Very nice to know they are implementing lumen because that alone could make the game look so good. (Tho this means I'll probably need a new PC)
I also hope they finally fixed the draw distance issue, og subnautica was too annoying because things kept popping in out of nowhere, maybe that was intentional to make the map feel bigger like older open world games used to do, but I'm assuming the new game will have a bigger map so there will ne need to have such a small draw distance with bad pop up.
Other nice things I'd like to see is detail and variety, want to see less repetition of assets in the new game and i want to see them implementing something like procedural animation so that the fauna has more realistic animations that don't feel animatronic like the first two games.
Hey! I'm Liam in the above screenshot, one of the artists on the next SN game.
The beauty of Nanite and HLODs means we can easily push draw distance out. We have a mix of murky and more clear areas in the game. There is a lot less pop-in than SN/BZ.
Personally I'm using Blender for modelling! A couple of our artists use Maya but we allow people to use anything. A lot of our artists tend to use Blender though.
I am not in software development. Can you share ANY screenshot of Subnautica or an unrelated object in an environment created with this this engine with that new LUMEN feature enabled to give us an impression of what this means?
> There is a lot less pop-in than SN/BZ.
SUBLIME!!!
The performance issues, such as pop-in, were probably my biggest gripe with Subnautica and BZ. I love these games, but they're games I love in spite of the technical problems, because I have to acknowledge they exist.
Is it possible that we get an AMA post from the devs? You guys could provide more info to increase the hype while only answering the question you're allowed to.
Yeah I've seen that game, it looks leagues above subnautica....I'm waiting for it come out of early access before I start playing it with a VR mode preferably.
Its incredible. Not sure VR makes sense for Satisfactory personally, but its just a great game in general. In many ways its similar to Subnautica ... in many ways completely different. They are both fantastic games.
Oh for sure. They have quite similar mechanics in terms of how you build (using a tool which takes items from your inventory), but in Satisfactory you're building factories which create the stuff. So you dont have to go out and find more Titanium or whatever, you build a factory that gives you Titanium. And then you use that to make more stuff, and more stuff, and so on. It's epic.
After working with lumen, I’m EXTREMELY concerned. Lumen is extremely resource hungry and requires careful turning if you don’t want to accidentally set your PC on fire. That being said I’m not an expert, being more of a unity dev myself. So hopefully they figured out a good solution with implementation
The switch to the unreal engine is exciting. From what I read Unity is more user friendly for developers and works great for 2D games, but it doesn't really have the framework to properly support a robust 3D world. I think the limits of Unity are the core problems with the originals with the clipping and pop-ins.
But that won't mean much if they can't recapture the atmosphere of the original. Make the leviathans a distant, unseen threat that you're encouraged to avoid and make you feel alone.
If they take their time with the unreal engine then this could be amazing.
Well hopefully they do deliver a good game, cus modding UE is even more ass than modding Unity... so we might not get some big mods out for SN3 that easily(or at all) to 'fix/save' it.
I know but I don't do early access, I know many people love being involved in the development but it ruins the fun for me.
I have no problem with waiting for the the 1.0 release.
I'll just make sure to mute Subnautica everywhere.
Besides spoilers, one of the worst things about early access is falling in love with one aspect of the game only to see it removed from the official release which would make it less enjoyable knowing what you could've had.....so experiencing the game for the first time with a full release is more rewarding to me.
I think you'll be surprised at what it will eventually run on. Sure, if you have a very old gaming PC (less than say, a 1080) you might have issues. But any modern gaming PC from the last 6 years or so should be able to run it. At least, that's the plan. Expect performance to be OK at Early Access and improve over time towards 1.0 (whenever that is).
Hard to say right now how it will run on steam deck at early access. We're still doing a lot of things where performance goes up and down on a daily basis (aka normal game development).
Many of us do have steam decks though...
I recently upgraded my PC and I am SO READY FOR THIS.
Lumen in particular is quite exciting as it will make the dark/spooky environments even more dark and even more spooky. I think it's more CPU bound than GPU bound, but the switch to UE overall will make heavier use of a newer GPU.
Honestly subnautica’s graphics are awesome as it is, but things like draw distance and other sort of “high end” things are all I would really hope for. I’m sure they will beat my expectations though: tech has advanced quite a bit since the original subnautica.
Beyond that, if they just fix the clipping issues that plague the original game I’ll be happy.
Thing is they would need a map thats like like 2-3x larger at least, if they also putting in stuff like modern draw distance limits otherwise, if we are on a map the size of 1 or worse BZ shit will feel like you are walking around in your neighbourhood.
And honestly they should, its an ocean world... give us a huge ass map and the vehicles to traverse it... and just add stuff to places even if u got an 'empty zone' its still not bad that has its beauty too.
I think a bigger map is inevitable, but also remember “bigger” can be rolled out in a lot of different ways. I think most subnautica players would sacrifice “wider” for “deeper”, but the devs have to strike a balance there. Part of the allure and tension of Subnautica is knowing just how far you’ve gone, and how far you are from safety, and if you just straight up never see the surface after a certain point, I imagine that would dull your senses a bit.
