Peregrine
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You guys are getting way ahead of yourselves here.
That is because there is so much :bowd::woohoo::bowd: in what is being currently done.
Just short observation regarding 3D building autogen. Despite “popular demand” for robust 3D cities this may be harder than it sounds. First, for the buildings in adition point coordinates + radius to designate areas of buildings wont be sufficient like it is in case of the trees. Orientation for each 3D unit needs to be added as this needs to be coordinated with possibly streets,roads, etc.
There is this problem of collision/damage/destruction for buildings as well as the fact that unlike as autogen trees which employ 1 single model, buildings tend to be little more varied in shape and size. GU movement through frequent 3D objects may prove to be difficult.So generally we are potentially stuck with the current way all of the features are rendered. All in database and bunched up as an objectives and perhaps only making them more expanded is the way to go for now. That requires quite a lot of work and time, and will possibly not be willing to accept any “magic” autogen treelike solution.
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4096 is WAY WAY too much for multi-texturing, the idea is to not NEED that much. I guess with something like MAXIMUM 256 textures and decent blending techniques, you can create many many different looks to the land.
Post# 25 sounds like a solution … ???
256 are nice to bring variations into a (size of) 64 seg. terrain,
but what about greater terrains, and what about dedicated landmark and city tiles
in a (size of) 128+ seg. terrain then?At least the possibility to use more than 256 textures would be nice IMHO,
… how many textures a dev will then NEED is terrain specific, I guess.
(iran - europe for example)BUT, feel free to prove me wrong someday.
No need to reply on this, I-Hawk. … we are slightly OT anyway.
… sorry reiser.Cheers,
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Photoreal for specific (and special) areas which cannot be filled with “generic” textures is OK I guess as long as the photoreal usage is sane.
Well that is the “problem” with a simulator. Every little bit of the whole theater is special and would need a special tile
Look at most of the areas build for FSX, all very accurate as you want to recognize and navigate by looking at the ground.Gr Falcas
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Well that is the “problem” with a simulator. Every little bit of the whole theater is special and would need a special tile
Look at most of the areas build for FSX, all very accurate as you want to recognize and navigate by looking at the ground.Gr Falcas
One of the big things our Guam theatre/project is trying to show is that we can build a 100% photo-real theatre and still have good FPS. Every land tile tile including the airports in Guam is made of unique, high resolution satellite imagery. The way we stay under the 4096 limit is entirely due to the large bodies of water around the land masses. So hopefully, one of my many wishes is that in the future, code changes can allow us increase the 4096 tile limit tenfold or more and Peregine will allow to construct a 100% photo-real real theatre much faster than the techniques we used in Guam.
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This really applies to everyone.
At this stage of this program development it is crucial that all of those who had dealt with terrain making for BMS give their input what and how to possibly improve this process. I know, that this is in a way little heavy handed and even rude to give just suggestions to a programmer and be expecting all that can be implemented. Pushing this correctness aside and in order to accomplished progress here, I think, this could be rather helpful.
Isn’ this basically the way we’ve been “steering” BMS development for quite a while now, by just throwing ideas over the fence and hope the devs pick them up at some point?
I really don’t have a problem with this approach and this tool looks much too promising to pass on the chance of getting all that is needed in there, maybe not for version 0.01, but also for any updates that might come later in the development process.
Thanks to everyone involved, this really looks fantastic (I’m in the boat with those who only understand less than half of what’s being discussed here ;))
Cheers, Uwe
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Look at most of the areas build for FSX, all very accurate as you want to recognize and navigate by looking at the ground.
This is accomplished by vector polygons, and other GIS available data, which are retraced and layered (when needed) from sat photos and maps - all using own (to the program) textures. Technique started with MSFS (FS9)and this is the way all other simulations replicate and render terrain successfully. It is in a way pretty work and time consuming process, but one which ensures decent performance, decent looks and bulletproof legality of graphic materials used for terrain textures.
Edit: This is how EDGE is being created and it explains why it is taking quite long (in russian, but one can get idea).
Sorry, it is not intended as derailment of this Peregrine thread.
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Well that is the “problem” with a simulator. Every little bit of the whole theater is special and would need a special tile
Look at most of the areas build for FSX, all very accurate as you want to recognize and navigate by looking at the ground.Gr Falcas
FSX isn’t a good reference I’m afraid for performance… Number of draw calls for the terrain and memory usage is too high, probably.
One of the big things our Guam theatre/project is trying to show is that we can build a 100% photo-real theatre and still have good FPS. Every land tile tile including the airports in Guam is made of unique, high resolution satellite imagery. The way we stay under the 4096 limit is entirely due to the large bodies of water around the land masses. So hopefully, one of my many wishes is that in the future, code changes can allow us increase the 4096 tile limit tenfold or more and Peregine will allow to construct a 100% photo-real real theatre much faster than the techniques we used in Guam.
I sure hope next generation terrain will not need anything close to 4096 textures…
Guys see this kind of terrain, this is the ultimate terrain engine AFAIK, and it doesn’t seem to use any photoreal, does it?
http://www.outerra.com/wgallery.html -
FSX isn’t a good reference I’m afraid for performance… Number of draw calls for the terrain and memory usage is too high, probably.
