Outerra forum
Outerra Engine => Ideas & Suggestions & Questions => Topic started by: xiong on June 29, 2012, 09:10:07 pm
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anyways, did not read every post on this thread.
but was wondering if instead of worrying about matching from the top view down, can this engine just provide a flat globe to the user and the user can add whatever lanform, trees, buildings, oceans, lakes, rivers, people, planes and whatever the user want on his planet/world?
that thoughts would be to re-create earth from its core up, instead of creating it from the space/mothership down.
such as starting from
(http://universe-review.ca/I09-03-Earth.jpg)
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I have split this post from the original thread, no need to append it everywhere :)
The engine works with elevation data that need to be mapped and compressed in a special way that's advantageous for rendering and level of detail management. These data are taken from satellite elevation scans. Forming a planet anew would require a whole new set of tools, and it wouldn't be able to match the current output easily.
Nevertheless, a planet creator is in the plan too, so that people can create artificial planets, see the ME-DEM (http://www.me-dem.me.uk/) project. It will take some time though, the priority is Earth as it has many more uses, including your model railways - you can base them off a real terrain.
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such as starting from
(http://universe-review.ca/I09-03-Earth.jpg)
Its a jawbreaker :P ::)
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Its a jawbreaker :P ::)
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is it too much to ask for?
you can zoom in and zoom out into the planet
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i definitely would like to build my own planets, and solar system with them :)
when will i be able to do that with this software?
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would be awesome to add this engine/game to simcity, simcountry, civilization, etc....it would be the better game
make it multiplayers worldwide :)
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i'm slow, so i cannot seem to get this game.
i can't zoom or know where i am when i'm on the planet.
i think there is a ned to make this game easier to play.
wish it was like google....
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Um... Try pressing G.
Also, do you realize how early this is in development?
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Um... Try pressing G.
Also, do you realize how early this is in development?
thanks, not much help
is there a timeline on this software to come out?
waiting to create Earth from the bottom up, then the solar system, the milky way galaxy, on to the whole universe :)
(http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/universe.gif)
billions of light years of the observable part :)
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Oh God, I didn't know you were here :)
Seriously, as I wrote above (http://www.outerra.com/forum/index.php?topic=1131.msg12997#msg12997), this software and specifically Anteworld isn't designed to create planets, much less from "bottom up", whatever you are imagining behind it. Anteworld is purely about the Earth, the exploration, re-building the civilization etc. A planet creator will require a different set of tools, functionality, design.
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Oh God, I didn't know you were here :)
Seriously, as I wrote above (http://www.outerra.com/forum/index.php?topic=1131.msg12997#msg12997), this software and specifically Anteworld isn't designed to create planets, much less from "bottom up", whatever you are imagining behind it. Anteworld is purely about the Earth, the exploration, re-building the civilization etc. A planet creator will require a different set of tools, functionality, design.
i was hoping that your engine could be reverse as well so planet creation could be in the pipeline.
anyways, i already paid the $15 but seem like i can't do anything with the program. is there any documentation on how to use the program?
i mean i just want to start off by say load up a country such as america, australia, china, laos, and so on and start build my own stuffs on it. so how do i go about doing that?
if this program is to be a sandbox, i surely like to start designing my own vehicles, airplanes, buildings, and so on for my project.
thanks
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The best thing would be to watch a couple of videos that people are making on youtube, like this (http://youtu.be/pA7s6oyl3vo), to see what you can do. Also, it's firstly meant to be a game (as described on the initial screen) with specific gameplay, plus a sandbox mode, it didn't promise to have all kinds of functionality people can come up with as that would not be possible to make in our life time.
At the moment it's in alpha stage, at the moment you can build roads and place a few stock buildings there, an importer will be coming soon. You seem to have a problem with controls, trying to control it like Google Earth, but it's more like a first person game.
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The best thing would be to watch a couple of videos that people are making on youtube, like this (http://youtu.be/pA7s6oyl3vo), to see what you can do. Also, it's firstly meant to be a game (as described on the initial screen) with specific gameplay, plus a sandbox mode, it didn't promise to have all kinds of functionality people can come up with as that would not be possible to make in our life time.