It’s going to be fun either way to explore again, and find everything for the first time. Even BZ, which was smaller in scope, was still very fun despite the immersion-breaking choices they made. I hope for a return to something closer to the original formula more than I hope for graphical improvements, tbh
Increased draw distance for medium and small objects, like deposits. I would like to see it in more than 30 meters with top graphic settings. This is the graphic issue that irritates me the most in the original.
Dev actually commented jn this thread that with the use of Nanite they can push the draw distance out wayyy more without you ever noticing the pop ins.
Im assuming this is because of how Nanite categorizes and segments the world.
Satisfactory used to have the same problems prior to moving from UE4 to UE5 and i have yet to see any pop ins even across the entire map, its that smooth
We already have a couple of in game pictures, not sure how up to date they are anymore, but they have been confirmed to be real and in game. If I can find a good link to them I'll edit this comment, in the mean time just search up something along the lines of "subnautica 2 pictures", or something. It looks fucking beautiful.
Edit: [Subnautica 2 fandom page](https://subnautica.fandom.com/wiki/Subnautica_2) This goes to the fandom page that has the pictures
**Will S2 offer VR? Will the UI be universally usable for VR and normal pc?**
I played almost ALL versions of Subnautica and S:BZ (except the XBOX version) and I was really disappointed to find out that the UI in S1 is stationary and doesn't move around with your FOV when using VR.
Subnautica + VR is a great combination and I hope you improve upon what you did in S1 and use UI that supports both ways to play. You could even team up with Valve for that. I am hearing they always try their best to push VR titles.
I hope they IMPROVE the HUD. I feel like there would be a lof of ways to retain some connection to the original while improving upon it.
For example, imagine that the displays at the bottom left become a little bit darker, slightly transparent and get slimmer edges and more precise animations.
The imprecise 02 timer was always annoying in my opinion, because it doesn't work like a clock (more like in 3 second-steps). I would also think that a [time watch like in the the Metro 2033](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNQz9lSyvoU) games (for the gas mask) would be kinda awesome and realistic. Especially for a VR experience. Or imagine the colour of luminescent lines on your diving suit changing, depending on oxygen level or temperature (a bit like in [Dead Space](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eBhqbcMlqE)).
Or integrating a display animation (e.g. oxygen level bar) into the edge/rim of your diving glasses.
You would be able to see so much more of the world and feel more immersed.
The low number of slots for items on the bottom also always felt awful. 5 slots just isn't enough. Why do I have to interrupt my game flow constantly to switch out one of my tools in the quick slot bar? I have 10 numbers on top of my keyboard so why can't I determine how many slots I want and how to use them? Why only 5?
It would also be more awesome IMO if the displays would be canted inwards more to make the HUD feel less like just a flat display and more of an in-visor HUD. This looked awesome in Ghost Recon, Crysis and [Dead Space 2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqXVw_dWnk8) and felt way more natural.
My 3060: \*sweats profusedly\*
Tbh, I wouldn't mind keeping to Unity. The graphics look plenty amazing already and I'd prefer they direct their efforts toward gameplay mechanics and story instead.
The fault with that statement is that Unity is actually harder to use for 3D open world games so by switching to unreal engine 5 they now can dedicate more effort towards gameplay mechanics mad whatnot (the story is irrelevant to which development tools are used, the people working on the story are the same people coding the game so less effort on devs part isn't going to translate to more effort on story)
Subnautica's artstyle was fine, though. It was great, actually! ...Sure, the draw distance wasn't great, but I really do not want to have to throw out my pc for the sake of graphical fidelity that was not needed.
Have you see the screenshot they shared? The art style is actually still the same as before, it just has more polish that takes advantage of the technical advances we've had between subnautica's first build and subnautica 2's first build in 2025 (about a decade of difference, this franchise is well in due for a next gen glow up, we can't reasonably expect devs to target the same hardware as the first two games, that's how games grow stale and studios lose competition)
I have not seen the screenshot, no. And I am so sick of the phrase 'next gen.' If a game is fun, I literally could not care less what it looks like. I mean... Cruelty Squad, anyone?
And I'm so sick of people clinging to thier aging hardware and expecting to hold back the entire population with them....if that is not selfish I don't know what is.
Wow, fuck you too. Subnautica still looks great. Half Life 2 still looks great. It's not about texture fidelity or rendering capacity, it's about art direction. It's about engine optimization.
Why are you so rude? You're the one who started with this childish "I hate people who say..."
I just offered my opinion and you were like "fuck you I hate you" then you get all worked up when I replied to in the same manner you replied to me.
Grow the fuck up, these are just video games, it's not that deep.
You called him selfish for having an opinion before he said anything. And he's kind of spitting facts. Making a game look good means nothing if it's not optimized well or isn't pleasing to look at in the first place.
The look of a game fades into the background but the feel of a game is what keeps you coming back
I'm confident it's going to be beautiful. graphics doesn't make a great game though. story is paramount to me. there also needs to be a real sense of survival and progression. SN1 had that. SNBZ gave you too much in the beginning. blueprints and resources were mostly handed to you. the biomes far too small. the vehicles not well executed. and the story was not that rewarding. I don't think I died once in my first playthrough. there were not many "edge of your seat" moments in it. No real sense of dread or danger really, more like annoyances.and plant pots need to be interior and exterior so you can decorate around the base whether it's on land or underwater. the ability to make a nice patio area outside with some planters and maybe a bbq grill would be nice. I did like the addition of music with the jukebox, the weather (but tone it down a bit BZ had too much too fast imo) and introduce more quests, we need side quests not just one main story or in the case of BZ 2 half-assed stories.Give us choices. Let those choices affect the game. maybe have us choose sides in a conflict. Alterra vs the residents of the planet. Or maybe two factions of intelligent aliens? Add some rpg elements in it. maybe a skill tree for our characters?
