- v0.5.2 - 26 June 2026
Read all about this update on our blog.Features Preface Improve planet visuals with cloud shadows enabled by default, updated cloud lighting and raymarching, refreshed basemap data, and cleaner distant population impostors. Use curated start bookmarks instead of geolocation-based start positions. Highlight new notifications and open the notifications panel when new notifications arrive. Improve population rendering performance and VRAM use by packing population and impostor instance data. OrbDemo Release OrbDemo for the first time as a Melba tech demonstration for ML-assisted planet population. Render Orb population from ML basemap and mask channels using Orb-specific surface/shader code, species and cluster lookup tables, and updated Orb population assets. Add the Orb ground-start camera flow, loading overlay, explanatory popup, updated basemaps, and visual tuning for color, clouds, at…
- Preface: Undiscovered World v0.4.5 - 4 March 2026
Version 0.4.5 for Preface: Undiscovered World is now live. This update introduces a brand new planet, along with system, memory, UI, and performance improvements.v0.4.5 ChangelogFeaturesAdded a new default Earth-size planet with improved terrain, better biome continuity, and richer data layersAdded clouds support and enabled clouds, depth fog, and screen-space shadows by defaultAdded Reset Settings button to discard all user settingsFixesReduced memory pressure during large map loads by loading one basemap at a timeImproved shutdown stability when unloading system DLLsFixed deeplink protocol handling when multiple protocols are registeredFixed rare crash when clicking before UI initializesFixed crash when audio category config is missingFixed UI button tracking on ultrawide resolutionsFixed positional audio playback at world locationsImproved ocean shading and terrain seam handlingRemov…
- Preface: Undiscovered World v0.4.1 - 26 January 2026
A smaller update brings a range of fixes and performance improvements to Preface: Undiscovered World.v0.4.1 ChangelogKnown IssuesPerformance drop when ray tracing is enabled while standing near a waypointFeaturesImproved shadow performance at dusk and dawn (up to 60% faster) Improved DX12 resource cleanup performance Fixes Fixed ocean animation consistency at varying framerates Fixed visual noise in ray tracing during darker hours Fixed visual artifacts at coastlines Fixed notifications not loading properly in the escape menu Fixed stale user config issues - configs based on older engine versions are now automatically discarded Invisible and Upcoming Work Boost removal Completed removal of all Boost dependencies (filesystem, asio, beast, exception, stacktrace, algorithm)Added replacement utilities (hash helper, toLower, etc.) Render Abstraction Layer (RAL)Large-scale cleanup across RAL…
- Preface: Undiscovered World v0.4.0 - 18 December 2025
Our latest update v0.4.0 update is focused on technical improvements to performance, rendering, and more foundational aspects.v0.4.0 ChangelogFeaturesSwitched our ML engine to ONNX Runtime (with DirectML as the backend), greatly improving our runtime agent performanceImplemented a new CPU task scheduler to improve CPU utilisation, parallel execution, and frame performanceFixesCleaning up rendering code to avoid DirectX 12 leaking resourcesStabilised raytracing (caching pipelines and avoiding runtime recompilation)Known IssuesJSON-based configuration remains fragile. If anything looks wrong, run `reset_preface.bat` to clear stale user/config dataInvisible and Upcoming WorkFurther removal of `boost` (posix_time, lexical_cast)Updated our assertion system and replaced any exception-throwing code within MelbaLauncher/plugin groundwork, made possible by our project restructure in v0.3.0This w…
- Introducing Preface: Undiscovered World v0.3.0 - 1 October 2025
Our Melba tech team has been hard at work on a number of features and upgrades for improved planet-sized terrain generation, and we are ready to share the next major update of Preface: Undiscovered World: v0.3.0.What’s new in v0.3.0? New Worlds to Explore!We’ve added 5 new planets for you to explore.MarsAnesidoraDractunZihanBlondewalnutOr select one from our globe navigator.Note: For the time being, changing planets via deeplinks only works if Preface is not already running. Close the program to load up a new planet to explore. OceansOur first iteration of planet-scale water is now part of Preface and it works on planets of any size.Environmental AudioWith this patch, we’re also introducing biome-specific environmental audio.Updated ShadersAs always, and as part of our goal to develop our engine transparently with the community, we have updated our public Shader repository on GitHub.Che…
