Outerra forum
Outerra Engine => Ideas & Suggestions & Questions => Topic started by: conscript2 on August 13, 2010, 04:29:00 pm
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Hello,
1.When the demo for download.
2.What it will contain?
Thanks...
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The demo will be available after we fix or work around the ATI driver issues that currently disallow running Outerra on ATI cards entirely. We will be focusing on this in next few weeks, together with performing some necessary optimizations.
The demo should contain almost everything that was shown till now. Drivable Tatra truck, Cessna, a free controller for flying around the world.
Tools for persistent scene editing (roads & runways. buildings ..) etc.
There will be just a single climate type everywhere in the world.
The demo will require a SM4 class graphics card to run, with at least 512MB memory, preferably an Nvidia 8800GT or higher.
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The demo will be available after we fix or work around the ATI driver issues that currently disallow running Outerra on ATI cards entirely. We will be focusing on this in next few weeks, together with performing some necessary optimizations.
The demo should contain almost everything that was shown till now. Drivable Tatra truck, Cessna, a free controller for flying around the world.
Tools for persistent scene editing (roads & runways. buildings ..) etc.
There will be just a single climate type everywhere in the world.
The demo will require a SM4 class graphics card to run, with at least 512MB memory, preferably an Nvidia 8800GT or higher.
sm4 = DX10?
can a 8xxx series of nvidia do this in hardware mode?
Anyways, a small question: is outerra DX10, or DX9 and DX10?
Do you plan to have a special DX11 renderer also? (tesselation, compute shader)
Greetz!
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The demo will be available after we fix or work around the ATI driver issues that currently disallow running Outerra on ATI cards entirely. We will be focusing on this in next few weeks, together with performing some necessary optimizations.
The demo should contain almost everything that was shown till now. Drivable Tatra truck, Cessna, a free controller for flying around the world.
Tools for persistent scene editing (roads & runways. buildings ..) etc.
There will be just a single climate type everywhere in the world.
The demo will require a SM4 class graphics card to run, with at least 512MB memory, preferably an Nvidia 8800GT or higher.
sm4 = DX10?
can a 8xxx series of nvidia do this in hardware mode?
Anyways, a small question: is outerra DX10, or DX9 and DX10?
Do you plan to have a special DX11 renderer also? (tesselation, compute shader)
Greetz!
I'm not on the Outerra Team, but perhaps I can help you.
SM4 = Shader Model 4
GeForce 8 Series does support this, it is the lowest Geforce series that does so.
On the ATI side, it is supported from the Radeon HD2xxx series and up.
Outerra is not rendering with DX9 or 10 (or 11), but with OpenGL. However, both Tesselation and compute shader (in the form of OpenCL) are also available in OpenGL (as far as I understand).
Besides, don't believe all the hype, may I ask why you care what it uses? As long as it looks good and performs well I couldn't care less.
Hope this helps (and is accurate).
BTW: cameni, I have an HD2600 XT card with 256mb, does that mean I can't run outerra until I upgrade (a little difficult in the next year for me). Does it refuse to run on less than 512mb?
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BTW: cameni, I have an HD2600 XT card with 256mb, does that mean I can't run outerra until I upgrade (a little difficult in the next year for me). Does it refuse to run on less than 512mb?
The optimizations we will be doing are directed at reducing the GPU memory footprint (along with performance). In the configuration one can set the amount of memory the card will use for terrain, if it's too low the terrain might not be refined enough in mountainous areas or when turning around.
I'm not sure about the performance of 2600, but it probably won't be great. We have only 4xxx and 5xxx ATI cards here so you'll be a tester :)
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Do you plan to have a special DX11 renderer also? (tesselation, compute shader)
Corona described it right. We would like to use tesselation shaders (available in OpenGL4) one day, but there are much more important things to be done first.
Also we could use OpenCL for more general computations, but we opted not to use it now as the drivers are in early stage and we don't want to pioneer the paths again :)
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I'm not sure about the performance of 2600, but it probably won't be great. We have only 4xxx and 5xxx ATI cards here so you'll be a tester :)
Now hold on. First, let's talk about my salary, then we can talk about recruiting me as a tester. So fax over that NDA and contract so my team of lawyers can look over it. Be sure to include a download link so I can evaluate before agreeing.
