Vs Godot

Aether vs Godot

Aether is Godot 4 — same core, same files, no lock-in. What it adds are the XR-first defaults and the one engine-level change a plugin could never ship: UI as real geometry.

The short version

Godot, with opinions for XR

Aether is Godot 4 with XR-first defaults and one big change: UI is real geometry, not a texture on a plane. Underneath it stays Godot, so your projects, plugins and scenes keep working and move freely in both directions.

Side by side

What actually changes

	Stock Godot 4	Aether Engine
World-space UI	A `SubViewport` drawn to a texture, then pasted onto a floating quad — blurry up close, one texture per surface.	Real 3D meshes. A whole panel batches to ~1 draw call, stays crisp at any distance, and curves around you.
New project	Empty folder; you configure it.	Pick from a template gallery with image previews and land in a working setup.
Language	GDScript by default; C# is an opt-in setup.	C# / Mono out of the box, with the Arch ECS baked into the template.
Animation	Standard animation panel.	Author clips in-engine under an AnimationPlayer, plus blendshape editing and a body poser.
Scripts per node	One script per node.	Stack multiple scripts on one node, synced at runtime.
Focus	General-purpose.	XR & 3D first — spatial is the default, not a mode.
Compatibility	—	Underlying Godot version unchanged; projects & plugins stay portable. No lock-in.

The obvious question

Why a fork, not a plugin?

Most of what Aether changes lives below the project layer, where a plugin has no reach:

The UI system is engine-level rendering — real geometry batched into the frame, not something a plugin bolts on after the fact.
Project templates live in the project manager. A plugin can't run there; the project doesn't exist yet.
The editor tools I consider core of Aether Engine.

Anything that can be a plain addon still is one, so it stays portable back to stock Godot. The fork only exists for what has to change the editor or the renderer.

Straight answer

Why not upstream it?

Honestly? This is part of a much bigger project, and I'm not interested in the bureaucracy of upstreaming to Godot. I'm here to make the XRUIOS, Masuki Quest and Echoes Online — keeping the fork focused on that is worth more to me than committee review.