StarCitizen:Star Engine

Star Engine Logo

Star Engine is the video game engine used by Star Citizen and Squadron 42.

Star Engine aims among others to simulate a very large-scale universe, seamlessly and without any loading screens or invisible walls despite being massively multiplayer.<ref name=":0">CitizenCon 2953: Shaping the ‘Verse - The Future of StarEngine, Star Citizen, YouTube, 24 oct. 2023</ref>

Development

Star Engine is a heavily refactored version of CryEngine 3 from StarCitizen:Crytek used since the first in-engine video released at the start of the StarCitizen:Crowdfunding campaign. More specifically, the last CryEngine update integrated into Star Citizen's code was patch 3.8.<ref name="GN-20160930-ST_64bitEngine">Gamers Nexus - Interview with Sean Tracy, summary</ref> This heavily modified version has been internally named Star Engine since September 2016 at the latest, before moving to StarCitizen:Amazon Lumberyard.<ref name="GN-20160924-CR CitCon16">Gamers Nexus - Interview with Chris Roberts, summary, gamersnexus.net, September 24, 2016, archived.</ref>

On 2016-12-23, CIG announced with the release of Star Citizen Alpha 2.6.0 its move to Amazon Lumberyard game-engine, which is also based on CryEngine 3.8,<ref>StarCitizen:Erin Roberts: "Lumberyard is completely based on Cryengine", wccftech, Star Citizen Switches Engines: Move Along Folks, Nothing to See Here, Dec 24, 2016</ref> in order to utilize the integrated Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Cloud-Computing features "to support next generation online gaming"<ref>Star Citizen Newsletter - Alpha 2.6 with Star Marine!, December 23rd, 2016</ref>Template:RSIForumDiscussion. Since then, large portions of the engine have been rewritten internally by CIG, including rendering, networking, persistence and simulation technologies. It can no longer be accurately described as a specific Lumberyard version.

The StarEngine development and support is driven internally within Cloud Imperium Games with some of former Crytek employees supervising the project.<ref name="GN-20160930-ST_64bitEngine" /> A lot of the work on it is done in the Frankfurt studio.<ref>Cloud Imperium Games – Behind the Scenes of Star Citizen, lebetatesteur.ca, September 5, 2025</ref>

The term "Star Engine" was officially used for the first time during the presentation "The Future of Gaming: StarEngine" at StarCitizen:CitizenCon 2953. The trademark was filed a few days later by CIG on October 26, 2023.<ref>STARENGINE Trademark Furm.com 2023-10-26</ref>

Features

Template:Editorial Note Here's a list of features added by CIG since CryEngine 3.8.

Notable Tech

StarCitizen:Large World (64bit world space coordinates)
StarCitizen:Object Container Streaming
StarCitizen:Mega Map
StarCitizen:Zone System
StarCitizen:Local Physics Grids
StarCitizen:Room System
StarCitizen:Camera Relative Rendering<ref name="MR-201409">Monthly Report Oct 2014</ref>
Procedurally Generated Planets
StarCitizen:PBR (Physically Based Rendering)
The Sun as a physical object (possibility of Binary Star Systems or exploding ships in orbit casting light to the planet surface)<ref name="GN-20160924-CR_CitCon16">Chris Roberts on Star Citizen's Procedural Planets, Alpha 3.0, & CitizenCon on gamersnexus.net (2016-09-24), archived on web.archive.org (2023-08-27)</ref>
StarCitizen:StarScript<ref>Star Citizen Live | Tech Talk w/ Benoit Beausejour, YouTube, retrieved 2025-09-12.</ref> (formerly Subsumption AI<ref name="Mr-201410">Monthly Report Sept 2014</ref>)
StarCitizen:Unified First- & Third-Person animations
StarCitizen:Unique Global Entity ID<ref name="MR-201411">Monthly Report Nov 2014</ref>
Generic Instance Manager<ref name="MR-201504">Monthly Report April 2015</ref>
Universe Simulator<ref name="MR-201504" />
Persistence (Player Info Server, Presence Server, HUB Server and Player Persistence)<ref name="MR-201504" />
StarCitizen:Persistent Entity Streaming
StarCitizen:Replication layer
Entity Graph
StarCitizen:Item Port System<ref name="MR-201505">Monthly Report May 2015</ref>
StarCitizen:Server meshing
"Grabby Hands" - now integrated into the Cargo system and Loot system,<ref name="MR-201504" /><ref>Subscriber's Town Hall with Austin Developers</ref> initial system for grabbing and moving objects (e.g. cargo) and initially set to be released in the (later delayed) StarCitizen:Astro Arena or StarCitizen:SATABall FPS game mode
Multi-LayerBlend - character shader tech<ref name="Mr-201406">Monthly Report June 2015</ref>
iPredictor (movement prediction) system<ref name="MR-201504" />
Diffusion (cloud-oriented back-end service architecture)

