EXPANSION OF DEVELOPMENT BASE PERSONNEL THROUGH EDUCATION
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The only reason I am focusing on tiles / 3D environment objects etc is because - WHILE FLYING - its the portion of the simulation that has been left behind the most in comparison to other features (e.g. cockpit / airframe fidelity). Plus, there is one more reason to deal with Tac-Ref, but only after other things have taken place 1st:
So you do not trust the BMS team. Each group its own priority then … and as I see, it can’t be a efficient community work.
I let this thread dying by its own. From my POV, most peoples here do not want to work (at least yet) the way BMS does. Sorry.I see mainly a lot of “creative juice ”.
If you want some info about tiling, may I suggest you to contact TomCatz, Joe Labrada or Earlybite:
https://www.benchmarksims.org/forum/showthread.php?12247-Tom-s-texture-pack
https://www.benchmarksims.org/forum/showthread.php?12247-Tom-s-texture-pack
https://www.benchmarksims.org/forum/showthread.php?22449-An-improvement-for-stock-korea-city-tilesDee-Jay out.
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So you do not trust the BMS team. Each group its own priority then … and as I see, it can’t be a efficient community work.
I let this thread dying by its own. From my POV, most peoples here do not want to work (at least yet) the way BMS does. Sorry.I see mainly a lot of “creative juice ”.
If you want some info about tiling, may I suggest you to contact TomCatz, Joe Labrada or Earlybite:
https://www.benchmarksims.org/forum/showthread.php?12247-Tom-s-texture-pack
https://www.benchmarksims.org/forum/showthread.php?12247-Tom-s-texture-pack
https://www.benchmarksims.org/forum/showthread.php?22449-An-improvement-for-stock-korea-city-tilesDee-Jay out.
I don’t even KNOW the BMS team to trust them. How about defining the BMS team and after talking with them for some time MAYBE I will have an idea concerning where I place my trust.
I don’t know how you live your life, but trust specifically is earned. Perhaps you are looking for a different word and not trust.
Also, I don’t mind working one bit. But there is a difference in blindly slaving on something that eventually I will be forced to do again… and again… and again… and taking your time to think 5 minutes ahead of yourself and start an effort that has continuity. In my experience it pays to do the thinking BEFORE the working. Don’t let me stop you from approaching this backwards though. Be my guest.
Why do I need to contact other people? To request their permission to think? What are we? 5y.o.? “May I have permission to improve the environment of Falcon”?
If something needs to be said, that is limitations that adhere to Falcon in terms of software and the other 2-3 points I am waiting for Cloud 9 to elaborate on (scope, goals, how-to, methods to get what we want etc). And if this is going to be a community effort, these things need to be discussed here. In this thread. Or not at all if that’s the way the core dev. team feels about it. I am only making suggestions and thinking out loud. I am not ramming my ideas down yours or anyone’s throat. You have a brain and opinion all of your own. I am sure you will arrive to conclusions sooner or later all by yourself.
And about that point concerning “working the way BMS works”, how exactly does BMS work? Lets state that and then lets compare methods. I don’t recognize anyone as “the only” or “the best” or “the smartest”. I do my own thinking and I invite everyone else to do their own too. Eventually, someone will have better ideas than someone else. Thats fine for me. Its kinda catastrophic for the egomaniac that thinks he has it all figured out or that he is unique in some way. To people with those kind of convictions I have only one thing to say:
“after we die - me included - the planet earth won’t slow down one bit”
We are just as special as the person next to ourselves.
Cheers.
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Atreides making 3d models more detailed will not improve their trajectory.
You can have instead of an aim 120 3d model the 3d model of the empire State building and it will get to you as the 120 would.
So you lack basic knowledge of the falcon engine to start something like you suggest, at least not as managing or leading the effort.About the rest well still the answers or excuses I read doesn’t answer or reduce the enormous loss of time off the wheel reinvention.
sent from my mi5 using Tapatalk
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Atreides making 3d models more detailed will not improve their trajectory.
You can have instead of an aim 120 3d model the 3d model of the empire State building and it will get to you as the 120 would.