I sure hope next generation terrain will not need anything close to 4096 textures…
Guys see this kind of terrain, this is the ultimate terrain engine AFAIK, and it doesn’t seem to use any photoreal, does it?
http://www.outerra.com/wgallery.htmlBut the real question is, being realistic, what could be done with the current code in a reasonable amount of time and effort to improve it, and to what degree?
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But the real question is, being realistic, what could be done with the current code in a reasonable amount of time and effort to improve it, and to what degree?
Current code? building a new terrain engine will not be “current code” anymore, I guess. I don’t know about a timeline and for sure something like this will take time (assuming it WILL start someday!).
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Current code? building a new terrain engine will not be “current code” anymore, I guess. I don’t know about a timeline and for sure something like this will take time (assuming it WILL start someday!).
What I meant is if there is any improvments that could be added to the corrent code to allow dealing with heigher terrain resolution and larger tiles without building a whole new terrain engine which would most likly take falcon years rather than weeks (in that case we might as well just call it falcon 5 :p)
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I am sure that FSX code is not a good example, but that was not the point.
What is the point is that we don’t want a generic looking theater.
What we do want is basically fly over google map, is an extreme resolution (Its almost christmas, so I can do a lot of wishes )
Working on the Europe theater I want to have each little road and waterway looking what it looks IRL. And it must be on the correct location.
The cities needs to be as they are IRL, so I can fly up to my bosses office and put a 2000lbs through his window.If that engine can do that by mixing textures in some way, I am very happy with that.
If not… well 4096 is not even coming close to the amount of tiles I would wish forGr Falcas
@I-Hawk:FSX isn’t a good reference I’m afraid for performance… Number of draw calls for the terrain and memory usage is too high, probably.
I sure hope next generation terrain will not need anything close to 4096 textures…
Guys see this kind of terrain, this is the ultimate terrain engine AFAIK, and it doesn’t seem to use any photoreal, does it?
http://www.outerra.com/wgallery.html -
Military version of outerra.
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Has anyone contacted Outerra in case they are willing to contribute - help or whatever… maybe in the spirit of IVC or Raknet was done?
Also if outerra is vast maybe http://www.world-machine.com/ ???
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From the military version of Outerra:
“Early versions of TitanIM are AVAILABLE NOW for selected projects - please contact us with information about your project and target use. We are also happy to discuss commercial partnerships and TitanIM-based products. We have a flexible business model that requires no upfront costs – qualifying commercial & academic projects will receive a FREE Development Kit.”Sorry for kidnaping the topic.
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What I meant is if there is any improvments that could be added to the corrent code to allow dealing with heigher terrain resolution and larger tiles without building a whole new terrain engine which would most likly take falcon years rather than weeks (in that case we might as well just call it falcon 5 :p)
No there is no improvement, this engine walked as far as it could…
I am sure that FSX code is not a good example, but that was not the point.
What is the point is that we don’t want a generic looking theater.
What we do want is basically fly over google map, is an extreme resolution (Its almost christmas, so I can do a lot of wishes )
Working on the Europe theater I want to have each little road and waterway looking what it looks IRL. And it must be on the correct location.
The cities needs to be as they are IRL, so I can fly up to my bosses office and put a 2000lbs through his window.If that engine can do that by mixing textures in some way, I am very happy with that.
If not… well 4096 is not even coming close to the amount of tiles I would wish forGr Falcas
Yea but, simulating RL looking cities isn’t our goal after all, we also don’t need to have all the roads, highways, power lines etc… we need it to look “good enough”, that’s it
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If that engine can do that by mixing textures in some way, I am very happy with that.
If not… well 4096 is not even coming close to the amount of tiles I would wish forThe answer is vectors, which can span over many tiles.
Then main role of terrain tiles is limited only to create terrain colored background. They do not require that many unique tiles because they are not used anymore to “paint” the map like terrain. For that vector polys are used (textured too) and they can create map like looking patches of forests, fields, outlines of the cities, inland waters, vector lines - ocean and sea shores, roads and rails etc. Even as old as Falcon sims - namely Jane’s F/A-18 had that feature to make the roads. Targetware had them too and of course then came all civilian series of sims MSFS , XPlane, FlightGear and combat Il-2, DCS.
However, in Falcon all ground units movement restrictions are encoded in each tile (paths and areas). This, unless again deeper code changes are made, can throw monkey wrench into attempt to get all that looking more like real map and not what was described above as “generic”.
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From the military version of Outerra:
“…. We have a flexible business model that requires no upfront costs – qualifying commercial & academic projects will receive a FREE Development Kit.”Sorry for kidnaping the topic.
yeap says it all
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However, in Falcon all ground units movement restrictions are encoded in each tile (paths and areas). This, unless again deeper code changes are made, can throw monkey wrench into attempt to get all that looking more like real map and not what was described above “generic”.
This is interesting to me, you mean that the data is actually saved ON the tile texture?? Hell I have no idea really but that sounds VERY odd to me. Anyway, I don’t see why a “vector” suit won’t be able to hold all such data as necessary (again, assuming we will over get there in the first place :))
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Military version of outerra.
WOW “… There are no limits in TitanIM, geographically or conceptually.”
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GOD…… this is realism …!!!