https://github.com/panosk92/spartanengine

A game engine with an emphasis on real-time cutting-edge solutions
https://github.com/panosk92/spartanengine

atmospheric-scattering bindless bsdf car-simulation cpp ecs fsr game-engine global-illumination imgui livestream physx shadow-mapping spartan ssao ssr taa vulkan xess

Last synced: 18 days ago
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A game engine with an emphasis on real-time cutting-edge solutions

• Host: GitHub
• URL: https://github.com/panosk92/spartanengine
• Owner: PanosK92
• License: mit
• Created: 2016-06-18T03:27:49.000Z (over 9 years ago)
• Default Branch: master
• Last Pushed: 2026-01-23T16:12:20.000Z (about 2 months ago)
• Last Synced: 2026-01-23T16:21:28.605Z (about 2 months ago)
• Topics: atmospheric-scattering, bindless, bsdf, car-simulation, cpp, ecs, fsr, game-engine, global-illumination, imgui, livestream, physx, shadow-mapping, spartan, ssao, ssr, taa, vulkan, xess
• Language: C++
• Homepage: https://panoskarabelas.com
• Size: 609 MB
• Stars: 2,840
• Watchers: 76
• Forks: 251
• Open Issues: 18
• Metadata Files:
  • Readme: readme.md
  • Contributing: contributing.md
  • Funding: funding.yml
  • License: license.md
  • Code of conduct: code_of_conduct.md

Awesome Lists containing this project

README

          


  





  A game engine with a fully bindless, GPU-driven renderer featuring real-time path-traced global illumination, hardware ray tracing, and a physics simulation running at 200Hz, built over 10+ years of R&D





  

  

  





  Discord •

  X •

  Wiki •

  Issues



---

## The Engine

Spartan started as a university project and has been in active development for over a decade, growing into a community of **600+ members** on Discord, including industry professionals sharing knowledge and pushing boundaries together. Its rendering technology has been adopted by **Godot Engine** and **S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Anomaly**, and featured in a **published programming book**.

**There's a destination that gives all this tech a purpose.** Curious? **[Read the plan →](https://github.com/PanosK92/SpartanEngine/blob/master/plan.md)**

---

## See It In Action

[![Engine Trailer](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/PanosK92/SpartanEngine/master/.github/images/video_promo.png)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMZ0epSVwCk)

---

## Worlds



Launch the engine and choose from a selection of default worlds. Each is physics-enabled—walk around, pick up objects with your mouse, or take a car for a spin.




### Forest



The most demanding world: **256 million** procedurally generated grass blades (inspired by Ghost of Tsushima), spanning **64.1 km²** covered with thousands of trees and rocks.

### More Worlds

| Sponza 4K | Cornell Box |

|:-:|:-:|

| 
Classic Dubrovnik building—ideal for path tracing | 
Classic ray tracing test scene |

| San Miguel | Liminal Space |

|:-:|:-:|

| 
Detailed courtyard scene with complex geometry and lighting | 
Reality shifts to a nearby frequency |

| Showroom | [The Plan](plan.md) |

|:-:|:-:|

| 
Clean showcase—no experimental tech | 
A neon-soaked city, built to push the engine toward real-time path-traced driving through rain-slicked streets at 60fps, that's the plan. |

---

## Rendering

The renderer is built around a single principle: **the GPU owns the data**. Every resource (geometry, materials, textures, lights, transforms, AABBs) lives in persistent, globally accessible buffers. There are no per-draw descriptor set updates, no per-draw resource binding, and no CPU-side draw loops.