Sound good? :-)
Edit: had some mysql errors when trying to post this......
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had some mysql errors when trying to post this......
That's because you mentioned lawyers :D
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I run one of my systems with a nVidia 8500GT with 1gb DDRIII ram, will that be good enough to run this demo? OS=XP SP3, 4GB DDRII Ram, 2TB Sata Raid HD's
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I run one of my systems with a nVidia 8500GT with 1gb DDRIII ram, will that be good enough to run this demo? OS=XP SP3, 4GB DDRII Ram, 2TB Sata Raid HD's
Again I don't know how much weaker these cards are in comparison to the 8800GT card, this has to be tested.
The 8800GT reference is nowadays still manufactured as Nvidia 250 I think, different technologies and frequencies but basically the same good old chip.
For the slower cards there will have to be a different configuration that will reduce the demands, sacrificing the quality a bit of course.
But in truth we weren't dealing with that much as we were using Steam Hardware Survey (http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey) as a reference when considering what hardware is being used. And it cannot be really expected that engine operating with such scales and detail ranges will work reasonably on those weaker cards anyway ..
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But in truth we weren't dealing with that much as we were using Steam Hardware Survey (http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey) as a reference when considering what hardware is being used. And it cannot be really expected that engine operating with such scales and detail ranges will work reasonably on those weaker cards anyway ..
Will you be selling your final game on Steam?
I buy 90% of my games now from steam and it seems like an easy way for you to get massive exposure (Win and Mac) for your game.
Many indie developers are publishing there and your customers will not complain about the non intrusive Steam DRM.
Also, I notice that devs will put their product on sale every now and then and I imagine this causes a nice cash injection from time to time.
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If it will be a standalone game then we'll probably go with Steam.
But it may be also a different model, for example something where you can rent a land when you want to build, or to buy additional vehicles with possibly different simulation cores also from other vendors and so on. In that case a kind of micropayment system would be more appropriate.
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If it will be a standalone game then we'll probably go with Steam.
But it may be also a different model, for example something where you can rent a land when you want to build, or to buy additional vehicles with possibly different simulation cores also from other vendors and so on. In that case a kind of micropayment system would be more appropriate.
I don't hope so,
Steam needs always connection to internet and many users would like to play offline i think
or maybe offline sell and online sell
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The demo will be available after we fix or work around the ATI driver issues that currently disallow running Outerra on ATI cards entirely. We will be focusing on this in next few weeks, together with performing some necessary optimizations.
The demo should contain almost everything that was shown till now. Drivable Tatra truck, Cessna, a free controller for flying around the world.
Tools for persistent scene editing (roads & runways. buildings ..) etc.
There will be just a single climate type everywhere in the world.
The demo will require a SM4 class graphics card to run, with at least 512MB memory, preferably an Nvidia 8800GT or higher.
sm4 = DX10?
can a 8xxx series of nvidia do this in hardware mode?
Anyways, a small question: is outerra DX10, or DX9 and DX10?
Do you plan to have a special DX11 renderer also? (tesselation, compute shader)
Greetz!
I'm not on the Outerra Team, but perhaps I can help you.
SM4 = Shader Model 4
GeForce 8 Series does support this, it is the lowest Geforce series that does so.
On the ATI side, it is supported from the Radeon HD2xxx series and up.
Outerra is not rendering with DX9 or 10 (or 11), but with OpenGL. However, both Tesselation and compute shader (in the form of OpenCL) are also available in OpenGL (as far as I understand).
Besides, don't believe all the hype, may I ask why you care what it uses? As long as it looks good and performs well I couldn't care less.
Hope this helps (and is accurate).
BTW: cameni, I have an HD2600 XT card with 256mb, does that mean I can't run outerra until I upgrade (a little difficult in the next year for me). Does it refuse to run on less than 512mb?
i know that sm = shader model haha :P. I just thought SM4.0 where supported from Geforce9XXX and up. The Geforce 9 series are DX10 cards, thats what gave me the confusion.