So you lack basic knowledge of the falcon engine to start something like you suggest, at least not as managing or leading the effort.About the rest well still the answers or excuses I read doesn’t answer or reduce the enormous loss of time off the wheel reinvention.
sent from my mi5 using Tapatalk
Arty, you just broke my heart by misunderstanding or misinterpreting what I said about prefering to have “a high fidelity SA-6 model [3D model] shooting at me with as accurate a trajectory [simulation aspect] as possible”. Good 3D models and simulation instead of a detailed Tac-Ref. How will I ever recover from this?… My heart weeps.
And WHERE IN THIS THREAD OR ELSEWHERE did I say that I want to manage or lead something??? Kindly find it and paste it so we can all read it Arty. Its not my fault people are insecure and think I will take away their toys or steal their position in the spotlight. ******! Get over yourselves.
The rest of your comment [about answers or excuses] I really don’t understand, so I hope you can rephrase later on.
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Sounds Tagman (?)
Why do I need to contact other people? To request their permission to think? What are we? 5y.o.? “May I have permission to improve the environment of Falcon”?
…
And about that point concerning “working the way BMS works”, how exactly does BMS work? Lets state that and then lets compare methods. I don’t recognize anyone as “the only” or “the best” or “the smartest”. I do my own thinking and I invite everyone else to do their own too. Eventually, someone will have better ideas than someone else. Thats fine for me. Its kinda catastrophic for the egomaniac that thinks he has it all figured out or that he is unique in some way. To people with those kind of convictions I have only one thing to say:Atreides, you do not understand what I mean. Could also be my bad english, I failed to make you understand my point. Whatever.
Feel free to try to improve everything you want … no prob with this. Wish you all the best and good luck as everyone will enjoy it at the end.
Cheers.
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Don’t let me stop you from approaching this backwards though. Be my guest.
Why do I need to contact other people? To request their permission to think? What are we? 5y.o.? "
You’re starting to lose me bro, but the more you talk about it, the more I don’t think this is a good idea at all. Especially with this post, you are getting into telling them what to do, which is a far cry from how you started, as such time to unsub it was fun while it lasted. Let me preface that while I thought you had a great idea or one that was well presented, when you start telling the dev team they’re doing it backwards, when the fact is this sim is about as close as anyone can get to doing it for real, that’s when I can’t follow this anymore. They definitely aren’t doing it backwards, this is just absurd, if not insulting and you have assured yourself to never be able to work with them in the future, imho.
Secondly you need to contact those other people that were suggested, because they are the brightest in this community at what they do. All those folks that Dee-Jay referred you to are the top of class in this community and some of the most talented modders in the world. See many of the things you’ve brought up have been picked to death over the years by the community and there are ways of doing things to get what you’re looking for in the sim. The reason Dee-Jay is asking you to reach out to them is so that you can possibly learn from them how exactly BMS works and all the other pieces that go into it, such as textures, tiles, models, and more, which would make you more valuable overall (potentially more qualified?!), as it’s obvious you do have knowledge on software development standards and protocols, however it has now been overshadowed by rudeness.
I’m going to bow out of this, I suggest you do the same, I really don’t see where you can go from here.
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You’re starting to lose me bro, but the more you talk about it, the more I don’t think this is a good idea at all. Especially with this post, you are getting into telling them what to do, which is a far cry from how you started, as such time to unsub it was fun while it lasted. Let me preface that while I thought you had a great idea or one that was well presented, when you start telling the dev team they’re doing it backwards, when the fact is this sim is about as close as anyone can get to doing it for real, that’s when I can’t follow this anymore. They definitely aren’t doing it backwards, this is just absurd, if not insulting and you have assured yourself to never be able to work with them in the future, imho.
Secondly you need to contact those other people that were suggested, because they are the brightest in this community at what they do. All those folks that Dee-Jay referred you to are the top of class in this community and some of the most talented modders in the world. See many of the things you’ve brought up have been picked to death over the years by the community and there are ways of doing things to get what you’re looking for in the sim. The reason Dee-Jay is asking you to reach out to them is so that you can possibly learn from them how exactly BMS works and all the other pieces that go into it, such as textures, tiles, models, and more, which would make you more valuable overall (potentially more qualified?!), as it’s obvious you do have knowledge on software development standards and protocols, however it has now been overshadowed by rudeness.
