Infinite Voxel Cave World

A cross-platform (Windows / Linux) voxel engine that procedurally generates infinite cave terrain in real time using OpenGL.

一个跨平台的体素引擎，使用 OpenGL 实时程序化生成无限洞穴地形。

Features

• Procedural Terrain & Caves — Dual-noise (OpenSimplex2 / OpenSimplex2S) blending with configurable weights and thresholds
• Chunk-based World — 16×64×16 chunks loaded/unloaded dynamically around the camera
• Optimized Rendering
  • Per-chunk persistent VAO/VBO (uploaded once, drawn every frame)
  • Neighbor-aware face culling — only exposed faces are rendered, including across chunk boundaries
  • Frustum culling — off-screen chunks are skipped entirely
• Multithreaded — Chunk generation runs on a background thread; rendering stays on the main thread with mutex-protected shared state
• Visual Quality — Blinn-Phong lighting, distance fog, directional ambient occlusion, edge darkening
• ImGui Debug Panel — Real-time FPS, camera position, view distance slider, noise weight tuning

Tech Stack

Component	Library
Windowing & Input	GLFW 3
OpenGL Loader	glad
Math	GLM
Noise	FastNoiseLite
Image Loading	stb_image
Debug UI	Dear ImGui

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Windows: Visual Studio 2022, OpenGL 3.3+
• Linux: CMake 3.16+, OpenGL 3.3+

# Ubuntu / Debian
sudo apt install cmake libglfw3-dev libgl-dev

Build & Run

Linux (CMake)

git clone https://github.com/WangSimiao2000/InfiniteVoxelCaveWorld.git
cd InfiniteVoxelCaveWorld
cmake -B build && cmake --build build
./build/InfiniteVoxelCaveWorld

Windows (Visual Studio)

Open InfiniteVoxelWorld.sln with Visual Studio 2022 and build.

Controls

Key	Action
Right Mouse Button	Toggle camera control
W / A / S / D	Move forward / left / backward / right
Q / E	Move down / up
Mouse	Look around (when camera control enabled)
Scroll Wheel	Zoom in / out
Space	Toggle wireframe mode
ESC	Quit

Project Structure

├── src/                    # Application source code
│   ├── main.cpp            # Entry point, render loop, ImGui
│   ├── Chunk.h/cpp         # Voxel chunk: generation, face culling, GPU upload
│   ├── ChunkManager.h/cpp  # Chunk lifecycle, threading, world queries
│   ├── Camera.h            # FPS camera (Euler angles)
│   ├── Frustum.h           # View frustum extraction & AABB test
│   └── Shader.h            # Shader compilation & uniform helpers
├── shaders/
│   ├── VertexShader.vert
│   └── FragmentShader.frag # Blinn-Phong + fog + AO + edge darkening
├── textures/               # Texture assets
├── third_party/            # Vendored dependencies
│   ├── glad/               # OpenGL loader
│   ├── imgui/              # Dear ImGui
│   ├── stb/                # stb_image
│   └── FastNoiseLite/      # Noise library
├── OpenGL/                 # Windows-only headers & libs (GLFW, GLM)
├── CMakeLists.txt          # Linux build
└── InfiniteVoxelWorld.sln  # Windows build

How It Works

1. Terrain height is computed per (x, z) column using 2D noise, producing a heightmap surface.
2. Cave carving uses 3D noise below the surface — voxels where the noise exceeds a threshold are hollowed out.
3. Face culling iterates each solid voxel and checks its 6 neighbors (including across chunk boundaries via ChunkManager::isVoxelAtWorld). Only exposed faces generate vertices.
4. GPU upload happens once per chunk on the main thread. The background thread handles generation and populates vertex data; the main thread detects new chunks and calls uploadToGPU().
5. Rendering binds each chunk's VAO, sets the model matrix, and draws — no per-frame buffer allocation.

Contact

• Email: mickeymiao2023@163.com
• GitHub: WangSimiao2000