- Open Beta for Prologue: Go Wayback! is now available - 12 August 2025
Hi everyone, we’re excited to open up access to the full version of our studio’s first game Prologue: Go Wayback! in the form of an Open Beta Playtest today! Go Wayback! uses the in-house machine learning model we have been developing, which feeds into Unreal Engine 5 and allows our artists and designers to generate realistic maps on your local system. It doesn’t use our own Melba engine like Preface does, but it represents a step towards our research into how we can generate worlds at scale to let players create experiences in.If you played Preface and wondered what a game could look like in a world that is generated anew every time you play, give Go Wayback! a try! Get the Open Beta via the Playtest button on the store page below:Stay tuned for more updated from the studio as we continue to update Preface: Undiscovered World.\\\\ PLAYERUNKNOWN Productions
- Patch v0.2.2 - 17 June 2025
v0.2.2FeaturesPopulation (trees/rocks/etc.) rendering has had its limit greatly increased - leading to a great improvement in vista rendering.Note: there should only be a minor decrease in performance. If you notice a big regression, please file a bug.FixesVarious developer tool fixes for working with FSR/DLSS upscaling enabled.Asset factory - moved importing to async jobs to retain GUI responsiveness.Fixes with ML generating textures that are "out of range" causing "stripy" terrain.Fix for clients generating a "null" ID from an empty string hash for analytics.Optimisations for instancing cameras to share defines in a better way.Avoid converting to wstring for debug names alongside the D3D12 API border - leading to a slight perf bump.Don't allow our time devgui to select a time before Midnight, January 1st, 1970 - the world did not exist before that.Imposter rendering now uses the corre…
- Patch v0.2.1 - 5 June 2025
Fixes Fix for "Enabling 'Hardware Raytracing' while setting 'Hardware Raytracing Mode' to Off may cause the app to crash after some time"
- Introducing Preface: Undiscovered World v0.2.0 - 4 June 2025
Today we are releasing v0.2.0, the first major update of Preface: Undiscovered World. This version introduces more elevation and terrain variety, optional ray-traced global illumination, smoother visuals, and several community-requested fixes. It also includes deeper changes to the tech foundations. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2820060/Preface_Undiscovered_World/ It has been almost 6 months since we launched Preface and we have loved seeing users get hands-on with the technology. We are lucky to have a great community on Discord who have helped us understand what is exciting about the tech, what is not up to expectations, and what needs to be challenged. Your feedback has been vital in shaping what comes next. A Stronger Foundation One of the things that became clear to us shortly after launch was the need to rethink some of our foundational systems. Especially the design of our E…
- Release v0.2.0 - 4 June 2025
v0.2.0 Known Issues The new ML model produces occasional straight-line artifacts at tile edges; a new base map is planned to fix this Waypoints have been reset to accommodate for changes to terrain generation Terrain horizontal displacement is disabled until camera system support is added, to avoid the camera going under the terrain Enabling 'Hardware Raytracing' while setting 'Hardware Raytracing Mode' to Off may cause the app to crash after some time Features World New ML terrain model with improved mountains & elevation Work has been done to improve the appearance of all in-game population assets (LOD's, normals, impostors) (PST-2998) Rendering Ray-tracing (experimental) can now be enabled via the settings menu (PST-1748) Added tone mapping & colour-grading to make the world look more vibrant (PST-3171) Added FSR & DLSS support (PST-3130) Added FSR & DLSS based anti-aliasing support…
- Patch v0.1.6 - 25 March 2025