I’m going to bow out of this, I suggest you do the same, I really don’t see where you can go from here.
Did I mention that I don’t know the BMS team? I didn’t even know that Dee-Jay is a part of it. As I said, I am not telling anyone to do anything. It appeared to me as a backwards approach to focus on execution without any planning. I am still waiting on what Cloud 9 has to say. As for contacting the people suggested by Dee-Jay, I will send an invitation to them to join the thread. I think that more than just me need to know what limitations are imposed on us along with everything else that has already been mentioned. I really think you - and others - are misunderstanding me. The initial scope of this thread stands. I don’t need to lead, manage or be in any team dev of otherwise. I will contibute my spare time in a certain direction as long as I am sure that this effort is not going to be a re-invention of the wheel as you stated quite well. But for that to happen, someone has to have scope. Someone that knows the limitations etc.
REQUEST: Can members of the dev. team identify themselves as such so I know who I am talking with? You obviously deserve credit for what you have already done, and I dont intend on insulting anyones work. So kindly say if you are a member of the dev team when we talk.
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Sounds Tagman (?)
Atreides, you do not understand what I mean. Could also be my bad english, I failed to make you understand my point. Whatever.
Feel free to try to improve everything you want … no prob with this. Wish you all the best and good luck as everyone will enjoy it at the end.
Cheers.
Take your time to write down things in a manner that I will understand Dee-Jay. I don’t even know you to be hostile or offensive towards you. As I mentioned on earlier posts, the BMS team - and since you are on it you are included in this - deserve credit for everything that you have done for us… and that we enjoy for free.
How am I supposed to know who is on the Dev. team is my question, but anyway.
Lets focus on the Tac-Ref since its a fairly easy thing to improve.
Here are my ideas on it:
Someone earlier suggested a pdf version. Not entirely a bad idea, but I prefer it to be an integral part of the game for the following reasons:
1. The tac-ref 3D models will be used in the game regardless.
2. Its more convenient to have a “one-stop-shopping experience” than opening a separate PDF file as you would with the manual.You mentioned that the data is outdated.
Perhaps some weapon systems have received upgrades since their introduction - as they usually do - so the information per version(s) participating in the game needs to be researched and collected. That is one thing.
The other thing is what kind of information will you make available to the end user? Technical specifications, capabilities, limits etc is the one side of weapon systems. The other is doctrine. How is it used? Tactics? Interoperability with other assets. Do you have any ideas on where to source that data? If its on-line then all that we need is either consent to copy-paste it or in a worst case scenario, we need to re-write everything. In the later case, the question is “what do you focus on, what do you keep and what do you leave out”?
Another approach is asking an active duty pilot what information they are presented with concerning other weapon systems. That would allow a realistic focus of the Tac-ref in the direction of the actual simulation, unless its useful for one reason or another to include information outside that field.
I hope I have set you up well enough to continue your thoughts on this.
QUESTION: Is there a member list somewhere on the forum for looking them up?
QUESTION 2: Is it Tomcatz1988? -
Atreides I didn’t say u wanted to lead somewhere. I just stated that with lack of basic knowledge you can’t lead or manager the effort. And now that I think of it you can’t even have a holistic view to propose something.
U must have deep knowledge.
Sure your general idea is very correct regardless what BMS developers say.
You (all not just Atreides) got in details of the leaf of a three and you don’t see the forest.sent from my mi5 using Tapatalk
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Atreides I didn’t say u wanted to lead somewhere. I just stated that with lack of basic knowledge you can’t lead or manager the effort. And now that I think of it you can’t even have a holistic view to propose something.
U must have deep knowledge.
Sure your general idea is very correct regardless what BMS developers say.
You (all not just Atreides) got in details of the leaf of a three and you don’t see the forest.sent from my mi5 using Tapatalk
And that is why I believe that the core dev team needs to initiate this thing. I agree about not knowing the limitations imposed as also the capabilities of the software. But to be quite honest - like many others in here from what I can tell already - if the core dev. team doesn’t want to contribute I will try to OPENLY try to find out what those limitations are. If we don’t take that into account we might as well do nothing since there is no guarantee that the end goals will be met.
e.g.