I care what it uses because i'm a developer myself too, and want to know a bit what kind of techniques are used. DX9 gives a whole lot less than DX10. But to be honest i havent worked with openGL asof yet.
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I don't hope so, Steam needs always connection to internet and many users would like to play offline i think or maybe offline sell and online sell
Offline will be possible only for some kind of games that can use a reduced resolution dataset, otherwise the terrain data are large so they will be normally streamed on demand. It is like - a 76m dataset takes 14GB, while a 1km one takes ~300MB. And we ultimately want to use a better resolution for mountains so these numbers will be even higher.
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You are from slovakia?
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When will the car engine sounds? I do not know English well, but I from Slovakia...
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When will the car engine sounds? I do not know English well, but I from Slovakia...
Replying via email ..
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Hello,
your Engine looks amazing!!!
Can you tell us at what date approximatly we can download the Demo from Outerra?
Is it in the next month or later?
Thanks a lot!
halobungie
P.S. I can't wait - this Engine is too good...
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I would rather not promise anything. We are currently optimizing the engine and implementing various helper logging features as the demo will also serve for testing. During this phase we also want to address remaining ATI problems. But I really do not know how much it will take.
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Another Idea from me.
A dynamik Movement for the Free Camera. So, that the Camera slide a bit when it stops. For a smoother View and Handling. I think it also looks good for Movies.
Dynamik is allways a good Idea. ;)
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Update on a demo?
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Still waiting for a working beta driver from ATI/AMD .. :(
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So lets make a Nvidia only Demo for the first Time. ;)
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So lets make a Nvidia only Demo for the first Time. ;)
Well... that'll help me confirm what I want my next card to be. The benchmarks for the Nvidia and AMD cards that I'm looking at are annoyingly even. :P
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So lets make a Nvidia only Demo for the first Time. ;)
Your suggestion does not please the ati owners.. not one bit.
(http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_FTKJFWNBIJo/TCihMiOLFlI/AAAAAAAAAGw/TZNjin-UJDc/s320/Rage1.jpg)
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Hi, newbie here :D
Outerra seems unbelievable- this could very easily be the holy grail (as said many times before) of simulators; many different types of vehicle, brilliant performance by the look of it. And a truly astounding level of detail considering, which means it looks amazing a centimetre away, let alone a mile.
Being a Nvidia card owner, I'm going to be ridiculously cheeky in my first post and say, any news on a demo release? Even if it is ridiculously basic, with only a few vehicles, just to see that landscape myself would be, for lack of a better word, awesome.
Cheers and regards,
Ollie
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Hi Ollie.
We are still thinking how to execute this. I feel releasing a Nvidia-only demo can be somewhat damaging for us, but we also do not want to stretch it for too long.
We are also toying with the idea of making a sandbox style game, using the indie model - releasing early in alpha state for a reduced price that slowly rises as the game nears completion. This could be working as many people want such an open sandbox environment with the ability to explore and mod the world, with possible simulator plugins and so on. But there are still some open matters that could alter our course so we aren't going to decide these things now. We are mainly collecting the opinions and arguing here at the moment :)
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Hi Ollie.
We are still thinking how to execute this. I feel releasing a Nvidia-only demo can be somewhat damaging for us, but we also do not want to stretch it for too long.
We are also toying with the idea of making a sandbox style game, using the indie model - releasing early in alpha state for a reduced price that slowly rises as the game nears completion. This could be working as many people want such an open sandbox environment with the ability to explore and mod the world, with possible simulator plugins and so on. But there are still some open matters that could alter our course so we aren't going to decide these things now. We are mainly collecting the opinions and arguing here at the moment :)
I completely understand not wanting a Nvidia only demo, that would be slightly (significantly) hard for AMD owners.
I agree with the sandbox idea. The community around simming is massive- to make an example, FSX has basically been completely by the community, not the original developers.
However, it can't be too sandboxy. Then the game takes a while to develop, and when bought initially, this can be frustrating. It would be nice to have a fair bit of detail (By fair bit of detail, I'm talking a modelled Earth similar to FSX- main roads and landscape simulated worldwide, along with airports and in your case maybe rail roads). It would be nice to start with weather engines, a few vehicles, realistic landscapes etc.