Known Issues Switching to Windowed mode from Borderless Fullscreen can cause the title bar to be out of your monitor's resolution * This is already fixed internally and will be fixed with the next patch The current texture upsampling model generates some artifacts, rainbow-coloured areas. This will be fixed next model updates. There are noticeable seams along the quadtree borders at large scale. This is caused by the basemaps currently not being seamless. There will be a new update of the basemap with seamless borders. Features Added a fixed altitude flying camera mode (Q/E keys and gamepad) * Prevent waypoint requests whilst above a certain altitude to avoid network saturation LOD/Impostor transition * Impostors now consistently appear once you exceed the farthest geometric LOD, avoiding sudden disappearances in distant scenery. Log Driver Version * We now log the user's driver version…
- Patch v0.1.5 - 5 February 2025
Known Issues Multi monitor setups may show the window on the wrong monitor. Windowed mode allows setting a too large resolution, which does not fit on screen. Use alt-enter to fix it. Sometimes when switching display mode and resolution simultaneously, the resolution will not be applied. Features Added LUT-based color correction, allowing custom color grading based on screenshots in the future. (PST-2131) Added a new API for logging and asserts which should improve detection of issues (PST-2006) Fixes Rendering Improvements Instancing & occlusion optimizations Optimized atmospheric scattering, reducing render time by up to 0.5ms (PST-1890) Stability Improvements Fixed incorrect handling of resource counts in the rendering abstraction layer Early exit mechanism added to prevent crashes when the GPU device is unavailable Improved handling of minimum VRAM requirements to ensure compatibili…
- Dev Blog: ML Generated Landscapes Based on Game Designer Input - 31 January 2025
How can game designers guide machine learning (ML) to produce landscapes that, while natural and world-like, also present interesting gameplay mechanics? And specifically, what role can Guided Generation play in achieving this goal? For our upcoming survival game Prologue, PLAYERUNKNOWN Productions have developed Guided Generation tools to combine the ingenuity, passion, and creativity of our game designers with the ability of a Machine Learning model to produce a huge number of startlingly unique permutations of this art. Read more: https://playerunknownproductions.net/news/guided-generation-in-prologue-ml-generated-landscapes-based-on-game-designer-inpu/
- Prologue Playtest: How to Join - 31 January 2025
We’ve added a range of new features and fixes into Prologue: Go Wayback! based on your feedback from December’s playtest—and now we invite you to experience these updates for yourself. Our next playtest starts Monday, February 3rd, 2025, and we encourage you to join via our Discord, and help guide the future of the project. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2943740/Prologue_Go_Wayback/ Join the PLAYERUNKNOWN Productions Discord to Participate This is your gateway to the playtest. When sign ups go live you can find them here. We also coordinate the playtest from our Discord with channels for feedback and chat, along with all the latest news and announcements. Playtest Minimum Specifications Please note, these requirements are higher than our planned min spec at launch - which you can check out on the Prologue Steam page. OS: windows 10 Processor: Intel Core i5-10600K Memory: 24 GB RAM (…
- Dev Blog: How Prologue Unlocks Player-Driven Journeys - 22 January 2025
Happy new year to our community! 2025 is a particularly exciting year for our studio, because we are now only a few short months away from the Early Access launch of Prologue: Go Wayback! our upcoming survival game based in an ever-changing machine learning (ML) generated terrain. Which means it is high time we start telling you more about the game. In this series of dev blogs, Scott Davidson, our Creative Director, will give you all the details on how the game is designed, the vision that guides the products we make at PLAYERUNKNOWN Productions, and the practical details of the tech that drives us. What does it take to build a game where players discover their own journeys? How can gameplay systems create emergent gameplay experiences? At our studio, we are exploring these questions with Prologue. While still in development, Prologue also serves as a test bed for experimental machine l…
- Patch v0.1.4 - 20 January 2025
