Last documented update: January 27, 2024 by

StreamingSectors are the files that define the world in Cyberpunk, they tell the engine what goes where, and define everything from the meshes you see and how you can interact with them, to the locations of lights, sounds and fx. They call up the NPCs, they define the minimap.

The fundamental bits of the structure are 2 main lists, the nodes, and the nodeData. The nodes define the assets that make up the sector, and the nodeData tells the engine where to put them. Theres a nodeRef list as well, which seem to be the link that quests use to tie in to triggers etc via the .scene files. Theres also some bits that define variants, that seem to be how sectors change after missions, not worked those out yet.

Theory

Streaming Sectors contain the world's data, holding a node tree that includes all its models and entities.

LOD data and grid sizes

The world is broken up into a grid, with several sizes of squares available (bit like graph paper with major and minor grid lines). The size of the grid in use is dependent on the Level of Detail (LOD) of the sector file your looking at, which is the last digit of the filename.

Chunk sizes are as below.

For every location, there can be multiple overlapping levels of LOD sectors with progressively more detail as you go down the levels.

For instance, Lizzies bar is located at approximately -1200, 1562, 22:

Filenames are structured as sectortype_X_Y_Z.streamingsector . If you preview a sector in wkit, the axes are shown as Z=-Y and Y=Z.

Calculating the files

I've left the detail of the process below for record, but if you just want a list of sectors I've created a python script to find the ones that a set of co-ordinates are in. You can find it HERE. Simply enter the co-ordinates in the player_loc dict in block 3 then run all blocks. You'll be given 2 lists containing of all the interior and exterior sectors which contain the co-ords within their bounding boxes. The list also shows the distance from the centre of the sectors to the co-ords given.

From those co-ordinates we can calculate the sector files for interior/exterior sectors by dividing by the grid size for the LOD and rounding. (ie 1200/32=38 etc)

At the level 0 files the whole building isn't covered by 1 sector, so you end up needing 4, conversely the exterior level 2 is several city blocks.

Some locations are partially defined in quest sectors, where parts of the location are locked away behind story triggers (for example half of V's apartment, as a lot of decoration will only be shown after completing quests). The exact process isn't fully understood as of May 2023.

Block and sector's variants

A steamingsector can split its nodes into ranges called variants. A variant is used to display/enable an amount of nodes in a specific situation (like during or after a quest). All sectors and their variants need to be declared somewhere; this place is the streamingblock.

We will see how they are declared and how they are linked together.

Streamingblock

The game contains only 3 streamingblocks that gather more than 26300 sectors. We will focus on the main one and take a look at the first sector inside (exterior_-18_3_-12_0).

This sector has 10 variants, in this case, each one is related to a quest state.

numNodeRanges indicate the number of node ranges the sector contains; it always corresponds to the number of variant + sector's default range (so here 10 variants + 1 default).

When opening a variant definition, we can find the range index (to find the right range inside the sector file). rangeIndex cannot be 0, 0 is used as sector's default range.

Variant's name is only used to identify the variant within the streamingblock.

enableDyDefault is self-explanatory; it indicates whether it should be enabled by default.

Sector variants and ranges

The sector file uses 2 arrays to define ranges: variantIndices and variantNodes.

variantNodes contains as many empty arrays as variants (in this case, 10).

variantIndices contains as many values as ranges needed (10 variants + 1 default range)

A variant indice indicates the range starting nodeData index. This range goes from the index specified to the start of the following range. If we look at variant indice #7, the range starts at node index 14 (included) and ends at node index 46 (excluded).

A sector always has a default range (variant indice 0); this default range indicates which nodes must always be visible/enable, whatever are the variants state. In our example, the default range goes from 0 to 1, so only the first node is always enabled.

Global overview

Here is an overview of files relations:

Summary

Published: Mar 02 2024 by Last documented update: Mar 02 2024 by

This page explains how shadows are configured for nodes in streamingsectors.

Wait, this is not what I want!

• To learn how components (equipment) casts shadows, check Meshes, Shadows, and Shadow Meshes

Shadows

The shadow properties of the environment are configured in the properties of each node inside the .streamingsector file:

Shadows are only cast as long as a mesh is visible.

Global and local shadows

A global shadow will not render small details — these will only be included if the castLocalShadows property is active.

Summary

Published: Mar 02 2024 by Last documented update: Mar 02 2024 by

This page explains how the level of detail is handled in environment files.

Wait, this is not what I want!

• To learn how components (equipment) casts shadows, check Meshes, Shadows, and Shadow Meshes

Auto-hiding

Many world objects are automatically hidden if you move away from them, freeing the engine resources that had been used to render them.

The distance at which this happens is controlled by the forceAutoHideDistance property of each world node:

This probably corresponds directly to the nearAutoHideDistance in the proxy mesh ndoes below?

Proxy meshes

There is a specialized node type for world proxy meshes: the worldGenericProxyMeshNode. (Which raises the question if there are specialized / extended worldXXProxyMeshNodes?)