### Architecture

- **Zero-binding draw path**, all per-draw data is stored in a single bindless storage buffer, push constants carry only a 4-byte index into it, keeping the entire push constant footprint at 80 bytes

- **Single global vertex and index buffer** for all geometry, inspired by id Tech, the CPU never re-binds geometry between draws

- **GPU-driven indirect rendering**, a compute shader performs frustum and occlusion culling entirely on the GPU, emitting a compacted indirect argument buffer, the CPU issues a single `DrawIndexedIndirectCount` per pass, replacing thousands of individual draw calls

- **Bindless materials, lights, and samplers**, all accessed through global descriptor arrays with no per-object binding

- **Uber shaders**, minimal pipeline state object (PSO) permutations eliminate draw call state changes

- **Universal HLSL**, all shaders are written once in HLSL and compiled for both Vulkan (via SPIR-V) and DirectX 12

- **Tightly packed 10-byte instance format** for hundreds of millions of instances (procedural grass, foliage)

- **On-the-fly GPU mip generation** (FidelityFX SPD) **and GPU texture compression** (Compressonator compute shaders), assets are compressed on the GPU at load time in milliseconds, not baked offline

- **Unified deferred rendering with transparency**, opaque and transparent surfaces share the same BSDF and render path, no separate forward pass

- **Async compute**, SSAO, screen-space shadows, and cloud shadows run on the compute queue in parallel with shadow map rasterization, synchronized via timeline semaphores

### Lighting and Global Illumination

- **ReSTIR path tracing**, reservoir-based spatiotemporal resampling for real-time multi-bounce global illumination, denoised via NVIDIA ReLAX (NRD)

- **Ray-traced reflections and shadows** via hardware ray queries

- **Atmospheric scattering** with real-time filtering and image-based lighting with bent normals

- **Volumetric fog** with temporal reprojection

- **Volumetric clouds** with procedural noise generation and shadow casting

- **Screen-space shadows** (inspired by Days Gone) and **ambient occlusion** (XeGTAO with visibility bitfield)

- **Shadow map atlas** with fast filtering and penumbra estimation

### Performance and Upscaling

- **GPU-driven frustum and occlusion culling** (Hi-Z), the CPU never touches per-object visibility

- **Variable rate shading** and **dynamic resolution scaling**

- **Upscaling** with Intel XeSS 2 and AMD FSR 3

- **Temporal anti-aliasing** and **FXAA**

- **Custom breadcrumbs** for GPU crash tracing and post-mortem debugging

### Camera and Post-Processing

- Physically based camera with auto-exposure and physical light units (lumens and kelvin)

- Tonemappers: ACES, AgX, Gran Turismo 7 (default)

- HDR10 output

- Bloom, motion blur, depth of field, chromatic aberration, film grain, sharpening (CAS)

---

## Car Simulation

A full vehicle dynamics simulation running at **200Hz** within the PhysX fixed-timestep loop.

| System | Details |

|--------|---------|

| **Tires** | Pacejka magic formula with MF 5.2 combined slip, load sensitivity, 3-zone surface + core thermal model, tire pressure, wear, per-axle dimensions, relaxation length, camber thrust, multiple surfaces |

| **Suspension** | Convex hull sweep contact, spring-damper with separate front/rear damping, anti-roll bars, progressive bump stops, bump steer, camber/toe alignment |

| **Weight transfer** | Geometric + elastic lateral split via roll center heights, roll-stiffness-based front/rear distribution |

| **Drivetrain** | Engine torque curve, turbo/wastegate, 7-speed auto/manual gearbox, rev-match downshifts, driveshaft torsional compliance, open/locked/LSD differentials, RWD/FWD/AWD |

| **Brakes** | Thermal model with fade, front/rear bias, ABS with slip-threshold modulation |

| **Aerodynamics** | Drag, front/rear downforce, ground effect, DRS, pitch/yaw sensitivity, rolling resistance |

| **Steering** | Ackermann geometry, high-speed reduction, self-aligning torque |

| **Assists** | ABS, traction control, handbrake |

| **Integration** | Semi-implicit Euler for wheel spin, consolidated net-torque per wheel |

| **Input** | Controllers with analog throttle/brake/steering, haptic feedback |

| **Camera** | GT7-inspired chase camera with speed-based dynamics and orbit controls |