Known Issues Multi monitor setups may show the window on the wrong monitor. Windowed mode allows setting a too large resolution, which does not fit on screen. Use alt-enter to fix it. Sometimes when switching display mode and resolution simultaneously, the resolution will not be applied. Features You can now set resolution in borderless fullscreen. You can now opt in or out of sending analytics data from the settings menu. Fixes Performance: Improved Atmospheric Scattering frametime by 33% by using float16 for the LUT format. Logging: Fix a bug where long messages are truncated. Redesigned and simplified a bunch of internal APIs around logging which should improve quality of logs. UI: Scale the "Confirm" button in the postcard interface with the resolution. Crashes: Avoid a highly annoying crash where we can set the screenshot readback buffer to not match the swapchain size. This one wa…
- Happy Holidays from PLAYERUNKNOWN Productions - 20 December 2024
Season's greetings to our community! As 2024 draws to a close, we want to express our gratitude for our community’s support and engagement. This has been an important time for PLAYERUNKNOWN Productions, marked by the launch of Preface: Undiscovered World and the announcement of Prologue: Go Wayback! Sharing our work with you has been exciting and, honestly, nerve-wracking, but the community’s interest, feedback, and enthusiasm have made it all worthwhile. Thank you! We’ve prepared a packed blog, reflecting on what we’ve achieved and sharing a glimpse of what’s ahead. And for those looking to try out Prologue: Go Wayback! we recently announced our second playtest, you can RSVP in our community Discord. Preface Updates Reflecting on the Launch It has been just over two weeks since the launch of Preface: Undiscovered World. Just long enough for us to catch our breath. As many of you know,…
- Happy Holidays from PLAYERUNKNOWN Productions - 20 December 2024
Season's greetings to our community! As 2024 draws to a close, we want to express our gratitude for our community’s support and engagement. This has been an important time for PLAYERUNKNOWN Productions, marked by the launch of Preface: Undiscovered World and the announcement of Prologue: Go Wayback! Sharing our work with you has been exciting and, honestly, nerve-wracking, but the community’s interest, feedback, and enthusiasm have made it all worthwhile. Thank you! We’ve prepared a packed blog, reflecting on what we’ve achieved and sharing a glimpse of what’s ahead. And for those looking to try out Prologue: Go Wayback! we recently announced our second playtest, you can RSVP in our community Discord. Preface Updates Reflecting on the Launch It has been just over two weeks since the launch of Preface: Undiscovered World. Just long enough for us to catch our breath. As many of you know,…
- Patch v0.1.3 - 13 December 2024
Features Provide a more click-able format for deeplinks See the new deeplink documentation PST-2504 - Improve unsupported hardware and OS detection and user-facing messaging Fixes Windowing PST-2461 - Prevent mouse being captured in full screen mode with DPI scaling PST-2462 - Handle updating UI hitboxes when switching to Borderless Fullscreen from Exclusive Fullscreen with a non-desktop resolution PST-2440 - Fix Preface logo getting drawn before ui scaling is calculated Logging Ensure the last line of logs is always added to output Performance Fix memory leak in and optimize string builder PST-2470 - Prevent new waypoints requests during flight and ensure they are streamed in when landing Crashes PST-2447 - Fix render model load crash When a model is no longer used, don't destroy its resources if an async job is working on processing textures for it Troubleshooting reset_preface.bat no…
- Patch v0.1.2 - 6 December 2024
Features Auto-walk is now auto-run Fixes Flight Animation: Fix a bug where when the distance on the geodesic could not be calculated, the animation would blend to default orientationPST-2401 - The helicopter animation now hovers above the target location until the target position is known precisely Backend and Analytics: PST-2432 - Fix curl tasks being reused whilst being executed on the worker threadPST-2431 - Retry authentication/connection to the waypoint server every 30 seconds, don't just give up at start timePST-2454 - Avoid truncating crash logs for GPU crashes Crashes: PST-2185 - Fix a crash when changing borderless → full-screen and using Alt+Tab UX: PST-2446 - Fix main display screen being saved as screen modePST-2346 - Fix some UI elements calculating scaling incorrectlyPST-2426 - Adjust UI element positionsImprove user messaging when (failing to) use integrated graphics card…