Rendering

Template:List item Template:List item Template:List item Template:List item Template:List item Template:List item Template:List item Template:List item Template:List item Template:List item Template:List item Template:List item Template:List item Template:List item Template:List item Template:List item Template:List item Template:List item Template:List item Template:List item Template:List item Template:List item

Tech included in Star Citizen Alpha 4.8.0

P4K System - improved data handling system
Planetary Rotation
Temporal Supersampling (TSAA) - previously rendered frames are used to improve the anti-aliasing results on the new frame
Improved Screen Space Directional Occlusion (SSDO)
New Filmic Tone Mapping Curve (ACES)
PBR Glass - Glass (e.g. cockpits) can be rendered with phyiscs-based distortions, cracks, reflections and chromatic effects
Terrain Occlusion & Shadowing
Space Fog" (Gas Clouds in e.g. asteroid fields)
New water - constantly in motion, reactive to wind and objects, be it footprints in puddles, rivers, lakes, oceans or hot tubs<ref name=":0" />
Cloud light shafts - 3D volumetric shadows from clouds as opposed to post effect<ref name=":0" />
Temporal Upscaling (DLSS, FSR and CIG TSR)
StarCitizen:Starhair<ref name=":0" />
Dynamic weather
StarCitizen:Dynamic Fire (partially)
Ground fog - follows the terrain, fully integrated into the atmosphere, reduces the scattered light<ref name=":0" />

Planned features (as of June 2026)

Fully dynamic blood, sweat and tears<ref name=":0" />
Virtual Terrain Texturing<ref name=":0" />
Improved Scattering System<ref name=":0" />
Ray Traced StarCitizen:Global Illumination<ref name=":0" />
StarCitizen:Starcloth<ref name=":0" />
StarCitizen:StarAudio
Maelstrom - physically based destruction system.
Genesis world builder

Tools & 3rd-Party Software

Kythera - AI middleware<ref name="SC kythera">Kythera by Moon Collider</ref>
Vulkan API - 3D graphics and compute API Template:RSIForumComment
Wwise - Sound Engine Template:WP
FMOD - (deprecated) Sound Engine <ref name="MR-201409" />
DataForge Template:Fact - Data management, Ship & Weapons balancing<ref name="MR-201409" />
StoryForge - Dialogue and Conversations system, built upon DataForge<ref name="MR-201411" />
VERS 3D (formerly known as PlanetEd) - Editor for creating planets<ref>PlanetEd reference</ref>
System Layout Tool - Star system layout and design<ref name="Mr-201410" />
Room Management System - (deprecated) System for players to manage their hangars; now changed and integrated in Item Port System<ref name="MR-201409" />

Licensing

Star Engine is not available for sale nor licensing, in part for legal reasons related to existing agreements.<ref name=":1">Quantum Vegas 2955: Session 1: "Tech & Tools" with Sean Tracy, Quantum Vegas 2955, Youtube, 21 July 2025</ref><ref>CitizenCon 2953 interview with Brian Chambers, Hugo Lisoir, Twitch, 22 Oct 2023</ref> StarCitizen:Sean Tracy who has done that job at StarCitizen:Crytek for a number of years said that this would require a 100% support a 100% of the time and he therefore hopes this won't happen at CIG and would oppose it as the game itself would massively suffer.<ref name=":1" />

Trivia

A typical Star Engine frame update has up to 64 hardware threads, 200 software threads, over 700 000 streamed-in entities on a server, millions of entities overall in the solar system, about 150 000 component updates.<ref name=":0" />
Any given frame has over 200 vehicles, thousands of actors, including new creatures, over 2 000 000 physical objects, over 100 000 objects generated per frame, many unique locations to explore in a gigantic seamless space.<ref name=":0" />

List of Videos on the Star Engine

References

Template:Short description