Multi-Planet Streaming in Unreal Engine 5 - PlanetGen V1.6
Multi-planet streaming in Unreal Engine 5 with PlanetGen V1.6. In this video I fly from one planet's surface out into zero-gravity space, then land on another planet — all seamlessly, with multiple planets streaming in the same level.
PlanetGen V1.6 just shipped on Fab. New in this update: multi-planet LOD (place many planets in one level, only one streams full terrain at a time), per-planet atmospheres, correct night sides with real day/night terminator, and distant-planet halo shells.
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🌍 GET PLANETGEN
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📁 Project file access for patreon members
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🛠️ WHAT'S NEW IN V1.6
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✔ Multi-planet LOD — place as many planets as you like in one level. A central arbiter streams full terrain for the nearest planet and renders the rest as low-poly far spheres, so only one chunk pool is ever active.
✔ Seamless LOD transition — the far sphere sits just above the streamed terrain, then eases below it as chunks stream in. Hidden by occlusion rather than a dither pop. Sized from the actual generated terrain and time-sliced for hitch-free handoff on 50km planets.
✔ Per-planet atmosphere assets — Rayleigh and Mie scattering, ground albedo, multi-scattering, aerial perspective, cloud altitude, and sun shadow distance configured per planet. The Sky Atmosphere is repositioned onto the nearest planet and configured from that planet's asset.
✔ Correct night side — volumetric clouds evaluate the sun's transmittance per sample, so the dark hemisphere no longer glows white. A shader-space day/night terminator darkens terrain and foliage on the night side.
✔ Distant-planet atmosphere — cheap fresnel halo shell and cloud shell for far planets with per-pixel distance fade. The real Sky Atmosphere cross-fades in as the halo fades out, so the handoff doesn't pop.
✔ Manual LOD and atmosphere controls — Force LOD0, LOD1, Both, or Release. Editor buttons to preview LOD0 terrain or LOD1 far planet independently.
✔ Noise scale guard — each noise layer reports whether its frequency is coarse enough for your tile size and resolution. Detail finer than vertex spacing gets flagged in the log.
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🌌 PLANETGEN CORE FEATURES
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✔ Spherical planets AND cylindrical ring worlds (O'Neill habitats)
✔ Async chunk streaming with runtime actor pool — game thread never blocked
✔ Layered 3D noise (CLMNoise: Perlin, Simplex, Cellular, Ridged, Domain Warp)
✔ Spatial climate biomes with polar ice caps
✔ Multiplayer gravity — radial for planets, centrifugal for rings
✔ Zero-gravity mode + jetpack (V1.4)
✔ Player-following grass and foliage with per-instance collision
✔ Procedural water (sphere for planets, cylindrical band for rings)
✔ Full C++ source with Blueprint integration
✔ UE 5.4, 5.5, 5.6, 5.7, 5.8 supported
Multi-Planet Streaming in Unreal Engine 5 — PlanetGen V1.6 (YouTube)