13. Open Worlds

Crest follows the camera so it is inheritently suitable for open worlds, but there will be engine issues to account for.

13.1. Shifting Origin

Crest has support for ‘shifting origin’ functionality, based on code from the Unity Community Wiki which is no longer available.

By default the ShiftingOrigin script will call FindObjectsOfType() for a few different component types, which is a notoriously expensive operation. It is possible to provide custom lists of components to the “override” fields, either by hand or programmatically, to avoid searching the entire scene(s) for the components. Managing these lists at run-time is left to the user.

13.1.1. Stable World Shifts

Tip

Not changing the threshold default value is the simplest approach to stable world shifts.

To avoid popping in the waves, the threshold needs to be set to WaveResolution x LargestWavelength. The WaveResolution is on the Shape component (Shape FFT or Shape Gerstner) as just Resolution. The LargestWaveLength can be found on the Ocean Wave Spectrum (the sliders with numbers from 0.0625 to 512) - find the largest number you are using.

For example, a Shape FFT with a resolution of 16 and a largest wavelength of 256 will require a threshold value at a minimum of 4,096 to have stable shifts. You could halve this number once at the cost of some instability, but anything low will have very noticeable shifts.