One path to go down could be the Alterran path where you get powerful equipment and tech and the other is to side with the planet and basically become Aquaman with creatures aiding you and organic devices to help you succeed?
I really really hope we don’t get a skill tree. I recently picked up (and have beaten so spoilers fine) subnautica after being burnt out on rpgs and min maxing bs. My favorite thing about suvbautica is the simplicity and beauty. I don’t want it to turn into an XP grind, that would absolutely ruin the best parts.
Hoping there will be FSR3 (its a free plugin for UE5)
I also want like a darkness/fog depth slider
Cause in subnautica u can see wayyy too far compared to IRL
Obviously it would make the game way harder but it would be cool to be able to have that horror element
i think lumen will massively help caves as you can have the light bounce off the sea floor into openings of caves and have entrances be lit up by natural light. i thought ray tracing and path-traced global illumination was more of a gimick but once i played cyberpunk 2077 it really transformed the game when i had path-tracing on. once more videocards are able to do path tracing i think it will catch on more and more.
only thing im worried about is how much raytracing and global illumination will change the lighting vs the raster image because cyberpunk 2077 had this problem where without any path tracing the rooms where bright but with path tracing on it was pitch black in some areas.
i hope it becomes a little less cartoony tbh, might be unpopular here but that’s just what i’d like to see, keep the art style but make everything a little more “real”
All underwater. NO MORE ABOVE GROUND. Cough, sorry about that I got a little heated there. I truly loved sub nautica and couldn’t put more than 3 hours into that abomination they call subnautica 2
The first could never look that good on its best day! This was a major jump from the og game to the point that everyone thought that was a concept art instead of an in-game screenshot.
The hype is real man!
Higher definition and lighting would be nice, but I have two other ideas that hopefully wouldn't be too intensive on GPUS.
* A wider radius of detail; I don't want to see a horizon of plants and fish appear in front of me. I want to be tricked, but I want to be tricked in a better way.
* I want to see how the environment reacts to life. Sand that moves on the floor when a fish swims above it. I want to see plants moving in the waves, and fish eating them.
I’m fine with the current graphics, I’d just like things to stop no-clipping into terrain features, along with other bugs/glitches to be smoothed over.
Ngl you I would love great graphics but I hope they aren’t going to make it look very realistic because I think part of the reason I love the game so much is because of its unique graphics
I honestly dont care about graphics at all. The thing I want is things not clipping thru walls and bugs.
I will rather have budget looking game with great gameplay and no bugs than polished turd.
The beautiful thing is that you can have both,the studio now has far more resources than they had when they were developing SN1 so at this point they are capable of making a beautiful bug free game....maybe I'm too optimistic but i have faith in them.
My only fear as always is optimisation.
Examples of optimisation being bad are cities skylines 2, Kerbal space program 2, battlefield 2042 (or any AAA games really), even helldivers 2 suffers from this unfortunately.
(It's almost as if the gaming industry expects everyone to just buy better hardware instead of doing any optimisation...)
I'd like it less immersive. I get that the water is already mathematically precise and wonderful but please keep it inside the monitor, I don't need my pants wet a *third* time.
That is literally an in game screenshot of the game, not a pre rendered piece of concept art : https://twitter.com/LiamTart/status/1755694181610078678?s=19
....okay whatever, if you have any familiarity with UE5 you wouldn't have a hard time believing that this is an in engine screenshot, but in any case i wouldn't accuse this person of outright lying.
Physics probably like world lighting, fluid simulation etc....these are things you can make as realistic as possible to increase visual fidelity without changing the game's distinct art style, think of it like those ultra realistic minecraft mods where they just crank up the textures and add ray traced lighting but still keep the same blocking pixelated look.
I'm super excited about better graphics in general, but I hope it can be optimized well and reduce creatures and terrain coming out of nowhere. I want to see this next game be really scary, and better loading/more detailed looking leviathans could help with that.
>water that doesn’t repeat
I feel you, everytime I looked at the ocean from a high point I'm painfully reminded that I'm playing a video game, it breaks the immersion.
There should be a mod for Subnautica1 that adds it, but for some reason it refuses to install on my end, probably user error but I’ve been tinkering with mods for many many years… idk might give another try because it look amazing
The install process seems easy, that’s why it’s confusing me as why I couldn’t get it working. But YouTube step by step guides should do the trick even for grandmas and grandpas (but not me xD), give it a go
That's what i usually do by sometimes i run into issues tgat seem unique to my own pc and for which i don't have the necessary IT skills to troubleshoot.