But, basically the only reason I'd buy this game (? sim is probably more appropriate) is to be able to explore the world in many vehicles with little objective- but it'd be nice to be able to drive/fly through the mountains of North Wales, or other areas (England) that I know. I'm not sure how far you intend to go before releasing an alpha? Is the whole world already modelled? If so, are there any screenshots or videos of anywhere other than the Himalayas?
Also, you say the price increases as it nears completion- 1) what would the predicted price be initially and completed, and 2) if you buy the initial game, will you keep having to pay for later versions as the game progresses in development?
Sorry for being quite pressing in thoughts.
Regards,
Ollie
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All this is in the realm of thoughts currently, so there's no precise idea on many aspects.
But Earth modeled to the level of detail in FSX would require a considerable budget - you don't really expect we could magic the same output as a big Microsoft team, even though procedural techniques ease it a lot.
Although, in theory, what you are saying .. after the virgin Earth (http://www.outerra.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=1797#p1797) is made using the procedural generation and global climate data, we hope to import OSM data for major road/rail networks, along with runways and other stuff.
We don't know what the prices could be yet, but usually it starts at the half of the full price. Of course, early adopters will get all further upgrades for free, that's the point of the model: attract enthusiastic people to participate on funding the development this way. They get a reduced price (as their gain from the investment, basically), but usually there are also other advantages given to them - for example an ability to steer the development (within bounds) or some in-game bonuses, here it varies.
I think a simulator could piggyback on a game designed for wider, general masses. After all, simmers are much more demanding and specialized crowd and I'm not sure if the interest from this side alone would be able to fund the development, given the output will not be so complete as they are used to. So we are also thinking of developing addons in parallel that would appeal more to simmers, bringing a different mode, while still greatly utilizing the environment and engine of the game.
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All this is in the realm of thoughts currently, so there's no precise idea on many aspects.
But Earth modeled to the level of detail in FSX would require a considerable budget - you don't really expect we could magic the same output as a big Microsoft team, even though procedural techniques ease it a lot.
Although, in theory, what you are saying .. after the virgin Earth (http://www.outerra.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=1797#p1797) is made using the procedural generation and global climate data, we hope to import OSM data for major road/rail networks, along with runways and other stuff.
We don't know what the prices could be yet, but usually it starts at the half of the full price. Of course, early adopters will get all further upgrades for free, that's the point of the model: attract enthusiastic people to participate on funding the development this way. They get a reduced price (as their gain from the investment, basically), but usually there are also other advantages given to them - for example an ability to steer the development (within bounds) or some in-game bonuses, here it varies.
I think a simulator could piggyback on a game designed for wider, general masses. After all, simmers are much more demanding and specialized crowd and I'm not sure if the interest from this side alone would be able to fund the development, given the output will not be so complete as they are used to. So we are also thinking of developing addons in parallel that would appeal more to simmers, bringing a different mode, while still greatly utilizing the environment and engine of the game.
Thank you so much- you've cleared up a lot of questions I had.
So, if you have basic roads and runways, the rest of the world will be completed by addons and developments from the community and the developer?
Sorry about being really naive about this :)
Very good idea targeting more markets than simmers- simming is quite a niche, and this engine has so much potential.
Can't wait for the demo even more now.
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I thought Outerra was going to be open-source?
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So, if you have basic roads and runways, the rest of the world will be completed by addons and developments from the community and the developer?
Yep, with the resulting app being an open sandbox, most of the content would come from community or specialized developers.
Nowadays there's a possibility to use a global storage on the web (such as Google apps) for scenery, so that the content can be accessed and replicated globally while not requiring us to build the infrastructure ourselves. This will require an advanced access control so that interests of different groups don't mix up and everyone could create their own world or mod the parts of it that could be then included within a group.
Ultimately, some of the addons could deal with gameplay, bringing entirely new games to be played within those worlds .. now that's quite distant yet :)
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I thought Outerra was going to be open-source?
Where did you get that? As far as I can see we didn't say anything like that, except maybe that should the project be abandoned it will go open. There was a thread about this already, notice this post (http://www.outerra.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=487#p487) from June.
