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Rivers, lakes, and oceans as one system

Water

First-class rivers, lakes, and oceans: waves, refraction, shore/flow bake, buoyancy, and surface queries. Shipped; upstream O3DE has no equivalent built-in water Gem.

Overview

Open-source O3DE has no equivalent built-in water Gem. DawnEngine Water treats streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans as first-class bodies: unified surface queries (height / depth / flow), Atom refraction and reflection, Gerstner or FFT waves, buoyancy physics, plus optional SurfaceData, Navigation3D, and particle bridges.

It does not provide CFD flooding or automatic river–lake–ocean topology fusion; waterline alignment and estuary transitions are authored. Tides are global / per-body level offsets, not hydrodynamics.

Key Capabilities

  • River / lake / ocean: spline river presets, closed-spline or polygon lakes, infinite or bounded oceans.
  • CPU/GPU coherence: shared water clock so queries match GPU displacement (≤ 1 cm @ 100 km).
  • Wave assets: explicit Gerstner, or Phillips / JONSWAP → FFT.
  • Rendering: refraction, planar reflection / SSR / IBL, shore foam, caustics, underwater fog.
  • Buoyancy and queries: WaterBuoyancyComponent, enter/exit / immersion events, and WaterSurfaceRequestBus.

Use Cases

  • Open-world rivers, lakes, and coastlines.
  • Levels with floating props, swimming, and underwater fog.
  • Large-world hydrology with PolyTerrain riverbed sculpting and World Streaming.

Large-world projects typically combine Water with double precision, World Streaming, and optional PolyTerrain. Manuals: docs site.