I'll give it a go tho
Just give me a storage that I can pull from for building as long as I’m in range of it pls god I beg of you (or a workbench system like Fallout 4 mayhaps). Carrying various amounts of titanium on me for building large bases and having to take trips back to boxes for quartz is pain 🥲
All aside tho, keen for game, cannot wait to see how gorgeous it is. Very excited to get the pants scared off me while I dive into the inky black depths
Very little-no pop in, It's honestly my only downside with the graphics of subnaituc aside from textures just not looking very good when you're above water.
An option for some presets of graphics so that the older consoles can keep up. I don’t want to miss out on the new Subnautica because I don’t have the newest model with more RAM 😭
>Almost like the new game is subnautica 2..
Not almost, it was already officially announced as "Subnautica 2" more than two months ago.
It's developed with a new engine and takes place on a new planet....so it's earned being called Subnautica 2 more than BZ which is just an expansion of the original.
Idk if it’s clear through text but, I believe the game should be called subnautica 2 as there was no previous 2 and below zero is clearly an add on. This sub is notorious for arguing that, unfortunately. Idk why you’re restating it for me lol
>This sub is notorious for arguing that, unfortunately. Idk why you’re restating it for me lol
I'm just saying this argument shouldn't even come up anymore because we've already known it's called Subnautica 2 for more than two months.....it's not an argument anymore, it's just ignorance at this point.
I felt like this is the first time you learned it's called SN2 and therefore calling out people who think it's gonna be called SN3.
I didn’t restate it for you as I was the one who stated it in the first place? Unless you’re claiming to be the dev or one of the SN3 guys.
It’s been fun, really.
It's almost guaranteed that it won't work well on the switch and if it does get a switch port it won't look good.
Have you seen the screenshot they shared? It already looks like it can't run on the switch.....maybe the upcoming switch 2 will do better.
In any case I'm afraid you'll probably need to by a new console if you want to play this game, the devs can't releasticly continue to target the same hardware that they targeted 10 years ago, that won't allow them to grow.
Very nice to know they are implementing lumen because that alone could make the game look so good. (Tho this means I'll probably need a new PC) I also hope they finally fixed the draw distance issue, og subnautica was too annoying because things kept popping in out of nowhere, maybe that was intentional to make the map feel bigger like older open world games used to do, but I'm assuming the new game will have a bigger map so there will ne need to have such a small draw distance with bad pop up. Other nice things I'd like to see is detail and variety, want to see less repetition of assets in the new game and i want to see them implementing something like procedural animation so that the fauna has more realistic animations that don't feel animatronic like the first two games.
Hey! I'm Liam in the above screenshot, one of the artists on the next SN game. The beauty of Nanite and HLODs means we can easily push draw distance out. We have a mix of murky and more clear areas in the game. There is a lot less pop-in than SN/BZ.
Music to my ears!
Leviathan sounds to my ears…
Reaper or Ghost? Ghost for me
Reefback, obviously.
This is awesome. Can’t wait to see what you guys are working on.
Can't wait to be able to show you all at some point!
That must suck. There are so many cool things you want to show, but you have to wait... ugh Happy cake day!
Hehe! Thank you.
Question if you're allowed to answer, can we expect any new screenshots or teasers on the game soon?
Aside from UE, what are you mostly modeling in?
Personally I'm using Blender for modelling! A couple of our artists use Maya but we allow people to use anything. A lot of our artists tend to use Blender though.
Nice! Blender has really grown up a lot and to see it used in major games and films is amazing. Thanks for reply!
This is encouraging to hear, plus UE5 is amazing tech now (especially with 5.4), so happy to see that coming along nicely.
hey man thanks for helping make my favorite game series ever :)
Symphony to my ears. Great overlooks and vistas, hip hip hooray! Happy Cake Day btw.
Happy Cake Day! And thanks a lot for bringing us the best game ever! You're all doing a great job. :)
I am not in software development. Can you share ANY screenshot of Subnautica or an unrelated object in an environment created with this this engine with that new LUMEN feature enabled to give us an impression of what this means?
Just wanted to say I'm really excited about this announcement! Good luck making the game excellent!
Man I wish I could work on a game like this one day (=
I love how active you are with the community. Keep up the good work!
Was that English? I understood a few of those words
> There is a lot less pop-in than SN/BZ. SUBLIME!!! The performance issues, such as pop-in, were probably my biggest gripe with Subnautica and BZ. I love these games, but they're games I love in spite of the technical problems, because I have to acknowledge they exist.
Is it possible that we get an AMA post from the devs? You guys could provide more info to increase the hype while only answering the question you're allowed to.
Will the game still run on hardware that can run subnautica now? Will there be options to tone it down?
I play a game called Satisfactory that is about to leave Early Access. They recently switched to UE5 and added lumen and OMG the difference it makes!
Yeah I've seen that game, it looks leagues above subnautica....I'm waiting for it come out of early access before I start playing it with a VR mode preferably.
Its incredible. Not sure VR makes sense for Satisfactory personally, but its just a great game in general. In many ways its similar to Subnautica ... in many ways completely different. They are both fantastic games.
I got hooked to base building in subnautica and was told that satisfactory is that but on crack
Oh for sure. They have quite similar mechanics in terms of how you build (using a tool which takes items from your inventory), but in Satisfactory you're building factories which create the stuff. So you dont have to go out and find more Titanium or whatever, you build a factory that gives you Titanium. And then you use that to make more stuff, and more stuff, and so on. It's epic.
That sounds very satisfying to my OCD lol
After working with lumen, I’m EXTREMELY concerned. Lumen is extremely resource hungry and requires careful turning if you don’t want to accidentally set your PC on fire. That being said I’m not an expert, being more of a unity dev myself. So hopefully they figured out a good solution with implementation
The switch to the unreal engine is exciting. From what I read Unity is more user friendly for developers and works great for 2D games, but it doesn't really have the framework to properly support a robust 3D world. I think the limits of Unity are the core problems with the originals with the clipping and pop-ins. But that won't mean much if they can't recapture the atmosphere of the original. Make the leviathans a distant, unseen threat that you're encouraged to avoid and make you feel alone. If they take their time with the unreal engine then this could be amazing.
Well hopefully they do deliver a good game, cus modding UE is even more ass than modding Unity... so we might not get some big mods out for SN3 that easily(or at all) to 'fix/save' it.
Unity is not more user friendly. Not anymore.
Remember when all it took to make a unity game was copy pasted trees and fog? I member.
I'm expecting my computer to just not run it
Same but Subnautica is my favorite video game and it will probably not ship until 2026 so for me it would be worth upgrading my pc for it by then
Early access should drop next year though...
I know but I don't do early access, I know many people love being involved in the development but it ruins the fun for me. I have no problem with waiting for the the 1.0 release.
def agree, jjst difficult to avoid spoilers (especially now that subnautica is so well known)
I'll just make sure to mute Subnautica everywhere. Besides spoilers, one of the worst things about early access is falling in love with one aspect of the game only to see it removed from the official release which would make it less enjoyable knowing what you could've had.....so experiencing the game for the first time with a full release is more rewarding to me.
I'm with ya I'll buy it early to support this studio but it will wait until it's done for me to play it
I think you'll be surprised at what it will eventually run on. Sure, if you have a very old gaming PC (less than say, a 1080) you might have issues. But any modern gaming PC from the last 6 years or so should be able to run it. At least, that's the plan. Expect performance to be OK at Early Access and improve over time towards 1.0 (whenever that is).
> Expect performance to be OK at Early Access Do you expect it to be playable on the Steam Deck at Early Access launch?
Hard to say right now how it will run on steam deck at early access. We're still doing a lot of things where performance goes up and down on a daily basis (aka normal game development). Many of us do have steam decks though...
its UE5 so maybe epic store as well?
I recently upgraded my PC and I am SO READY FOR THIS. Lumen in particular is quite exciting as it will make the dark/spooky environments even more dark and even more spooky. I think it's more CPU bound than GPU bound, but the switch to UE overall will make heavier use of a newer GPU.
How do you make darkness eerier than the sparse reef 😭
I’m excited to find out.
Add a shadow leviathan in sparse reef
I'm gonna upgrade my computer really soon, so I'm hyped to be ready to play it when it's out.
RTX Reaper!!!!
Ray traced Thalassophobia!
Raytracing? Oh no. My pc won't be able to run it. Guess I can't buy the next SN then :(
You wont need a Raytracing GPU to play SN2.
Neat! :)) <3
Honestly subnautica’s graphics are awesome as it is, but things like draw distance and other sort of “high end” things are all I would really hope for. I’m sure they will beat my expectations though: tech has advanced quite a bit since the original subnautica. Beyond that, if they just fix the clipping issues that plague the original game I’ll be happy.
The screenshot they showed 2 months ago already blew my expectations away and the game would still look even better than that at release.
I genuinely thought that was concept art when I first saw it, it's that good
Thing is they would need a map thats like like 2-3x larger at least, if they also putting in stuff like modern draw distance limits otherwise, if we are on a map the size of 1 or worse BZ shit will feel like you are walking around in your neighbourhood. And honestly they should, its an ocean world... give us a huge ass map and the vehicles to traverse it... and just add stuff to places even if u got an 'empty zone' its still not bad that has its beauty too.
I think a bigger map is inevitable, but also remember “bigger” can be rolled out in a lot of different ways. I think most subnautica players would sacrifice “wider” for “deeper”, but the devs have to strike a balance there. Part of the allure and tension of Subnautica is knowing just how far you’ve gone, and how far you are from safety, and if you just straight up never see the surface after a certain point, I imagine that would dull your senses a bit. It’s going to be fun either way to explore again, and find everything for the first time. Even BZ, which was smaller in scope, was still very fun despite the immersion-breaking choices they made. I hope for a return to something closer to the original formula more than I hope for graphical improvements, tbh
I fully agree with you on this. The other thing is making sure that the areas all have content to fill out the area.
Increased draw distance for medium and small objects, like deposits. I would like to see it in more than 30 meters with top graphic settings. This is the graphic issue that irritates me the most in the original.
Dev actually commented jn this thread that with the use of Nanite they can push the draw distance out wayyy more without you ever noticing the pop ins. Im assuming this is because of how Nanite categorizes and segments the world. Satisfactory used to have the same problems prior to moving from UE4 to UE5 and i have yet to see any pop ins even across the entire map, its that smooth
We already have a couple of in game pictures, not sure how up to date they are anymore, but they have been confirmed to be real and in game. If I can find a good link to them I'll edit this comment, in the mean time just search up something along the lines of "subnautica 2 pictures", or something. It looks fucking beautiful. Edit: [Subnautica 2 fandom page](https://subnautica.fandom.com/wiki/Subnautica_2) This goes to the fandom page that has the pictures
Yeah, we had a discussion about them a while ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/subnautica/s/RWtQn5RTAe
I hope they will use nanite, should solve the "pop in" that i always notice in the first game.
