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 be seamless 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. It is not known which version of Lumberyard is currently integrated in Star Engine and how CIG will handle future iterations (as of November 2016, the current version of Lumberyard is Beta 1.6).

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>

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" />
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:Item Port System<ref name="MR-201505">Monthly Report May 2015</ref>
StarCitizen:StarNetwork
GOST (Game Object State) (reworked to newer system<ref name="MR-201409">Monthly Report Oct 2014</ref>)
"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

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Tech included in StarCitizen:Star Citizen Alpha 3.0.0<ref name="CitizenCon 2017">CitizenCon 2017 Graphics Engineering Panel "Beyond the Cutting Edge"</ref>

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

Planned features (as of October 2017)<ref name="CitizenCon 2017" />

Short term

Terrain Occlusion & Shadowing
Gameplay Driven Material Shaders
"Space Fog" (Gas Clouds in e.g. asteroid fields)
Improved Hair
New Shield Effect
Depth of Field Improvements
Colour Processing Improvements
New Motion Blur Implementation
Support for Complex Shading Models

Mid/Long term goals

Object Container Streaming support on the low level/system side
Improved Planet Effects (shadows, clouds, etc.)
Improved Space Effects (stars, sun, rings, etc.)
Dynamic StarCitizen:Global Illumination
Batching of physics-thread
Batching of render-thread
Vulcan backend support

Planned features (as of October 2023)

Cloud light shafts - 3D volumetric shadows from clouds as opposed to post effect<ref name=":0" />
Ground fog - follows the terrain, fully integrated into the atmosphere, reduces the scattered light<ref name=":0" />
New water - constantly in motion, reactive to wind and objects, be it fottprints in puddles, rivers, lakes, oceans or hot tubs<ref name=":0" />
Fully dynamic blood, sweat and tears<ref name=":0" />
Temporal Upscaling<ref name=":0" />
Virtual Terrain Texturing<ref name=":0" />
Improved Scattering System<ref name=":0" />
Ray Traced Global Ilumination<ref name=":0" />
StarCitizen:Starcloth<ref name=":0" />
StarCitizen:Starhair<ref name=":0" />
Maelstrom - physically based destruction system.

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 timeand 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

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