Metaplanets Creator 2.2.1: oceans, landings and live surfaces

This update rolls up everything since 2.1: 2.1.1, 2.2.0 and 2.2.1. It rebuilds the ocean, makes descents and landings smooth, and lets you change a planet's surface at runtime. It ships for Unreal Engine 5.6, 5.7 and 5.8 with full C++ source, and now builds on macOS.

What's new

A rebuilt ocean

One seamless camera-centred clipmap with GPU FFT waves (wind sea and swell), whitecaps, and surf that breaks along the real coastline. It stays clean from the beach to orbit with no tile seams, and buoyancy matches the sea you see.

Smooth descents and landings

New tiles morph from the nearest tile still on screen, with no motion-vector smear under TAA or TSR. Collision is always ready near the camera, so a landing player never falls through new ground. Terrain tiles no longer flicker during descents on UE 5.8.

Runtime surface parameters

Declare parameters in a surface and drive layer height, latitude and biome ranges from a Material Parameter Collection. Change sea level, ice caps or vegetation at runtime with no tile regeneration.

Real elevation data

The new Planet DEM terrain node reads real global elevation data, such as Mars MOLA or Earth ETOPO, in metres.

Better forests

Far forests use octahedral impostors with depth that match the mesh trees, with crown occlusion, LOD cross-fades, distance-field lighting and contact shadows. Trees and grass stay on the ground as the terrain refines, grass no longer reshuffles while moving, and ground scatter casts shadows. Foliage on still ground is re-seated only after the terrain or camera changes, instead of thousands of traces every frame.

Faster streaming

Much faster tile generation on Voronoi and noise-heavy graphs, with identical heights. Streaming keeps up with fast camera moves, up to 16 tile workers, and Set Prefetch View Path loads tiles along a known camera path.

Also new

  • SetSpawnerGenerator: swap a planet's spawner at runtime, from Blueprint and in Shipping builds.
  • New example planets: Shoal, Rust, Veil, Europa, Io and Enceladus, plus jungle Plant Synth and Texture Synth sources.
  • Neutral shadows: no more blue cast up close.
  • Console settings for foliage reach, shadows and re-seating.

Metaplanets Atmospheres 2.2.1

The version jumps to match Metaplanets.

  • Blue sky from low ground: a camera below the planet's datum, such as in basins or on real elevation data, no longer sees a flat grey dome.
  • No more coloured strip along the bottom of the screen with downsampled clouds.
  • No more dark smears behind objects that move in front of the clouds.

Fixes

  • Grass and rocks no longer go missing near spots baked from far away.
  • Live sea-level changes keep the baked coastline; new bathymetry fades in.
  • Surface noise is anti-aliased: no tile-shaped patches from orbit.
  • No water LOD flashes on rivers and wetlands, and no shallow-sea patches over dry land from orbit.
  • LOD pixel error now matches the setting.
  • Builds on macOS.

Known issues

  • Grass shadows shimmer slightly at low sun while the camera moves.
  • From orbit, very small islands can be covered by water.

Get it

Metaplanets Creator 2.2.1 and Metaplanets Atmospheres 2.2.1 are available now for UE 5.6, 5.7 and 5.8. Existing levels load unchanged; rebuild your own Synth Plants to get impostors with depth. The full changelog is included with the download.