Will it be expandable?
Would it be possible to connect adjacent maps into a larger one?
In what way(s) would future improvement take place? etcAll these questions adhere to scope. Without it, I / You / We would be flying blind. Its the very same reason why I said that at least ONE person needs to be told what needs to be done from beginning to end. After that, there can be contribution. But not without a plan that includes growth, expansion, scope, improvement.
P.S. The invitations have been sent out (Today, 12:47) to Joe Labrada, Earlybite and Tomcatz to voice their opinions in this thread.
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In another thread there was a nice expression said by a member. Development debt.
This is also a nice example of this debt… Actually it is the most important from the community devs side.
BMS devs straggle to reduce the core debt… So no time or resources for the community devs.
From time to time the spaghetti is passing to the community.
Bits of info scattered all over.
Sure if devs started a wiki and instead of answering here answer to the wiki and link as an answer some pieces of the puzzle would be already there.
But someone must create and maintain this platform we can’t ask from the devs to do that too.sent from my mi5 using Tapatalk
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Hi Atreides,
I didn’t read all what you posted in this thread because it’s honestly too much and I don’t have the time, but hopefully I’m getting what you are trying to say.
OTOH, I’ll try to tell you how things are working in Falcon land, since ever. Falcon world is globally divided to 2 main parts:
1. Code –> Everything that is part of the EXE, and since we also have shaders for GFX for sometime now, that also includes shaders. In other words anything that you can’t really “crack” or “Reverse Engineer”.
2. Data --> Everything elseI think that’s a place to start for you, so you can understand what’s going on (I’m assuming, mainly from your post-count, but not only, that you are new here…)
Now, think this way:
BMS team holds the source code and keeps developing it to all kind of directions and areas. There are many areas in the sim, and if we look at it, I can put a short list of headlines - GFX, Avionics, Sounds, Physics, Network UI etc etc. Going into a more detailed list I can write - 3D models, Special effects, Avionics, Multiplayer and 2D/3D worlds, Terrain, Weather, Comms etc etc…What’s my point? That no matter how you turn it around, it all eventually sums up to code & data. I like to think that 90% of the serious guys that hanging around here for a couple of years now, will have the ability to tell you what you can do alone and what you can’t do because you need code support for.
So, Now my turn to ask:
What kind of process you try to search here that isn’t already known or been discussed to death during the years?Because… Dude, Falcon is OLD, older than most of us here, Hell when I found there is a Falcon forum it was at 2003, and the sim was already ~5 years old! People already were messing with it back then and some of them knew on some areas more than we know even today. So sorry to disappoint you but there is no “new process to start” here, because almost everything is known already.
But, at the same time I can say that there is an infinite work to do, so if someone is REALLY looking to help, then you can start right away. I’ll start from the most needed stuff:
- We have at any given moment 100s of 3D models that needs updating.
- We probably have many textures in the DB that could use some love.
- As it was mentioned already, Tacref requires some work.
And I’m sure there are many many more. So, if someone wants to really help? You can start picking anything and start work. There are guides to do almost everything and I’m sure we have experts that can help with anything. I never remember even once that someone was screaming about some area and we didn’t checked it (Yes there is stuff which takes us time to check, and also there is stuff which cannot be changed/fixed although people may think it’s all easy…)
So, the path is right there, one just need to choose what he wants to do and start chasing that.
Cheers!
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Hi Atreides,
I didn’t read all what you posted in this thread because it’s honestly too much and I don’t have the time, but hopefully I’m getting what you are trying to say.
OTOH, I’ll try to tell you how things are working in Falcon land, since ever. Falcon world is globally divided to 2 main parts:
1. Code –> Everything that is part of the EXE, and since we also have shaders for GFX for sometime now, that also includes shaders. In other words anything that you can’t really “crack” or “Reverse Engineer”.
