Outerra forum
Outerra Engine => Ideas & Suggestions & Questions => Topic started by: Sofox on November 13, 2014, 10:16:43 pm
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Recently, I came across the 3D Warehouse (https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com), it's a website that has a gigantic library of 3d models free to download. That's good in and of itself, but here's the great part: A large amount of its library contains models of buildings that exist in the real world. They were made to be put into Google Earth, and so were encoded in a file format called KMZ (which uses open standard markup language KML (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyhole_Markup_Language)). The great thing about a KMZ file is that it's pretty much just a Collada file with a text file that gives the model's GPS position.
If Outerra supported KMZ files, then you could just browse for a KMZ file of, say, the Eiffel Tower, download it, select the file from within the engine, and the suddenly, the Eiffel Tower appears in Outerra exactly where it would be in real life, in Paris. You wouldn't need to manually position the model, as the model would already know where it is.
You could then download a large amount of KMZ files for different parts of Paris, the Louvre, the Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame Cathedral, and then put them all in the engine in one go, and suddenly, Paris is now populated with buildings all in their correct place, you wouldn't need to carefully position each model, they would appear where they're meant to be. This would save a lot of time and make things easier for people recreating real cities and building in the Outerra engine, in my view.
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I've always assumed that if Outerra ever gets OSM working, that the ease of object placement will make the scenario you're describing very common. Right now though, its a waiting game.
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I've just thought of a varient of this idea:
What if Outerra collaborates with 3D Warehouse?
Originally, people put their building into 3D Warehouse, marked them as "Google Earth Ready", and after Google approved them, they would appear in Google Earth. Why doesn't Outerra do exactly the same thing, so that now when you browse the earth, buildings are automatically downloaded and loaded, just like the terrain?