Beyond Good & Evil 2 and its Voyager Engine: a universe without loading screens
The Beyond Good & Evil 2 project remains active, though its path is complex. At its technical core beats the Voyager engine, a platform that Ubisoft is creating specifically for this title. Its goal is ambitious: to build a persistent online universe where players can explore without anything stopping them. This involves taking off from a world, crossing its atmosphere, and navigating interstellar space to reach other suns, all in a continuous sequence without pauses. The engine must manage this data imperceptibly, loading and unloading resources on the fly. 🚀
The Voyager Engine scales to manage a continuous cosmos
To achieve this uninterrupted flow, the Voyager Engine needs to process gigantic volumes of geometry and textures. The system dynamically manages multiple levels of detail (LOD), adjusting from a street-level view to an orbital perspective. The team is pursuing cinematic visual quality that holds up even at galactic scales. Achieving this requires using advanced world streaming techniques and intensive use of compute shaders to generate terrain and atmospheric effects in real time. The engine is based on a persistent shared world for a large number of users. 🌌
Technical pillars of the Voyager Engine:- Smooth planetary transition: Moving from the surface to space without loading screens, handling data continuously.
- Dynamic asset streaming: Loading and unloading models, textures, and environment data based on the player's position.
- Compute shaders: Using the GPU for complex tasks like simulating vast terrains and realistic planetary atmospheres.
Turning an interstellar journey into an experience as fluid as walking through a room is a technical dream still being tested in development labs.
The challenges of building a borderless universe
Implementing this vision involves major technical challenges. Synchronizing such a vast cosmos among thousands of players requires an extremely robust and scalable server architecture. On the other hand, rendering detailed planetary landscapes and complex ships in real time demands optimizing the graphics pipeline to the maximum. Although technical demonstrations have shown promising advances, the project's future depends on the team successfully resolving these obstacles and delivering a stable experience. The promise of a borderless loading-free space remains its main appeal and greatest challenge. ⚙️
Main obstacles to overcome:- Massive multiplayer synchronization: Maintaining consistency in a shared and constantly changing universe for all participants.
- Graphical performance: Rendering scenes with high detail levels at planetary and space scales without compromising fluidity.
- Persistent world stability: Ensuring the online environment operates stably with a large population of interacting players.
The future of a technical promise
The development of Beyond Good & Evil 2 with the Voyager engine represents a colossal effort to redefine the limits of open worlds. Its technical success would not only define the game but set a precedent for managing massive uninterrupted online universes. As the team works to overcome performance and design challenges, the community awaits to see if this ambitious technology finally materializes its vision of a truly continuous cosmos. The journey, both in development and within the game, continues to be a trek through uncharted territories. 🪐