2. Data --> Everything elseI think that’s a place to start for you, so you can understand what’s going on (I’m assuming, mainly from your post-count, but not only, that you are new here…)
Now, think this way:
BMS team holds the source code and keeps developing it to all kind of directions and areas. There are many areas in the sim, and if we look at it, I can put a short list of headlines - GFX, Avionics, Sounds, Physics, Network UI etc etc. Going into a more detailed list I can write - 3D models, Special effects, Avionics, Multiplayer and 2D/3D worlds, Terrain, Weather, Comms etc etc…What’s my point? That no matter how you turn it around, it all eventually sums up to code & data. I like to think that 90% of the serious guys that hanging around here for a couple of years now, will have the ability to tell you what you can do alone and what you can’t do because you need code support for.
So, Now my turn to ask:
What kind of process you try to search here that isn’t already known or been discussed to death during the years?Because… Dude, Falcon is OLD, older than most of us here, Hell when I found there is a Falcon forum it was at 2003, and the sim was already ~5 years old! People already were messing with it back then and some of them knew on some areas more than we know even today. So sorry to disappoint you but there is no “new process to start” here, because almost everything is known already.
But, at the same time I can say that there is an infinite work to do, so if someone is REALLY looking to help, then you can start right away. I’ll start from the most needed stuff:
- We have at any given moment 100s of 3D models that needs updating.
- We probably have many textures in the DB that could use some love.
- As it was mentioned already, Tacref requires some work.
And I’m sure there are many many more. So, if someone wants to really help? You can start picking anything and start work. There are guides to do almost everything and I’m sure we have experts that can help with anything. I never remember even once that someone was screaming about some area and we didn’t checked it (Yes there is stuff which takes us time to check, and also there is stuff which cannot be changed/fixed although people may think it’s all easy…)
So, the path is right there, one just need to choose what he wants to do and start chasing that.
Cheers!
Thanks for taking the time to reply and clarify certain issues.
Let me simplify things for you so we can focus on what I am presenting:
For me - my initial goal at least - is “how do we get a better, more detailed terrain that looks less blockish”.
Realizing that it requires alot of work to be done… much more than a single person would be able to handle - this turned into PIPELINES: If pipelines were created that allowed the community to contribute productively (not in a disorganized and overlapping manner) then at least that portion of the problem is resolved.
The problem with setting up the pipelines is that the non programming savvy that have no idea concerning the limitations and capabilities of the engine, can’t say what can be done to go after it. This includes me.
That is why I have insisted that the initiative of setting up such a pipeline in which the average Joe is given a way to contribute, either falls on the shoulders of the current core dev. team, or someone else that will try to get all that information into one place, figure out “the how” along with the goals, verify everything before doing it himself once while creating educational resources (video? pdf?) to train other members, and then set the whole thing in motion.
That is what I think. Perhaps you have a different opinion. Or perhaps you feel that the terrain is just fine (while clearly I feel its the portion that needs the most attention… certainly not the tac-ref which is not even directly involved while flying the sim).
I pretty much figured out by myself that “code” imposes the inherent limitations to what can be done concerning the environment. So - if you share the same or similar views with me - I invite you to educate me concerning those limitations. What can be done. What is Falcon capable in terms of terrain? What do you think should be done to improve on its current blockiness? What do you think about ground obejcts needing improvement? Can we think freely and unconstrained about these things and try to set up what I am reffering to as pipelines or are there other things I need to be aware of? Perhaps you have a better way to do this?
I am looking forward to read your thoughts on all this.
Enjoy!
One more thing… I am not suggesting specifically modding the existing terrain. I am looking forward - hopefully - to come up with a terrain that has many more smaller tiles to start with, more detailed elevation data and then apply - if possible - photorealistic textures from sat. imagery. That I think would be a vast improvement. But again, we need to know what are the limitations.
If the current terrain comprises of 100x100 tiles, things would look MUCH better if it comprised of 10.000x10.000 for the exact same area, if more detailed elevation was generated not via linear interpolation though, as that would give us the same blockiness we already have.
And if anyone feels I should be apologizing to anyone, just speak up. I have no ego concerning recognizing mistakes and apologizing.
