System similar to Unreal Engine 5's Nanite?

[Divine Aurora]

Having seen the Unreal Engine 5 demo. I think it would be nice if something similar to however they do the 'nanite' thing on the back end was implemented in No Man's Sky to solve many of the LOD issues the game suffers from.

Given the game is procedurally generated, the system would probably have to work differently, but it would be really nice if something like that could be implemented, maybe only as an option on higher end systems, with perhaps only parts of the implementation on lower end systems that don't slow things down on them. Just really want the game to have less stutter as you approach stuff, and less LOD and pop-in issues. I have no idea if whatever methods nanite is using in Unreal 5 would help with that, or if they'd be able to be added to No Man's Sky somehow, but they must be doing something clever to dynamically cheat with not having to have developers make manual LODs and have the game do it mostly in real time.

If it did work, it would be great if the implementation could also be linked to improvements in base models and textures used as the parts for the procedural generation to mix up, since a lot of stuff gets questionable looking close up or simply in general where textures and meshes are stretched.

Maybe such could be a part of a big update after the new consoles come out along with the game being updated for the new consoles, and, perhaps, if it's possible to make a version that would work on it, the development of a Switch version is worth mentioning in context with developing for more consoles, although that would probably require more significant work and downgraded graphics, perhaps the work and experience of downgrading for and getting it working well on switch could help with optimizations for the main game, and help with re-implementation of a game mode that works on older PCs that met the original requirements but stopped working with the Vulcan update, given some players are still complaining about that.

I wouldn't be too surprised if at least elements of nanite doesn't require PS5 level hardware and special SSD stuff, given that it sounded like they were setting it up so elements of it even worked on smartphone games that use Unreal 5.

[Dirak2012]

I don't have idea of what "nanite" is in this context, but if it's related to the unreal engine, changing engines in a game means reworking the whole thing. A really bad idea unless you talk about NMS 2 or something like that.

[Divine Aurora]

Originally posted by Dirak2012:

I don't have idea of what "nanite" is in this context, but if it's related to the unreal engine, changing engines in a game means reworking the whole thing. A really bad idea unless you talk about NMS 2 or something like that.

It's the name they put on a new feature built into the engine, but I don't see why something similar can't be done in other engines, I think DX12 already has a more limited related feature.

It's basically a system for not having to pre-make separate LODs, and instead dynamically adjust a single high end texture and high poly model into lower poly and lower resolution versions using calculations from the graphics card and CPU. It probably requires certain levels of computational power and RAM and VRAM, but given it sounds like they're preparing a version that works on smartphone games, it probably doesn't require the greatest of modern systems, so much as being a new method that might require some greater understanding of things like graphics processing systems and graphics cards (either on die or discrete) to use.

Here is the video demonstrating it on PS5:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qC5KtatMcUw