Peregrine
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I may make it so that they are brushes and you can “paint” 9x9 templates and things like that
Yes, 4096 tile limit in current Falcon/BMS is rather a significant barrier for any attempt to use sat photos all over. It is for a certain reason and as far as I know, because of the impact on performance, when in 3D, it is (to my knowledge) for now to stay. Not to mention task of restructuring of texture.bin where all information impacting ground movement (and other info pertaining to 3D and campaign) is stored.
This in “one breath”, what I perceive are your immediate challenges for now.
Not to discourage you from bold attempts to change the terrain concept entirely, but maybe to channel your abilities to more practical application and use, I would strongly suggest further discussion what could be done here. There are many things, which indeed could be done and for a starter concept of “brush” catches my attention right away. However, I do not quite understand how 9x9 template can work in ^2 world.
Again, I would like to repeat, yours is great initiative, but like ZELEGEND suggests above, close coordination with what is currently available in terms of terrain tools and how things currently working in FBMS - may save a lots of time, effort and work.
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Yes, 4096 tile limit in current Falcon/BMS is rather a significant barrier for any attempt to use sat photos all over. It is for a certain reason and as far as I know, because of the impact on performance, when in 3D, it is (to my knowledge) for now to stay. Not to mention task of restructuring of texture.bin where all information impacting ground movement (and other info pertaining to 3D and campaign) is stored.
This in “one breath”, what I perceive are your immediate challenges for now.
Not to discourage you from bold attempts to change the terrain concept entirely, but maybe to channel your abilities to more practical application and use, I would strongly suggest further discussion what could be done here. There are many things, which indeed could be done and for a starter concept of “brush” catches my attention right away. However, I do not quite understand how 9x9 template can work in ^2 world.
Again, I would like to repeat, yours is great initiative, but like ZELEGEND suggests above, close coordination with what is currently available in terms of terrain tools and how things currently working in FBMS - may save a lots of time, effort and work.
The 9x9 brush idea is so when you have a central tile, you can form borders, 3x3, 5x5, 7x7, 9x9, etc.
I’m working around these things and will let you all know when the tiling part is done.
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Thanks, this is one of many things we may need indeed. :headb:
Perhaps this is well known to you, but would you care take a look at this:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/game/Autotiles_Algorithm.aspx?display=Print
There is a link with source code within the article.This is what I understand as a concept of brush. What is also necessary is feature of “fill” of closed contour.
(FYI making all transitions could be also automated and always consistently identical as far as configurations and its sequence of naming). -
The 9x9 brush idea is so when you have a central tile, you can form borders, 3x3, 5x5, 7x7, 9x9, etc.
I’m working around these things and will let you all know when the tiling part is done.
Maybe brush and use of synthetic textures?
Satelite textures are always not so good in down low
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I can see an European Theater appearing on the horizon and a late Cold War campaign
This horizon is much, much closer than you might think
http://www.weapondeliveryplanner.nl/CET/index.htmlThis looks very promising, however… tiles and terrain is one part.
Getting all the objectives in and correct is something differentGr Falcas
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This horizon is much, much closer than you might think
http://www.weapondeliveryplanner.nl/CET/index.htmlThis looks very promising, however… tiles and terrain is one part.
Getting all the objectives in and correct is something differentGr Falcas
Maybe would be pointless to create Korea '80s theater? Where can I join to development of this theater?
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Thanks, this is one of many things we may need indeed. :headb:
Perhaps this is well known to you, but would you care take a look at this:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/game/Autotiles_Algorithm.aspx?display=Print
There is a link with source code within the article.This is what I understand as a concept of brush. What is also necessary is feature of “fill” of closed contour.
(FYI making all transitions could be also automated and always consistently identical as far as configurations and its sequence of naming).I’ve implemented something similar before in a game engine but what I was referring to was marching squares algorithm where you trace an outline of a shape, building a “corner bit mask” for the edges which will be your transition tiles. It’s a good algorithm for quantifying procedural dungeons and things like that from other genres.
The manual “brush” idea is basically that though. Have a tool where you define a base and the edge transitions and when you paint the tiles we can apply tiles additively and have the transition tiles along the edges. I’m currently working on marching squares to trace the shapes provided by openstreetmap data.
Define a few base tiles, let it generate the base tiles across the map, apply auto tiling for roads, city polygon areas, rivers, and airbases.
Now, what I need to find is, in order to do comparisons, a good base rule set for the old dem2terrain tool to generate feature TDF’s and CSV’s. That way I can compare my tools output with what is known good data.
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Just in case you would like to know:
- on the very onset of theater creating process dem2Terrain toll is used, but that you know
Define a few base tiles, let it generate the base tiles across the map, apply auto tiling for roads, city polygon areas, rivers, and airbases.
-the above describes precisely what CATE tool does.
-CATE is available for quite long time, pretty well documented, even with source code (for those more adventurous), however CATE is pretty hard to use (again this just maybe requires being more familiar at scripting there) but end results are not fool proofed as they still require quite of hand editing in the end.- and then, even then, all looks pretty much repetitious to the degree that it is even ugly, so this is where Monster’s Terrain Editor can give a help with many work modes and modules programmed in into this tool. Among many features not mentioned for brevity: it can manipulate and edit L2 by export and import its data, can work with tiles/sets, has texture.bin editor for paths, areas and now autogen ,*.map editor, has 3D preview and objective editor. It is really most versatile tool to post edit any theater already created.
- finally there is BMS Editor which handles editing and placement of 3D Features (elements) within Objectives.