Thanks all.P.S. I will be looking into what data is freely available for use (e.g. NASA Worldwind). I will be aiming for a 1m resolution with its elavation data. That is 1mx1m tiles with - if I remember correctly - 4 elevation values per tile (one for each corner). If alternatives exist, I kindly request anyone interested to do research into this area so we can see what we can work with. NASA Worldwind is a global project. There might be other projects out there that offer their DTM (Digital Terrain Model) data openly. Good luck data hunting!
P.S.2 I will also be contacting FlightGear with questions in the same direction. Just letting everyone know so our efforts don’t overlap.
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I think it’s fair to say that everyone who is passionate about BMS has the best interests of the future of Falcon at heart, even if they don’t always agree on the best way to get there. Please also understand that English is not everyone’s first language, so if meaning is unsure please refer to the sentence above and give people the benefit of the doubt.
Bear (not Bare unless their mind is empty) in mind that Benchmark Sims is a group of volunteers who give up their free time for something that they believe in too. As such the group does not function like a business, nor are the members interested in self-aggrandisement. The fact that the group is the only one, to my knowledge, that continues to function and develop Falcon 4 would seem to indicate that they must be doing something right.
Also consider that coders code because that’s what they know and do and enjoy. Data guys & gals, graphic artists, etc are the same. If you only have limited time for your hobby you’re going to do what you want and know best. Whilst we do try to document what we know don’t forget there are many extremely talented and knowledgeable individuals outside the dev group who give up their free time too and might be able to answer your questions in a more timely fashion.
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Questions for anyone that is code savvy enough to be able to answer. Take your time with these.
1. Are tiles the only method used by Falcon to create terrain?
2. For a given area of 1sqkm lets assume that currently 100 tiles are used (10x10 layout). Can falcon scale upwards concerning the number of tiles for the same given area e.g. to a 1sqkm with 10.000 tiles (100x100 layout) or even better 1.000.000 tiles (1000x1000 layout)? What would be the expected performance penalty for that?
3. What dependencies arise from a change of tile count for a given area as also from a higher detail elevation map to go along with that?
4. How does Falcon provide elevation for each tile? Or does it use combinations of elevation and tilt per direction?
5. Is there a limit to area of terrain or to number of tiles or number of elevation values that Falcon can handle?
6. Can “maps” be adjoined? In other words for two adjacent maps, is it possible for the user to fly from the one into the other?
7. How is a single tile labeled in Falcon? The proper nomenclature and formatting is important to have, so that work can be segmented.
8. Are tiles “grouped” or does the developer need to assign a tile for every tile position? For instance, I provide a list of all the tiles that form a road which has a given color (e.g. asphalt), will Falcon assign the same tile to all of those tiles or do I need to provide one tile per tile position? In other words, is the terrain “smart” or “dumb”?
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@Cloud:
But you’re missing the point Molni!!!
C9
I cannot see the point.
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For me - my initial goal at least - is “how do we get a better, more detailed terrain that looks less blockish”.
I guess that makes the 2 of us then
Before I start explaining stuff deeper, I’ll tell you 1 thing that you need to know:
3D rendering is (Usually) made of 2 parts, 1) Geometry 2) Textures.
The Textures are mapped into the Geometry.You must know that in order to understand my answers better.
Questions for anyone that is code savvy enough to be able to answer. Take your time with these.
1. Are tiles the only method used by Falcon to create terrain?
In Falcon terrain, the Geometry represents squares of 1KMx1KM and the texturing also goes with that size, i.e every texture tile is stretched over 1KMx1KM of Geometry.
2. For a given area of 1sqkm lets assume that currently 100 tiles are used (10x10 layout). Can falcon scale upwards concerning the number of tiles for the same given area e.g. to a 1sqkm with 10.000 tiles (100x100 layout) or even better 1.000.000 tiles (1000x1000 layout)?
As I stated above, the textures are stretched over a 1KMx1KM world sized mesh.
Now, from a technical POV, yes you can tile as many textures as you want on a single 1KMx1KM, but there are 2 questions to ask here:
1. How long it’ll take the renderer (Let’s assume GPU time only by skipping some technical details) to render such amount of textures on all squares of the Geometry?