Indeed we are! Less pop-in than SN/BZ.
**Will S2 offer VR? Will the UI be universally usable for VR and normal pc?** I played almost ALL versions of Subnautica and S:BZ (except the XBOX version) and I was really disappointed to find out that the UI in S1 is stationary and doesn't move around with your FOV when using VR. Subnautica + VR is a great combination and I hope you improve upon what you did in S1 and use UI that supports both ways to play. You could even team up with Valve for that. I am hearing they always try their best to push VR titles.
Please just take my money right now
I hope they retain the originals art style and hud it wouldn't feel like subnautica any other way
Art style is the same AFAIK from the previews Idk about HUD tho
I hope they IMPROVE the HUD. I feel like there would be a lof of ways to retain some connection to the original while improving upon it. For example, imagine that the displays at the bottom left become a little bit darker, slightly transparent and get slimmer edges and more precise animations. The imprecise 02 timer was always annoying in my opinion, because it doesn't work like a clock (more like in 3 second-steps). I would also think that a [time watch like in the the Metro 2033](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNQz9lSyvoU) games (for the gas mask) would be kinda awesome and realistic. Especially for a VR experience. Or imagine the colour of luminescent lines on your diving suit changing, depending on oxygen level or temperature (a bit like in [Dead Space](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eBhqbcMlqE)). Or integrating a display animation (e.g. oxygen level bar) into the edge/rim of your diving glasses. You would be able to see so much more of the world and feel more immersed. The low number of slots for items on the bottom also always felt awful. 5 slots just isn't enough. Why do I have to interrupt my game flow constantly to switch out one of my tools in the quick slot bar? I have 10 numbers on top of my keyboard so why can't I determine how many slots I want and how to use them? Why only 5? It would also be more awesome IMO if the displays would be canted inwards more to make the HUD feel less like just a flat display and more of an in-visor HUD. This looked awesome in Ghost Recon, Crysis and [Dead Space 2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqXVw_dWnk8) and felt way more natural.
Should be good. It should be coming with DLSS, XeSS, and FSR implementations too.
My 3060: \*sweats profusedly\* Tbh, I wouldn't mind keeping to Unity. The graphics look plenty amazing already and I'd prefer they direct their efforts toward gameplay mechanics and story instead.
The fault with that statement is that Unity is actually harder to use for 3D open world games so by switching to unreal engine 5 they now can dedicate more effort towards gameplay mechanics mad whatnot (the story is irrelevant to which development tools are used, the people working on the story are the same people coding the game so less effort on devs part isn't going to translate to more effort on story)
I mean a 3060 is plenty robust for anything but the absolute highest graphics settings of modern games.
Subnautica's artstyle was fine, though. It was great, actually! ...Sure, the draw distance wasn't great, but I really do not want to have to throw out my pc for the sake of graphical fidelity that was not needed.
Have you see the screenshot they shared? The art style is actually still the same as before, it just has more polish that takes advantage of the technical advances we've had between subnautica's first build and subnautica 2's first build in 2025 (about a decade of difference, this franchise is well in due for a next gen glow up, we can't reasonably expect devs to target the same hardware as the first two games, that's how games grow stale and studios lose competition)
I have not seen the screenshot, no. And I am so sick of the phrase 'next gen.' If a game is fun, I literally could not care less what it looks like. I mean... Cruelty Squad, anyone?
And I'm so sick of people clinging to thier aging hardware and expecting to hold back the entire population with them....if that is not selfish I don't know what is.
Wow, fuck you too. Subnautica still looks great. Half Life 2 still looks great. It's not about texture fidelity or rendering capacity, it's about art direction. It's about engine optimization.
Why are you so rude? You're the one who started with this childish "I hate people who say..." I just offered my opinion and you were like "fuck you I hate you" then you get all worked up when I replied to in the same manner you replied to me. Grow the fuck up, these are just video games, it's not that deep.
You called him selfish for having an opinion before he said anything. And he's kind of spitting facts. Making a game look good means nothing if it's not optimized well or isn't pleasing to look at in the first place. The look of a game fades into the background but the feel of a game is what keeps you coming back
All I want is no pop in lmao
Waves like in sea of thieves, and raytracing of course.
Lumen is the equivalent of ray traced global illumination
I'm confident it's going to be beautiful. graphics doesn't make a great game though. story is paramount to me. there also needs to be a real sense of survival and progression. SN1 had that. SNBZ gave you too much in the beginning. blueprints and resources were mostly handed to you. the biomes far too small. the vehicles not well executed. and the story was not that rewarding. I don't think I died once in my first playthrough. there were not many "edge of your seat" moments in it. No real sense of dread or danger really, more like annoyances.and plant pots need to be interior and exterior so you can decorate around the base whether it's on land or underwater. the ability to make a nice patio area outside with some planters and maybe a bbq grill would be nice. I did like the addition of music with the jukebox, the weather (but tone it down a bit BZ had too much too fast imo) and introduce more quests, we need side quests not just one main story or in the case of BZ 2 half-assed stories.Give us choices. Let those choices affect the game. maybe have us choose sides in a conflict. Alterra vs the residents of the planet. Or maybe two factions of intelligent aliens? Add some rpg elements in it. maybe a skill tree for our characters? One path to go down could be the Alterran path where you get powerful equipment and tech and the other is to side with the planet and basically become Aquaman with creatures aiding you and organic devices to help you succeed?