At the moment it's in alpha stage, at the moment you can build roads and place a few stock buildings there, an importer will be coming soon. You seem to have a problem with controls, trying to control it like Google Earth, but it's more like a first person game.
yes, i do have control issues. when i load it up, i'm in space looking at the stars?
i went to the default location, and as i try to get to where i want to be it is very very slow using the WASD keys. i was hoping that this movements could be programmed into the mouse so i could move around a lot quicker. i just loosing patience with this slowness to go to where i want to go, muc less put in buildings and roads.
is it my computer or the game is slow. my movements are nothing like those in the videos where they can go very fast. just bought this computer brandnew less year to run the engineering program AUTOCAD, so i doubt that it is my computer?
i just want the ability to design my buildings and roads, airplanes, ships, and so on base on my own phototypes.
i'm very slow on this game, is there any documentation out there to help slow learners like me :D
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on planet creation, i'm not sure what is the difficulty in it using this engine.
if this engine can generate the planet's features using survey data, then why would it not be able to generate data that's created by the user in creating a planet. both method relies on data/information that is already there, and as you go over the area the engine just generate the features for you?
with planet creation, my simple thought was to simply designed the center of the planet as coordinates (X, Y, Z) of (0,0,0) and create the features of the planet using these three coordinates. these three coordinates are the three dimensions of our human world anyway. and if down the road, the fourth dimension coordinate of Time (T) could be incooperated into the engine then we can have night and day, base on the planet's rotation around its own axis.
from the planet's on it's own axis, then we can create the month base on the moon going around the planet, then the year as the planet goes around the sun, and so on
i do believe that the map above of the observable universe could be created if this engine does not have a limitation to how large it could be, in its scale of creation.
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would it be nice to have many default locations in the game so you can pick the location and go to where you want to go quicker?
it seems that i can get to the mountains in CA using the defaults, and i would like to go to melbourne australia, but will take very long time to use the WASD keys to get there.
it would be very helpful too if this can be incorporated into google earth so i can pick my location on google earth and the game will get me to that location using the graphics of this engine.
yes, i'm frustrated
any help will be much appreciated.
i just want to start building my own version of australia, china, laos, japan, and so on with this game engine :)
but i need to get there first
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As easily found in the Controls under UFO, you can speed up using the PAGE UP button and slow down using the PAGE DOWN button. As for rapid location change, you can also use the Lat and Lon of your destination and put it into the location tool.
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on planet creation, i'm not sure what is the difficulty in it using this engine.
if this engine can generate the planet's features using survey data, then why would it not be able to generate data that's created by the user in creating a planet. both method relies on data/information that is already there, and as you go over the area the engine just generate the features for you?
These are two different things. The engine only renders a pre-compiled dataset that was made by another tool. The compilation of the dataset takes an hour and it processes 20GB of packed input data. It should be clear that the processing of external dataset and an interactive creation of arbitrary planet with a comparable detail are two very different things. If you would want to create a new planet for Outerra, you would need to create and edit a huge 80GB heightfield dataset. In theory it's possible, but in practice you would find it extremely problematic - no tools would load a datasets that big, even on smaller data it takes them eons to compute stuff (like for a Europe-sized region it takes a week to compute erosion and river flows).
So that's the difficulty.
would it be nice to have many default locations in the game so you can pick the location and go to where you want to go quicker?
F2 or "Locations" menu - load saved locations and save the current location, navigate to any place on earth via latitude and longitude.
PgUp/PgDn - adjusting the base speed so you can go faster, but for rapid changes use the locations
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There is a solution for having underground datasets. That is terrain bedding etc so when terrain is removed/reduced down it shows difference bedding etc until planet core (minecraft?) . The way to do it is reduce the sub elevations (-) resolution significantly. Such as 1000x lower. That would be sufficient for beginners. Detail can be added with algorithms on the fly, so to speak.
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hey xiong i like youre idea just wondering if its possible to put guns in game for wars and stuff or maybe it could be a idea to work on please no nobody give me a hard time its a idea
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say i want to go to the mountain called phou bia in the country of laos at lat/long of 18.983 / 103.15, how do you enter that in? when i enter them it lead me to the stars. should a location has direction as N, E, W, S as shown in google map, and if i included these directionals then it goes to the sky somewhere.
why the entries on this engine don't have directional to enter N 18° 59' 0'' E 103° 9' 0''
so please help me?