---

## Engine Systems

| System | Details |

|--------|---------|

| **Particles** | GPU-driven particle system component with compute-shader emission, simulation, and rendering, screen-space depth-buffer collision, and soft blending |

| **Physics** | PhysX integration with rigid bodies, character kinematics, and vehicle physics |

| **Scripting** | Lua 5.4 with full engine API access (entities, components, math, physics, audio) via Sol2 bindings with lifecycle callbacks (Start, Tick, Save, Load) |

| **Audio** | 3D positional audio, streaming, reverb, and procedural synthesis via SDL3, supports WAV, OGG, MP3, FLAC, and more |

| **Input** | Keyboard, mouse, controllers, and steering wheels with haptic feedback |

| **Entity system** | Component-based architecture with transform hierarchies, prefabs, and XML serialization |

| **Threading** | Custom thread pool with hardware-aware scaling, parallel loops, nested parallelism detection, and progress tracking |

| **Profiling** | Nsight/RGP-style timeline profiler with separate graphics and async compute lanes, CPU and GPU scoped time blocks, zoom and pan, draw call and binding stats, stutter detection, and RenderDoc integration |

| **Asset import** | 40+ model formats (via Assimp), 30+ image formats (via FreeImage), 10+ font formats (via FreeType), mesh optimization (via meshoptimizer) |

| **Editor** | ImGui-based editor with world hierarchy, asset browser, property inspector, script and shader editors, texture viewer, viewport with transform gizmos, profiler, and console |

---

## Getting Started

### Building

One-click project generation—see the **[Building Guide](https://github.com/PanosK92/SpartanEngine/wiki/Building)** for details.

### Learning the Engine

Start with **[Game.cpp](https://github.com/PanosK92/SpartanEngine/blob/master/source/runtime/Game/Game.cpp)**, it shows how default worlds are loaded and is the best entry point for understanding the engine's structure. For gameplay scripting, check out the **[Lua Scripting Guide](https://github.com/PanosK92/SpartanEngine/blob/master/scripting.md)**, it covers the full API, lifecycle callbacks, and examples.

---

## Podcast

  

    

    

      Exploring the tech world and beyond



      Meeting the brightest minds across cutting-edge industries.



      📺 Watch on YouTube


      🎧 Listen on Spotify

    

  

---

## Community & Support

### Contributing

Contributors get access to **[exclusive perks](https://github.com/PanosK92/SpartanEngine/wiki/Perks-of-a-contributor)** designed to accelerate learning and skill development.

**[Read the Contributing Guide →](https://github.com/PanosK92/SpartanEngine/blob/master/contributing.md)**

### Sponsorship

I cover the costs for Dropbox hosting to ensure library and asset bandwidth is available. If you enjoy running a single script and having everything download, compile, and work seamlessly, please consider **[becoming a sponsor](https://github.com/sponsors/PanosK92)**. Direct sponsorship helps more than Discord boosts—it goes directly into maintaining and improving the project.

---

## Projects Using Spartan

| Project | Description |

|---------|-------------|

| **Godot Engine** | Integrates Spartan's TAA ([view source](https://github.com/godotengine/godot/blob/37d51d2cb7f6e47bef8329887e9e1740a914dc4e/servers/rendering/renderer_rd/shaders/effects/taa_resolve.glsl#L2)) |

| **S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Anomaly** | Rendering addon using Spartan's source ([ModDB](https://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-anomaly/addons/screen-space-shaders)) |

| **Programming Book** | Jesse Guerrero's [beginner programming book](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CXG1CMNK) features Spartan's code and community |

| **University Thesis** | Originally created as a portfolio piece while sutyding at the [University of Thessaly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Thessaly) with Professor [Fotis Kokkoras](https://ds.uth.gr/en/staff-en/faculty-en/kokkoras/) |

**Using code from Spartan?** [Reach out](https://twitter.com/panoskarabelas), I'd love to showcase your project!

---

## License

**[MIT License](https://github.com/PanosK92/SpartanEngine/blob/master/license.md)**, free to use with attribution.