2. How much memory you will need in order to load all those tiles and render all in a single frame?Increasing tiling factor does cost memory and GPU time. And if the number of tiles is HUGE then you may also get out of Video memory and things may get REALLY slow. That said, tiling a texture many times is actually a VERY common technique in 3D rendering to texture large meshes, but of course repetition among other issues must be taken into account.
3. What dependencies arise from a change of tile count for a given area as also from a higher detail elevation map to go along with that?
For (textures) tiles I already answered above. Elevation is something else as it is related to the Geometry. The elevation resolution in Falcon is 1KMx1KM which I know is pretty low. Improving that will probably mean to write something new because it’s not just about the tiles size and textures, it’s also related to Z-Fighting (Higher resolution meshes on the current engine represent Z-Fighting issues, if you aren’t sure what Z-Fight is, then I’m sure you can google it :)), view range, rendering time, memory and more.
Bottom line - All Terrains you see on Modern games aren’t just plan meshes of a X-Y grids that are easy to implement, there are some sophisticated Graphics techniques out there for Rendering large terrains.
4. How does Falcon provide elevation for each tile? Or does it use combinations of elevation and tilt per direction?
Elevation comes from the Terrain L2 file, that holds the Heightmap, along with some other stuff.
5. Is there a limit to area of terrain or to number of tiles or number of elevation values that Falcon can handle?
Yes, the current mesh resolution in BMS is 1KMx1KM and the max number of separate tiles is 4096. Those 4096 textures can then be specified in the L2/O2/texture.bin files in order to decide how to actually tile them on the Mesh.
6. Can “maps” be adjoined? In other words for two adjacent maps, is it possible for the user to fly from the one into the other?
No, Falcon theaters are bounded.
7. How is a single tile labeled in Falcon? The proper nomenclature and formatting is important to have, so that work can be segmented.
For this info and a lot of what I explained above you can look here and at other related pages:
http://pmc.editing.wiki/doku.php?id=falcon4:file_formats:theater_l2Cheers!
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And some forum post stickied in the terrain section, and some forum search for terrain elevation, coordinates, falcon projection etc etc
As said quite often already. The info is there, but you have to dig for it.
Because you won’t get all the facts all at once - if learning to fly BMS is a steep curve, learning to mod it and do it right is even steeper.It requires dedication, commitment on the long term, team work and a pretty basic understanding of you can’t do it on your own.
At least not if you want your work to survive the next BMS version -
1st of all thank you for taking the time to read and start to provide me with some valuable information!
I guess that makes the 2 of us then
Before I start explaining stuff deeper, I’ll tell you 1 thing that you need to know:
3D rendering is (Usually) made of 2 parts, 1) Geometry 2) Textures.
The Textures are mapped into the Geometry.You must know that in order to understand my answers better.
So far so good, as I am familiar with texels and voxels. However the textures - to my understanding - are rendered ONTO the underlying geometry.
In Falcon terrain, the Geometry represents squares of 1KMx1KM and the texturing also goes with that size, i.e every texture tile is stretched over 1KMx1KM of Geometry.
This is a VERY, VERY crude representation of any DTM. But I can’t blame anything since such were the limitations of machines 20+ years ago.
As I stated above, the textures are stretched over a 1KMx1KM world sized mesh.
Now, from a technical POV, yes you can tile as many textures as you want on a single 1KMx1KM, but there are 2 questions to ask here:
1. How long it’ll take the renderer (Let’s assume GPU time only by skipping some technical details) to render such amount of textures on all squares of the Geometry?
2. How much memory you will need in order to load all those tiles and render all in a single frame?Let me make this clear: I don’t want to use the existing 1km tiles. Geometry wise its VERY crude and using several textures on them would only add a memory problem to the existing crude geomentry. I want smaller tiles. I would be quite happy with 1mx1m tiles but since this will require a larger effort than just data collection, I / We / You and Me / Whoever else, need to plan for greater and smaller increments. So… If the minimum “straight edge” is currently 1000m long in the landscape, lets try to make plans for 100m edges, 10m edges and 1m edges I would say that, 1m edges would be adequate for the foreseeable future as I wouldnt expect a 0,1m edge requirement in the near future for any flight sim application… UNLESS we wanted to expand the scope of this project to e.g. driving and or naval simulation (is that possible?). Just laying down ideas… nothing set in stone yet.
