Space Engineers 2 Needs a Powerful, Modern, Moddable Particle/VFX System

I would love to see Space Engineers 2 eventually include a much more advanced particle and visual effects system than Space Engineers 1, especially one that modders can properly use and extend.

Space Engineers has always been at its best when players and modders can create large, technical, sci-fi systems. In SE2, a strong VFX framework would massively expand what creators can build: portals, jump effects, shield impacts, weapon effects, industrial machinery, reactor failures, atmospheric effects, mining dust, thruster plumes, welding/grinding sparks, energy fields, holograms, and other high-end sci-fi visuals.

Why this mattersIn Space Engineers 1, particles often feel limited, especially for complex modded effects. Modders can make useful effects, but the system does not feel flexible enough for large modern sci-fi visuals such as unstable portals, rifts, energy shields, plasma arcs, or layered environmental effects.

For SE2, it would be amazing if the particle update loop and rendering pipeline were designed from the start to support more advanced effects with better performance. Ideally, effects should be able to handle large particle counts, layered emitters, ribbons, trails, mesh particles, animated flipbooks, distortion, lighting, and GPU-friendly simulation without destroying performance.

A good reference point would be systems like Unity’s VFX Graph, not necessarily as a direct copy, but as inspiration for the kind of control and structure that would be useful.

Useful particle system features for SE2Some features that would be extremely helpful:

• A clear particle lifecycle system: spawn, initialize, update, render/output.
• GPU-friendly particle simulation for large particle counts.
• Particle strips, ribbons, beams, trails, and arcs.
• Mesh particles as well as billboard particles.
• Flipbook/atlas animation support.
• Distortion, refraction, emissive bloom, soft particles, and depth fading.
• Collision support against grids, voxels, characters, and terrain.
• Local-space and world-space simulation modes.
• Effects that can attach cleanly to moving grids and subparts.
• Exposed parameters for modders, such as color, intensity, radius, speed, turbulence, lifetime, emission rate, and animation phase.
• LOD controls for effects based on distance, performance settings, and visibility.
• Culling controls and effect bounds so large effects do not vanish incorrectly.
• Event-driven spawning, so effects can react to gameplay events like impact, damage, block activation, power state, overload, or shutdown.
• Support for multiple output types in a single effect, for example particles plus beam trails plus distortion plus glow.
• Good profiling/debugging tools so modders can see what an effect costs.

Modding supportIt would be fantastic if the SE2 modding tools eventually allowed creators to build and preview particle effects directly in the VRAGE3 editor.

For modders, the dream would be a visual or data-driven VFX editor where we can create reusable effect graphs or effect definitions.

Modders should ideally be able to define:

• Emitters.
• Particle materials.
• Flipbook textures.
• Beam/ribbon effects.
• Color curves.
• Size curves.
• Velocity/noise/turbulence.
• Event triggers.
• Looping and one-shot effects.
• Start/open/loop/close sequences.
• Performance budgets.
• LOD versions.
• Exposed mod parameters.

This would allow mods to create much more professional effects while still letting the engine control performance and stability.

Portal/rift effect use caseOne example where this would matter a lot is portal or rift-style modding.

A proper portal effect usually needs several stages:

1. Idle/offline state.
2. Dialing/tuning state.
3. Opening state.
4. Stable open/looping state.
5. Closing/collapse state.
6. Return to idle.

For a portal generator, modders might want layered VFX such as:

• Energy arcs between two gate pylons.
• A central unstable rift membrane.
• Sparks and electrical discharge.
• Heat distortion around the aperture.
• Floating particles pulled into the opening.
• Emissive channel lights showing lock status.
• Different color states for tuning, locked, active, overloaded, or shutting down.
• Sound and light intensity synced to particle state.

This kind of effect is hard to do well with a simple particle emitter. It needs a proper layered VFX system with exposed controls and state-based triggering.

Portal camera/render texture toolsAnother useful feature would be support for render-to-texture style effects.

For example, a portal could render a fake camera view from the destination portal and display it on the surface of the local portal. The camera would match the player camera’s relative offset and rotation from the local portal, but applied to the destination portal. This creates the illusion that the player is looking through the portal to the other side.

For this kind of system, modders would benefit from tools such as:

• Render target textures.
• Secondary scene cameras.
• Camera-to-surface projection.
• Portal masks or stencil support.
• Clip planes to prevent incorrect geometry rendering.
• Resolution scaling for performance.
• Distance-based update rates.
• Optional fallback visuals for low settings or multiplayer performance.
• The ability to sync portal view state without networking every particle.

This would not only be useful for portals. It could also support:

• Security cameras.
• Remote control screens.
• Ship camera monitors.
• Hangar displays.
• Drone feeds.
• Sensor screens.
• Mirrors.
• Windows into remote locations.
• Jump/rift previews.
• Sci-fi holographic displays.

Multiplayer and performanceFor multiplayer, it would be best if particle effects were driven by synced gameplay states rather than syncing individual particles.

For example, the server could sync that a portal is “dialing,” “open,” or “closing,” while each client locally simulates the visual particles. This would keep bandwidth low while still allowing impressive effects.

It would also be useful to have:

• Client-side effect simulation.
• Networked effect state parameters.
• Performance-scaled versions of expensive effects.
• Max particle budgets per effect.
• Distance-based LOD.
• Visibility culling.
• Quality settings for low, medium, high, and cinematic effects.

This would let modders create impressive visuals without making servers or clients suffer.

Why this would benefit SE2 long-termA strong particle/VFX system would make SE2 feel much more modern and would massively help modders build advanced sci-fi content.

It would improve vanilla effects too, including:

• Thrusters.
• Explosions.
• Weapons.
• Damage.
• Mining.
• Welding.
• Grinding.
• Reactors.
• Jump drives.
• Shields, if ever added.
• Atmospheric entry.
• Weather.
• Electrical overloads.
• Industrial machinery.
• Environmental hazards.

Space Engineers 2 already has the chance to become a much stronger platform for modding than SE1. A powerful particle system would be a huge part of that, especially if it is exposed through the mod tools in a safe, optimized, data-driven way.

My main request is: please make the SE2 particle/VFX system modern, performant, modular, and moddable. Give creators the tools to build complex sci-fi effects, while still allowing to keep performance and multiplayer stability under control.