Peregrine
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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 …!!!
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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 :))
Not “on” the tile (texture) but in the texture.bin which holds all the roads, rivers and areas (like forest).
Gr Falcas
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GOD…… this is realism …!!!
No its not. This is just visuals. The engine has some potentials though.
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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 )
Yes, path and area information restricting/facilitating GU movement is strictly related to each terrain tile and limited to size of the tile. Now, in addition to all this there is tree autogen info there (still that is just format of area - point coord and radius). Some of the tiles (without roads/bridges, without water) have no such a information attached to them. All that is stored in texture.bin.
I also think this can be stored in vector suite, but not without deeper and more significant changes in the code. -
So Texture.bin it is, thanx guys!
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I just want to back up to something I-Hawk said. While I really appreciate the enthusiasm and great ideas presented the last few pages, for me, as a simmer, I’m ok with “good enough.” Please understand, I’d love to have the best terrain available, too. But what we have in 4.33 right now is, IMHO, “good enough.” What you guys did with the auto-gen trees is friggin’ magical. And everything just looks a bit better to me.
If Peregrine enables us to generate theaters much more easily and faster than using the older tools, that in and of itself can be game changing. With the talent on these boards, things like that ever-elusive Europe or Vietnam suddenly become completely viable.
BMS is in such a sweet spot right now. I’m still stunned and amazed at how this sim has matured, and for a $6 investment on Good Old Games anyone with the will can join in.
Awesome stuff.
I’m glad so many of you talented individuals devote your time to making this sim more fun for us end users.
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