There are also other important tools for editing stats in Campaigns and Database like: TacEdit, Pit and FM editing tools, but this is where my familiarity ends.
What I have described above is pretty much what was being used from the advent of this great simulation to create and edit Terrain/Objectives for Theaters. It is rather time and work consuming process and giving sometimes “clunky” results, specially by today’s standards. I have been around for long enough to realize what can, or cannot be accomplished @ current FBMS state of the terrain concept and its available tools. Yet, I am of the opinion that there are some room of improvement to the existing process, where I and I am sure many others gladly offer you our help and information sharing.
Changing and revolutionizing of the entire model of Terrain would be,not perhaps IMPOSSIBLE, but sadly IMHO, truly gargantuan task far beyond scope of anybody free time and possibility to properly coordinate all that with the coders. my 2c.
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Changing and revolutionizing of the entire model of Terrain would be,not perhaps IMPOSSIBLE, but sadly IMHO, truly gargantuan task far beyond scope of anybody free time and possibility to properly coordinate all that with the coders. my 2c.
This is the same as 15 years ago saying Falcon would never be what it is today.
Not even BMS has become something totally different than what is was when it was released in 1998, also the tools have been hugely improved. Making a theater today has become already so much easier (although time consuming) than many years ago.
Think about what Monsters TerrainEditor and MC is doing for you today what you didn’t have 5 years ago.This is just a new progress that makes new things possible (if you get it working 100% )
Keep the progress going.Gr Falcas
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Falcas,
I don’t disagree with you necessarily. You have a 2007 profile date, so perhaps you’re much more “in the know” than most of us.However, Polak is perhaps the best “terrain guy” on these forums, and has worked closely with the developers on what I presume was the iteration of Korea we have now. So with all respect to everyone, I think there is some value to listening very closely to what he is saying, and take his advice to heart.
I’m not saying we should stifle innovation….not at all. And I’m all for anything that makes building things easier in Falcon.
But Polak knows what he’s talking about. So, for reiser or whomever, there is value to coordinating efforts with the developers.
I didn’t understand much of this conversation, but I understood that much anyway!
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All I am saying its worth someones free time no matter how large the task may be.
As long as the person who is doing it is having fun in what he is doing.
Thats what BMS deveploment has been all about all these years.gr Falcas
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WOW
Speechless…
RESPECT…
How on earth did I miss this thread?
First I have to reread it.
I read many nice trigger words in here like Procedural, ArcGIS *.shp file support (Done), GIS Database Support, GMTED Elevation etc.
Could you have the roads network and LODS and maybe for buildings characteristics like height and etc, or for lods like park, green, parking etc? Targeted program is CityEngine.
Repvez post is correct Polak… reiser looks he can easily master the basics, so why not go for the rest which cause of the workload never where done for Falcon.
Finally, no offense, but are we talking about a free tool here or it’s going to be payware?
This looks ultra promising.
Once again Respect.
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For everyone’s information here, please be advised that we are not arguing much here.
We are all in close contact and exchange of information and advice in any and all manners possible: this forum, PMs and through other channels. The main goal of this exchange is only one: advance and improve Falcon BMS further in any way we see possible.
Given always present limitation of time resource and certain initial degree of not knowing what participants of this discussion may or may not know about current state of Falcon we may have different approaches and opinions of what is the best and most pragmatic course of the future progress. Are we right here, probable not …it really does not matter.
What is only important - to keep the ideas, views and opinions coming.
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+1
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WOW
Speechless…
RESPECT…
How on earth did I miss this thread?
First I have to reread it.
I read many nice trigger words in here like Procedural, ArcGIS *.shp file support (Done), GIS Database Support, GMTED Elevation etc.
Could you have the roads network and LODS and maybe for buildings characteristics like height and etc, or for lods like park, green, parking etc? Targeted program is CityEngine.
Repvez post is correct Polak… reiser looks he can easily master the basics, so why not go for the rest which cause of the workload never where done for Falcon.
Finally, no offense, but are we talking about a free tool here or it’s going to be payware?
This looks ultra promising.
Once again Respect.
I’m pretty confident it will be freeware.
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I-Hawk, if BMS went to a DX11 API, you could offload much of the texture computations of to the GPU. Furthermore, Updating to a GFX Engine like Python would make the change to DX11 much simpler and make the base BMS program much less CPU intensive in turn.
When I hear Python, I think of python the language. Google doesn’t show me any results for a GFX engine named Python.
Can you link me something to read? Always trying to educate myself.edit - in fact, I should be flying right now and not reading about cool new BMS tools and technology.
You guys sucked me in! -
Work continues, this time, editing of texture.bin files. Only viewing is available now but work on the BMS plugin for Peregrine continues. I’ll be releasing an alpha alpha version soon and releasing the source to the BMS plugin. Most of the stuff is disabled (being worked on or reworked UI due to architecture changes with plugins) but the BMS plugin will be included.
DDS Support included.
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The plugin architecture was reworked over the weekend, this had to be done in order for plugins to drive their own UI. Instead of the UI driving the plugins. This makes Peregrine more of a “platform” app instead. Providing functionality to do GIS work with a WPF UI controlled directly by the plugin (and being themed by Peregrine).
The source to the BMS plugin will be released as well, but not the source to Peregrine. Documentation will be provided on how to write your own plugins shortly after.
Yours,
-Working as Fast as I can- -
This horizon is much, much closer than you might think
http://www.weapondeliveryplanner.nl/CET/index.htmlThis looks very promising, however… tiles and terrain is one part.
Getting all the objectives in and correct is something differentGr Falcas
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Does this mean I am going to have to buy a new video card again?
:wfish: