Engine / Multiplayer · In development
5,000 players.
One session.
Every machine in step.
Every robot in this footage is a networked seat: a scripted player sending real inputs over its own connection, with its own body in the world and its own animated skeleton.
Drawn from the session's inputs after it ran.
- 5,000scripted players in one session, each on its own connection
- 0 mismatchesthree machines, five minutes, three runs in a row
- 1/3 of a corethe relay that served all 5,000
In development A proof on a development branch. Not in a release. Straight answers
What you are looking at
Not a crowd behind a few players. Every one is a seat.
The camera travels with one seat as it runs through 4,999 others, each on a path planned beforehand so that none touch. Drawn afterwards from the session's inputs. The whole field from above: all 5,000 seats in motion at once. Eye level where two armies of 1,250 run through each other on alternating lanes.
Its own input stream
Through the network, like a controller's.
Its own body in the world
A collision capsule and a movement controller.
Its own skeleton
19 bones, animated, out of step with its neighbors.
Simulated by each full client
Each computes all 5,000, thirty times a second.
How this is possible
The network carries inputs, not the world.
The same inputs in the same order give the same world on each machine that simulates. In these runs, Linux and Windows machines reached the same checksum.
- 01
Inputs, not positions
A stick direction is a few bytes, sent only when it changes. Nobody is sent 5,000 positions; each client computes them.
- 02
The server relays; it does not simulate
Thirty times a second it seals the tick and forwards everyone's inputs.
- 03
Agreement is checked
Each simulating machine reports a checksum of its world. The relay compares them and names any that differs.
The numbers
Measured on our own machines.
- 30 times a secondeach full client simulates all 5,000
- 0 mismatchesthree machines, five minutes, three runs in a row, checked 60 times a run
- 1/3 of a core, 94 MBthe relay for 5,000 players at 9,000 inputs a second
- 38 bytes a secondwhat each player sends, on average, in the busiest session
- 14.5 MBa 40-second session of 5,000 players, as a file that replays into the same session
- 13 to 20 msto simulate one tick of 5,000 characters, of the 33 ms available
- 15 msto draw all 5,000 animated robots at 1920x1080 on an RTX 3080
From three five-minute runs across three machines, and two shorter sessions that the footage was drawn from. Office network and a private network only. The drawing time is drawing alone, measured apart from the simulation.
Straight answers
What this proof is, and is not.
- Are those 5,000 real people?
- No. Two or three machines ran full clients; the other seats were scripted players: real network connections sending real inputs through the same relay.
- Do the characters have physics?
- Each has a collision capsule and a movement controller: gravity, standing on the ground, being stopped by walls. Characters do not collide with one another in these sessions.
- Are they avoiding each other live?
- No. Each scripted player follows a path planned beforehand so that no two touch. The engine did not steer them as it ran.
- Is this over the internet?
- Not yet. Office network and a private network only. Nothing was measured over distance or loss.
- Is the footage live play?
- No. It was drawn afterwards from the session's inputs. A live window that also simulates 5,000 does not yet hold a steady 60 frames a second.
- Does it feel instant?
- Not at this scale: each machine shows confirmed ticks only, so a player's own input appears a few ticks late.
- Can I use it today?
- No. It is a proof on a development branch, not in a release.
What comes next: a live window at 60 frames a second with 5,000 on screen, real players over the internet, instant-feeling control at this scale, and characters that steer around and collide with each other.
What it is for
The relay stays small. Each machine does the work.
Armies, not squads
Thousands of characters that are all seats in the session.
Crowds where every figure is a seat
A city square, a stadium, a festival.
Large training exercises
Thousands of seats and entities in one shared scenario.
Replays for the review
An after-action review plays the recorded inputs back; nothing extra is recorded.
Thousands of seats in one scenario.
In development now. Ask us about it in a pilot.