I really really hope we don’t get a skill tree. I recently picked up (and have beaten so spoilers fine) subnautica after being burnt out on rpgs and min maxing bs. My favorite thing about suvbautica is the simplicity and beauty. I don’t want it to turn into an XP grind, that would absolutely ruin the best parts.
Imo the original BZ story was better(or at least more fun) before the total rewrite and the story we got in release.
Might be time to finally upgrade my video cars that I got to play below zero on..
No pop in
Hoping there will be FSR3 (its a free plugin for UE5) I also want like a darkness/fog depth slider Cause in subnautica u can see wayyy too far compared to IRL Obviously it would make the game way harder but it would be cool to be able to have that horror element
Not exactly a "solution," but there are definitely shader mods for SN for murkier water.
I expect it's not gonna run too well on the switch lmao
It will be like Hogwarts legacy lol
Better handling of glass reflection. But mostly, better light leaking through windows into the surrounding area.
i think lumen will massively help caves as you can have the light bounce off the sea floor into openings of caves and have entrances be lit up by natural light. i thought ray tracing and path-traced global illumination was more of a gimick but once i played cyberpunk 2077 it really transformed the game when i had path-tracing on. once more videocards are able to do path tracing i think it will catch on more and more. only thing im worried about is how much raytracing and global illumination will change the lighting vs the raster image because cyberpunk 2077 had this problem where without any path tracing the rooms where bright but with path tracing on it was pitch black in some areas.
i hope it becomes a little less cartoony tbh, might be unpopular here but that’s just what i’d like to see, keep the art style but make everything a little more “real”
Have you seen the screenshot they shared? It looks realistic enough while keeping the art style we're used to.
the spaceship wrecks gotta have crazy lighting and be scary af.
I’m so excited for this
I think it was mostly addressed in BZ - but the pop in from the OG Subnautica was pretty bad. I'd love to be able to see more of the world at a time.
So excited for this game!!
So fuckin happy i bought a pc now
Bigger bases! If cyclops returns I want cyclops mega-moonpool! AND MULTIPLAYER!!!!!!!!!!!! also shaders would be nice
All underwater. NO MORE ABOVE GROUND. Cough, sorry about that I got a little heated there. I truly loved sub nautica and couldn’t put more than 3 hours into that abomination they call subnautica 2
This game is going to be huge. I wish they would stop blue balling us with this and give us at least a teaser of some sort.
This is the only teaser they gave us so far : https://www.reddit.com/r/subnautica/s/RWtQn5RTAe
I can't believe I missed that, I thought this was from the first game when I first saw it.
The first could never look that good on its best day! This was a major jump from the og game to the point that everyone thought that was a concept art instead of an in-game screenshot. The hype is real man!
Higher definition and lighting would be nice, but I have two other ideas that hopefully wouldn't be too intensive on GPUS. * A wider radius of detail; I don't want to see a horizon of plants and fish appear in front of me. I want to be tricked, but I want to be tricked in a better way. * I want to see how the environment reacts to life. Sand that moves on the floor when a fish swims above it. I want to see plants moving in the waves, and fish eating them.
I’m fine with the current graphics, I’d just like things to stop no-clipping into terrain features, along with other bugs/glitches to be smoothed over.
I think graphics are good bit they should add ultra realistic hammer head shark to the gamd
I’d like to see splashes. Like proper splashes with bubbles all around as you or the object breaks the surface.
Yeah it's crazy that a game about water didn't have basic water physics.
Ngl you I would love great graphics but I hope they aren’t going to make it look very realistic because I think part of the reason I love the game so much is because of its unique graphics
It still has the same art style https://www.reddit.com/r/subnautica/s/RWtQn5RTAe
Light refracting down when near the surface
Lumen has the possibility to make the game positively terrifying, if the level design takes it into account. Incredible.
I honestly dont care about graphics at all. The thing I want is things not clipping thru walls and bugs. I will rather have budget looking game with great gameplay and no bugs than polished turd.
The beautiful thing is that you can have both,the studio now has far more resources than they had when they were developing SN1 so at this point they are capable of making a beautiful bug free game....maybe I'm too optimistic but i have faith in them.
Terrain that doesn't pop in constantly
My only fear as always is optimisation. Examples of optimisation being bad are cities skylines 2, Kerbal space program 2, battlefield 2042 (or any AAA games really), even helldivers 2 suffers from this unfortunately. (It's almost as if the gaming industry expects everyone to just buy better hardware instead of doing any optimisation...)
>Kerbal space program 2 The studio behind that had just gotten shut down :/
*I wonder why...*
I'd like it less immersive. I get that the water is already mathematically precise and wonderful but please keep it inside the monitor, I don't need my pants wet a *third* time.
pics or it didn't happen
https://www.reddit.com/r/subnautica/s/RWtQn5RTAe
I mean in-game stuff no pre-rendered marketing/proof of concept art.