Increasing tiling factor does cost memory and GPU time. And if the number of tiles is HUGE then you may also get out of Video memory and things may get REALLY slow. That said, tiling a texture many times is actually a VERY common technique in 3D rendering to texture large meshes, but of course repetition among other issues must be taken into account.
Lets see what limits we have with a finer mesh. I think we need to do some trial and error and experimentation while running a modified version on today’s hardware. I suspect that at the very least we will be able to make an improvement by a factor of 10 and that would be quite significant. But at the same time, I wont be making this pipeline all over again for another similar leap. I guess this falls right now onto you and me and anyone that hopefully will chip in and help us.
For (textures) tiles I already answered above. Elevation is something else as it is related to the Geometry. The elevation resolution in Falcon is 1KMx1KM which I know is pretty low. Improving that will probably mean to write something new because it’s not just about the tiles size and textures, it’s also related to Z-Fighting (Higher resolution meshes on the current engine represent Z-Fighting issues, if you aren’t sure what Z-Fight is, then I’m sure you can google it :)), view range, rendering time, memory and more.
There are several ways to orient a surface. Usually you provide the elevation of the COG (Center Of Gravity) of the tile and after that two cosine values perpendicular to each other that provide you with the tilt of the tile while rotated around the x and y axis (assuming z is elevation).
Another way to do this, is to provide elevation data for all corners of the tile (or as many needed to create defined geometry… in the case of a square or rectangle that would mean three corners).
How the machine is told to orient each tile is important because once you multiply the provided information by e.g. 1.000.000 tiles you get a performance penalty.
We need to know this Hawk.
Bottom line - All Terrains you see on Modern games aren’t just plan meshes of a X-Y grids that are easy to implement, there are some sophisticated Graphics techniques out there for Rendering large terrains.
I would never assume for any game of the last 20 years - unless it was designed to be flat - that its DTM IS flat. The question is what do we have to work with. And this once more relates to the code.
Elevation comes from the Terrain L2 file, that holds the Heightmap, along with some other stuff.
Useful to know. Is the L2 file a csv file kind of deal or does it use its own proprietary format for storing the information? How exactly is X, Y, for each elevation point stored? Are the positions pre-assumed or are they calculated? For instance, if you design a very steep terrain of 100 sqkm, (10x10 1km square) will the orthographic projection of the entire map be 10kmx10km in dimensions or will it be less than 10kmx10km as is expected? I need to know this distinction to account for stretching of each tile or not.
Yes, the current mesh resolution in BMS is 1KMx1KM and the max number of separate tiles is 4096. Those 4096 textures can then be specified in the L2/O2/texture.bin files in order to decide how to actually tile them on the Mesh.
So, for a square map layout we are limited to 64x64 1km tiles, each one with its own texture information.
1. Can we have a finer mesh? Tiles of 100x100m, tiles of 10x10m and finally tiles of 1x1m.
2. How much memory do we need for our ultimate goal of 1m resolution? Even at the 1m level we would still be using textures for each tile, and even if todays machines can’t handle this detail (assuming the software permits it or can permit it) then in the future we can have it.
3. Would the core dev team be able to provide us with a modified version for each of the above 3 iterations? 100x100, 10x10, 1x1?
4. Are there limitations on the file size of the above mentioned files (L2, O2, other)?No, Falcon theaters are bounded.
Which leads us to the next question for the core dev team:
Can we have larger theaters in terms of size?For this info and a lot of what I explained above you can look here and at other related pages:
http://pmc.editing.wiki/doku.php?id=falcon4:file_formats:theater_l2Cheers!
Thanks for taking the time I-Hawk!
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Is there a way to import terrains from other 3D modeling packages like Bryce, Terragen, or Blender?
Or to build from RW DTED data?..which I think I might know how to do, using one or more of these packages. Others might also. Terragen in particular is capable of producing some stunning scenery.