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So, if you have basic roads and runways, the rest of the world will be completed by addons and developments from the community and the developer?
Yep, with the resulting app being an open sandbox, most of the content would come from community or specialized developers.
Nowadays there's a possibility to use a global storage on the web (such as Google apps) for scenery, so that the content can be accessed and replicated globally while not requiring us to build the infrastructure ourselves. This will require an advanced access control so that interests of different groups don't mix up and everyone could create their own world or mod the parts of it that could be then included within a group.
Ultimately, some of the addons could deal with gameplay, bringing entirely new games to be played within those worlds .. now that's quite distant yet :)
This is going to be insane.
And judging by some videos of creating roads, creation will be very easy, certainly more so than FSX. Will it be possible simply to adjust terrain, place buildings, make roads and spawn objects just on the fly in real time? That would be very snazzy- we can each create the bit of the world we want to see (our local airport, town) and just have that there.
However, are there going to be basic autogen sortof trees, landscapes and more importantly cities? Because the landscape would look fairly bland without anything
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Nowadays there's a possibility to use a global storage on the web ...
In other words, a type of cloud storage? I know you're using bittorrent for the land data, but I wanted to make sure I didn't misinterpret this bit of information ;). I'm seeing some unique possibilities with this, if I understand it properly. If so, yours would be the first engine to really take advantage of clouding.
I'm also seeing a kind of Tad William's "Otherland" novel series, come to life :). If anyone hasn't read it yet, it's about a virtual reality simulation where you can go between different worlds users have created, with very different results. But it's all based on a more-or-less simulated Earth. The main characters within Otherland have a hard time figuring out what is and isn't real.
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However, are there going to be basic autogen sortof trees, landscapes and more importantly cities? Because the landscape would look fairly bland without anything
There is no autogen as you know it, the world is persistent.
Forests and terrain types will be set by global climate data with 500m resolution, basically you should see the world as it could have been looking ten thousand years ago. Not quite, because the climate data are recent. But it shouldn't be considered bland, of course it will not contain artificial human creations at this level. These will come in separate layer.
For cities/towns/villages there could be a generator, but it will use a database of cities together with roads to populate the resulting polygons with buildings of given type.
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In other words, a type of cloud storage? I know you're using bittorrent for the land data, but I wanted to make sure I didn't misinterpret this bit of information ;). I'm seeing some unique possibilities with this, if I understand it properly. If so, yours would be the first engine to really take advantage of clouding.
Yes. The bittorrent is used to exchange large chunks of base data, and the cloud storage would be used for smaller scenery edits, mainly a vector data.
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Sweet! When I first understood cloud storage for what it was, and the fact that it seems to be the wave of the future, I could see a few possibilities with it that would be incredible if utilized properly. 10 years from now, people are going to be saying that the Outerra team made real-life a thing of the past :P
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I must be getting annoying by now... sorry...
Basically, one of the main gripes I have with FSX and why I don't use it as much is the loading time- it takes around 20 minutes to get from PC startup to flying, no joke.
OpenGL is usually a lot faster for me- how quick is the loading of the environment, how long does it take to get playing?
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10 years from now, people are going to be saying that the Outerra team made real-life a thing of the past :P
I really hope not. :(
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It has no relevance to either OpenGL or DirectX, and it cannot be really compared as FSX loads much more data and code, although I would not expect 20 minutes :O
Here it takes just a few seconds to get fully loaded, but it will take a bit longer when everything is implemented. And then you will need to count additional time for addons.
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It has no relevance to either OpenGL or DirectX, and it cannot be really compared as FSX loads much more data and code, although I would not expect 20 minutes :O
Here it takes just a few seconds to get fully loaded, but it will take a bit longer when everything is implemented. And then you will need to count additional time for addons.
*thumbs up*
And that finishes my bouts of questioning, thank you very much! :D
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Got it.. Get Outerra to this point of detail and lets get this party started..
[youtube]UwWLnaME0CI[/youtube]
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Way to be realistic. :P
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That looks incredibly fun, as well as incredibly dangerous... (especially at 3:20!)
I also bet they put in an incredible amount of time training for something like that! :D