Making an open world map. Could use some input.

[Not_Sure]

@angrypenguin

Distance is never the issue anyway. Relative magnitude of numbers is the issue. If floating point precision is going to be an issue then scaling the world up or down won’t help it.

I’m saying that floating point is not an issue for me.

[EternalAmbiguity]

@Not_Sure

so long as I put lots of obstacles (like mountains) to move around

Do these mountains provide interesting gameplay events, or are they just an obstacle?

Because if it’s the latter, players will hate you.

[Not_Sure]

True.

[Rodolfo-Rubens]

@angrypenguin

There are many factors that impact that. The near clip plane of the camera and the shadow bias distance of the light both make a huge difference. You may have to script some auto-tuning of these if your game plays across different scales. It’s not a weakness of Unity, it’s to do with how floating point numbers work.

5k? What kind of glitches? I’ve got a project where I’m going way past 5k without any noticeable issues. Heck, some bits I’ve tested with no noticeable issues out to 100k.

It really depends on what you’re doing, but if you’re getting noticeable issues as close as 5k I wonder if there’s not also a large disparity in object scales or weights or lots of scaled parenting or something?

Mostly with shadows. Here are some videos I made:
Close to the world origin:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0FwRmDXUFw

Around 1500 units away from the world origin: (I think it’s very hard to notice in video)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHb4zx8qDfY

5k units far from the world origin:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMaDmx4DWRU

5k units far from the world origin, light settings changed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQerjl07f7M

Panning at 5k units, I think it would be very hard to level design with the camera that shaky:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKtBkCzQE3A

Edit: Btw, the terrains are 500x500 units, the “player” is 2 units tall (default unity’s capsule).

[angrypenguin]

@Rodolfo-Rubens

Mostly with shadows. Here are some videos I made:

What are your camera settings? Particularly the near clip distance. I’d also look at the shadow distances for your current quality setting, as that’ll probably impact accuracy, too. I haven’t noticed distance from origin making a difference, but I haven’t particularly been looking for it.

For my game, given the large view distances and long shadow distances I’ve got set, I find that I need both my camera’s near clip and the sun directional light’s shadow bias setting need to be pushed out as far as possible. That’s obviously undesirable in some circumstances, so my plan is to write a controller script that interpolates between short and long distance optimised settings depending on what the player is doing.

[Peter77]

@angrypenguin

It really depends on what you’re doing, but if you’re getting noticeable issues as close as 5k I wonder if there’s not also a large disparity in object scales or weights or lots of scaled parenting or something?

I was just giving this a try, added UnityChan to an empty project and moved it to x=100, 1000, 10000 and 25000 units away from the origin. The model started to jitter quite noticeably at around 5000 units. Did you do anything special to not run into this issue?

Here is the test that I did about a minute ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeMa1aMb7Xo

[Rodolfo-Rubens]

@angrypenguin

What are your camera settings? Particularly the near clip distance. I’d also look at the shadow distances for your current quality setting, as that’ll probably impact accuracy, too. I haven’t noticed distance from origin making a difference, but I haven’t particularly been looking for it.

For my game, given the large view distances and long shadow distances I’ve got set, I find that I need both my camera’s near clip and the sun directional light’s shadow bias setting need to be pushed out as far as possible. That’s obviously undesirable in some circumstances, so my plan is to write a controller script that interpolates between short and long distance optimised settings depending on what the player is doing.

I tried increasing the near clip to 0.1 and decreased the far clip to 100 but the shadows are still shaky, maybe it’s my GPU.

[angrypenguin]

@Peter77

Here is the test that I did about a minute ago.

I’ve not seen anything like that, probably because the project in question for me doesn’t have skinned meshes.

@Rodolfo-Rubens

I tried increasing the near clip to 0.1

Depending on the distances involved 0.1 is still a tiny near clip distance. For me, when the player is flying around there’s no reason not to push the near clip all the way out to its maximum (in the Inspector) value of 2.0, and given the long draw distances and shadow distances I’ll take all the precision I can get.

When the player is near the ground / indoors it’s a different matter, hence having a controller script on my to-do list.

[TerraUnity]

A bit late but just a heads up for the OP, for large open-worlds in Unity refer to this thread: TerraLand 3 - Streaming Huge Real-World & Custom Terrains For Open-World Environments

[Teila]

@Not_Sure

I’m not looking to pour any money into this so I don’t expect to be able to use any assets that are more than ~$10.

Not sure that is possible. The best assets start at $40 at least, and you will need assets for terrain building, day/night, textures and shaders for the terrain, plus trees, rocks, rivers, lakes, etc. I have found there is no perfect terrain tool that does it all, especially if you want tiled textures that actually work well with neighboring tiles.

I would suggest a few hundred dollars at least for the tools alone, and then much more for the model/texture assets.

Good luck!