Godot Fluids 🌊, UE5 Nanite Grass 🍃, Twitch Interaction 🧑💻
🎮 Game Tech & Engines
Insanely Optimized Godot Terrain & Particle Physics on M1 Max
Developer Sebastien Menozzi is experimenting with a Godot setup that combines terrain collision, real-time terrain edits, and a huge number of particles—heavily optimized to run smoothly on an M1 Max. He’s now refining slope collision stability and edge behavior, with more details promised in the original Reddit thread. The piece also links to a jello-like MPM fluid sim you can try in your browser and highlights more of Sebastien’s Godot projects.
Shader-Driven Wind: 9 Million Nanite Grass Blades in UE5
Technical Art Director Nate LaMartina has created a shader-driven wind system for Unreal Engine 5 that breaks away from the uniform, “gamey” motion of typical grass. Using PCG, per-instance data, Blueprints, and a moving wind cell, his setup avoids traditional wind nodes and vertex painting entirely. The system reportedly drives 460,000 instances and over 9 million Nanite blades. A full technical breakdown with performance tips is planned for release, making this one to watch for foliage-heavy projects.
🧠 AI, Systems & OS Tweaks
How to Purge Windows 11’s Built‑In AI with One PowerShell Script
If you’re uncomfortable with Windows 11’s AI creep, there’s now a one‑shot way to push back. The GitHub project “Remove Windows AI” is a PowerShell script that targets Copilot, Recall, Windows Studio Effects, and other AI services that run by default. It’s regularly updated as Microsoft ships new components, and the maintainer accepts reports for missing features or registry keys. Ideal for developers and gamers who want privacy and minimal background noise.
Designing Async I/O Like a Systems Programmer: Odin, OS APIs, and Event Loops
Odin creator GingerBill walks through how to really think about asynchronous I/O, from first principles to a concrete API design. He contrasts synchronous vs asynchronous execution, explains how single-threaded event loops hide I/O latency, and explores OS primitives like IOCP, io_uring, and kqueue. Along the way, he critiques async/await’s “function coloring” problem, compares callbacks vs polling, and live-designs a non-blocking TCP echo server API. It’s a practical masterclass in cross-platform async I/O and usage-first API design.
🎥 Performance & Player Interaction
This Hospital Sim Turns Twitch Chat Into In-Game Patients
Sentinel Games is tackling indie discoverability by designing Cure: A Hospital Simulator specifically for streamers and their audiences. Using a custom “Shoutout Engine,” the Unreal-powered co-op game connects directly to Twitch so viewers can spawn NPC patients with their name and avatar and see follow/sub alerts on ER monitors. Strict limits on chat content, queues, and player control aim to keep things chaotic but safe. With 20,000+ sales and 116,000 watched hours on zero ad spend, Sentinel now plans to open the tech to other devs.
AAA-Quality Performance Capture in Unreal: Tools, Workflows, and Hardware Options
Epic’s Ben Kidd walks through a complete, modern performance capture pipeline in Unreal Engine, from low-budget inertial suits to hybrid studio mocap setups. He shows how Live Link Hub, Switchboard, Multi-User, Mocap Manager, and VCAM work together to stream, record, and organize body and camera data. The session also covers facial capture with MetaHuman Animator, practical retargeting tweaks, and non-destructive motion cleanup. A downloadable “goodie bag” of sample data lets you recreate the entire workflow on your own.