Outerra forum
Outerra Engine => Development screen shots and videos => Topic started by: cameni on August 02, 2012, 12:42:43 pm
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Enhanced grass shadowing algorithm is capable of shadowing segments of blades separately, contrary to the previous one (http://www.outerra.com/forum/index.php?topic=1183.0) that was shadowing the whole blades - in fact, it was shadowing whole tufts. It was a bit faster, but the difference in quality is quite noticeable. The new algorithm also fixes leaking of lights and shadows around objects.
Now you can see that just tops or bottoms of the blades are shadowed/lighted, which is neat.
(http://i.minus.com/jb1Ay9WqMVjCU9.jpg) (http://minus.com/lb1Ay9WqMVjCU9)
(http://i.minus.com/jYpE4XOLYfCX4.jpg) (http://minus.com/lYpE4XOLYfCX4)
(http://i.minus.com/jETwYiUsiEJet.jpg) (http://minus.com/lETwYiUsiEJet)
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This looks really impressive. You're going into a lot of detail with this grass and I was wondering just how far you're planning to go. You mentioned earlier that you have based the grass movement on the ocean pattern and that you would look at this again at a later date. Are you planning to incorporate wind into the equation, so at times we will see still grass and others it will be blowing strongly?
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Definitely, once there's a wind system seeded from some global wind map and then procedurally refined, it will be used to drive the grass animation as well.
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Very impressive, really great algorithm! now we need rivers, waterfalls, rain, snow, deserts, sandstorms etc... :)
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I am assuming that all this grass shadowing stuff will be easily modified to the 3d trees when they are ready. I was studying the real world and the amount of light a thick canopy blocks from the sun is crazy. I hope you guys can make it look authentic!
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I can't wait to move through the environment at night with a dynamic light source... and weather... TBH I just can't wait for all the improvements, period. :D
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Well, now we wait for bushes and trees to have the same thing.
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Looks great!
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Looks awsome, but also pretty dam*ed demanding CPU/GPU-vice :D
Keep up the good work!
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Looks awsome, but also pretty dam*ed demanding CPU/GPU-vice :D
Keep up the good work!
Actually Outerra is almost fully GPU dependent. I can encode video and run outerra at 40fps 1920x1200@85hz
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HI
You can make self-shadowing of grass and increase range of drawing?
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Probably will be implemented later as a higher-quality option.
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Looks good! 8)
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Please can you increase the distance of the grass from 50 meters to 100 meters? The reason I ask this is when at ground level walking around hilly areas, the illusion of vast fields of grass is broken whenever you come to a ridge that is more than 50 meters away. you would expect a rough edge to the ridge due to the long grass. This is also noticeable when you move from ground level up to the sky, especially if you are using the highest resolution.
My second reason is always a bugbear of mine and it relates to future proofing, or ensuring the in a couple of years time, your engine is still looking really good. I believe you should always provide graphics settings beyond what the current generation can handle and we well know that next year those computers can handle whatever you throw at them. the cry-engine is a good example of this, where people actually go out and buy new computers to run the engine at the highest possible setting, even modifying various elements of the engine to improve it further.
My third reason is screenshots. how great would it be to set up your shot then push the graphics and setting to their limit so you then have a perfect shot to use as a wall paper etc. It's almost as if you were rendering a scene in a 3d program. Again I wish games makers - rockstar in particular could have done this. I would have loved to see what a render of a scene from red dead redemption would have looked like with shadows and objects visible into the far distance. Surely if you refreshed these games for future consoles with this ability they would still look stunning?
separately, could you implement custom settings for terrain/graphics settings which could take them e.g. levels 1 to infinity for those who wish to play about with these settings further?
So there's my reasons for wanting a change and I would be interested in your response
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Some of the limitations are architectural, and as much as we would like it to be future-proof, some things will always be a compromise that had to be taken in order to be able to run it on the current hardware. In other words, it's not quite possible to make it completely scalable into the future, when you have to implement some optimizations that make it run on the current hardware, but also place some constraints on the tech.
However, even with the current implementation, the grass has a potential to cover larger areas than it does now. The distance limit should actually depend on the terrain quality and FOV setting, not to be a fixed distance.
50m is for 480p quality due to the fact that the terrain level to which the grass rendering is coupled covers slightly above 50m distance with default FOV. However, with twice as much the quality it should be able to go farther (but not twice as far because of the perspective though). At the moment the grass is cut after 50m regardless of the quality setting, which is wrong and will be fixed. The distance will then depend on the terrain quality setting, which I think can go further than 1080p even now but you have to manually edit the world.cfg. However, at the moment the settings don't adjust properly when you change the quality and even 1080p is problematic and needs additional tweaking of terrain cache size.
Once fixed, it should allow you to extend it all much further, provided you have enough GPU memory available.
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Great news, I shall look forward to the update and will take a look at the world.cfg file. Of course there is only so far you can extend the grass until the distance where a blade equals 1 pixel. There is no point extending beyond this.
I was very impressed with the work you have done with shadows, whereas in other engines, shadow quality or shadows themselves are quick to disappear after a certain distance. Keep up the good work!
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Of course there is only so far you can extend the grass until the distance where a blade equals 1 pixel. There is no point extending beyond this.
The concern I voice a while back was how "zooming" would be handled. Binoculars or rifle scopes looking at a hill a few hundred yards away would be bare terrain unless some special care was taken to render the grass all the way through the super narrow FOV for hundreds of feet. Like imagine a car parked on a hill in the grass. From far away you would be able to tell the grass wasn't there covering the bottom half of the tires.
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Really nice improvement! Looks awesome!
Marko
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FPS actions in a whole-world sim will be problematic. FPS engines provide the telescopic detail levels, but a world engine would need special rendering exceptions for what you describe, Zeos. Could it be done? Heck, anything seems possible these days. But in terms of more global thinking, is that a feature that would be a high priority? Sure would add to the immersion when the product is much further along on its timeline. I love the ideas that come along in this forum. Sure wish I had the code skills to at least offer some sort of help. Massive project!!
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It will probably come with an on/off switch ... but as long as I am concerned, people should have super computers to be worthy of this game. I have like just a dual core of 2.9GHz , a video card of 1GB memory of 128bit, and just 6GB ram.. and I feel not worthy :).But in a 2-3 years period, everyone will have better.So it does not really matter when complaining about things like this :D.In the contrary... I would like to see more, since when I've or others started denying progress? :P