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hey xiong i like youre idea just wondering if its possible to put guns in game for wars and stuff or maybe it could be a idea to work on please no nobody give me a hard time its a idea
the awesome thing about this engine is that you get a blank planet earth. the difficult thing about this engine is how do you use the tools given to you to create what you want on planet earth.
i like this very details and to scale engine, it just erks me that moving around is at snail pace for me. every location that i want to go to takes a few minutes to just load up or generate for me. i would have thought that once you sign into the program and it load things up, which already takes about 3 minutes for me, it would load up the whole planet like in google earth. then you just zoom in and zoom out, fly to wherever you want to go on the planet.
this would be a great engine for games and seeing "what if" conditions of real world applications....but looks like a lot of works to be done yet.
as i have said elsewhere, i wish that this program could be use in engineering projects. say by modelling traffic flow, earthquake simulation, simulation weather patterns, etc..
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There is a solution for having underground datasets. That is terrain bedding etc so when terrain is removed/reduced down it shows difference bedding etc until planet core (minecraft?) . The way to do it is reduce the sub elevations (-) resolution significantly. Such as 1000x lower. That would be sufficient for beginners. Detail can be added with algorithms on the fly, so to speak.
i thought that most planets are made up of different layers. the creator would create each layers base on whatever he want. each layer has the (x, y, z) coordinates associated with them. there many games out there that just use tiles or hexagons to create the landforms. a planet creator could do the same using tiles or hexagons, whichever gives the most realistic look of the surface of the planet.
my thoughts on creating a game out of this engine would be the planets be consisted of tiles, hexagons, or cubes...and these will have (x,y,z) dimensions which defines the boundaries of an area/country. so you can say my country/area consists of this to this....no dispute about it :D
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say i want to go to the mountain called phou bia in the country of laos at lat/long of 18.983 / 103.15, how do you enter that in? when i enter them it lead me to the stars. should a location has direction as N, E, W, S as shown in google map, and if i included these directionals then it goes to the sky somewhere.
why the entries on this engine don't have directional to enter N 18° 59' 0'' E 103° 9' 0''
But it has, in F2 you can enter lat/lon. It takes multiple formats, but N/E comes at the end: 18° 59' 0'' N, 103° 9' 0'' E
Also, "leads you to the stars" may mean there's night in there, you may want to adjust the time of day and day of year in the F2 window as well.
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i like this very details and to scale engine, it just erks me that moving around is at snail pace for me. every location that i want to go to takes a few minutes to just load up or generate for me. i would have thought that once you sign into the program and it load things up, which already takes about 3 minutes for me, it would load up the whole planet like in google earth. then you just zoom in and zoom out, fly to wherever you want to go on the planet.
3 minutes? What computer have you got? Can you attach your eng.log?
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say i want to go to the mountain called phou bia in the country of laos at lat/long of 18.983 / 103.15, how do you enter that in? when i enter them it lead me to the stars. should a location has direction as N, E, W, S as shown in google map, and if i included these directionals then it goes to the sky somewhere.
why the entries on this engine don't have directional to enter N 18° 59' 0'' E 103° 9' 0''
But it has, in F2 you can enter lat/lon. It takes multiple formats, but N/E comes at the end: 18° 59' 0'' N, 103° 9' 0'' E
Also, "leads you to the stars" may mean there's night in there, you may want to adjust the time of day and day of year in the F2 window as well.
thank you for that help :)
got me there
wish that was in the documentation/direction.
would work very nicely if the movements were programmed into the mouse instead of the WASD. the trees are much different than memories serve me, and there are no grass up there....this will have to be modified.
awesome though
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3 minutes? What computer have you got? Can you attach your eng.log?
dell desktop run on windows xp pro?
how do i post eng.log?
today it took exactly 1 minute and 53 seconds when i log on. perhaps faster because i was playing with it yesterday?
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You have to find the eng.log in your Outerra data directory (by default on XP in c:\documents and settings\your user name\outerra\eng.log), and then zip it and attach to the post here.