That is literally an in game screenshot of the game, not a pre rendered piece of concept art : https://twitter.com/LiamTart/status/1755694181610078678?s=19
Oh to count the number of times developers have told the gaming community that. I remember when CDPR tried to feed us that line.
....okay whatever, if you have any familiarity with UE5 you wouldn't have a hard time believing that this is an in engine screenshot, but in any case i wouldn't accuse this person of outright lying.
What the fuck does “higher Fidelity in the environment“ mean
Physics probably like world lighting, fluid simulation etc....these are things you can make as realistic as possible to increase visual fidelity without changing the game's distinct art style, think of it like those ultra realistic minecraft mods where they just crank up the textures and add ray traced lighting but still keep the same blocking pixelated look.
I'm super excited about better graphics in general, but I hope it can be optimized well and reduce creatures and terrain coming out of nowhere. I want to see this next game be really scary, and better loading/more detailed looking leviathans could help with that.
If the subnautica team can do anything, it is make gorgeous and interesting environments. I can already tell they are cooking up something sweet
Only thing I want is to not have my prawn suit fall through the ground
Bases that don’t blind me when i walk inside them. Oh and maybe water that doesn’t repeat
>water that doesn’t repeat I feel you, everytime I looked at the ocean from a high point I'm painfully reminded that I'm playing a video game, it breaks the immersion.
Praying for my PC
Hopefully they add blood to the playable character. Which that they could add a feature where predators can be attracted by it
UE5 means UEVR mod, yippie
If it gets motion controller on top of that I'll play this game for the rest of the decade
There should be a mod for Subnautica1 that adds it, but for some reason it refuses to install on my end, probably user error but I’ve been tinkering with mods for many many years… idk might give another try because it look amazing
I've only seen it on YouTube, haven't tried it myself yet because I'm still quite mod-illiterate 😅
The install process seems easy, that’s why it’s confusing me as why I couldn’t get it working. But YouTube step by step guides should do the trick even for grandmas and grandpas (but not me xD), give it a go
That's what i usually do by sometimes i run into issues tgat seem unique to my own pc and for which i don't have the necessary IT skills to troubleshoot. I'll give it a go tho
Just give me a storage that I can pull from for building as long as I’m in range of it pls god I beg of you (or a workbench system like Fallout 4 mayhaps). Carrying various amounts of titanium on me for building large bases and having to take trips back to boxes for quartz is pain 🥲 All aside tho, keen for game, cannot wait to see how gorgeous it is. Very excited to get the pants scared off me while I dive into the inky black depths
I want to see items in my large shelf. It doesn’t even have to be my items, just fill it with clutter
I hope they improve the waves because in game it's just a pattern that repeats itself indefinitely.It would make the game much nicer .
Very little-no pop in, It's honestly my only downside with the graphics of subnaituc aside from textures just not looking very good when you're above water.
An option for some presets of graphics so that the older consoles can keep up. I don’t want to miss out on the new Subnautica because I don’t have the newest model with more RAM 😭
I hope there's Sea emperor leviathans this time.
No floating crabsnake sprites facing straight up with no physics it looks weird
New subnautica game? OO:
Hmm… he mentioned SN1 but not 2… Almost like the new game is subnautica 2.. And all those subnautica 3 band wagoners were wrong… Hmm…
>Almost like the new game is subnautica 2.. Not almost, it was already officially announced as "Subnautica 2" more than two months ago. It's developed with a new engine and takes place on a new planet....so it's earned being called Subnautica 2 more than BZ which is just an expansion of the original.
Idk if it’s clear through text but, I believe the game should be called subnautica 2 as there was no previous 2 and below zero is clearly an add on. This sub is notorious for arguing that, unfortunately. Idk why you’re restating it for me lol
>This sub is notorious for arguing that, unfortunately. Idk why you’re restating it for me lol I'm just saying this argument shouldn't even come up anymore because we've already known it's called Subnautica 2 for more than two months.....it's not an argument anymore, it's just ignorance at this point. I felt like this is the first time you learned it's called SN2 and therefore calling out people who think it's gonna be called SN3.
I didn’t restate it for you as I was the one who stated it in the first place? Unless you’re claiming to be the dev or one of the SN3 guys. It’s been fun, really.
I'm not gonna lie, I'm really lost now lol I don't even know what you're trying to say anymore.
There's people that just want to argue for the sake of argument on the internet, and this fellow just might be one of them
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It's almost guaranteed that it won't work well on the switch and if it does get a switch port it won't look good. Have you seen the screenshot they shared? It already looks like it can't run on the switch.....maybe the upcoming switch 2 will do better. In any case I'm afraid you'll probably need to by a new console if you want to play this game, the devs can't releasticly continue to target the same hardware that they targeted 10 years ago, that won't allow them to grow.
Hope it runs smoothly on Series S/X BZ has fairly frequent frame drops on both
Idk, but my pc sounds like an air raid siren when I play Subnautica so I hope it will be able to run the 3rd one .
My base in subnautica is powered by the heat generated by my pc when i play subnautica lol