Outerra forum
Outerra Engine => Technology => Topic started by: Tfirma on August 20, 2012, 06:09:10 am
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Hello
As the road mapping isn't aligned to a road/poly path (like usually in games) it makes especially the contrasty white marks (lines) always "jaggyfied".
I don't know how you render out the road textures but would it be feasible to have smoothed ("anti aliased") marks? (It's an eyesore until sub texel distance hides them).
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At the moment there's no anti-aliasing on the roads, but it will be added together with more road/marking types; it needs to be done algorithmically.
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OK.
While on the subject.. Much less important but common IRL.
Cracks and wear.
(I'm no programmer and I don't know how marks are created or if separated but if possible..)
An easy way could be to have these just as the other marks in selection.
An advanced way could be a separate wear-modifier-value. (assigned to ready alpha-textures or advanced modifying methods).
If roads also gets a value geometry could be included. (potholes, bigger cracks)
Last related question.. (hard to do + even less important, I totally understand if it's not considered).
The trouble with parallel dotted lines on roads.
Three-lane roads have these long dots (and in Sweden much of the smaller marked twoway (1+1) country roads (some in cities) uses dotted side-lines, ergo parallel).
Games usually depict these parallel marks always synced (easiest way for texture reasons).. but..
when the road curves the marks really does go out of sync. (although sometimes eg in berlin they can be sync adjusted).
It would be nice but also very complicated for such a small effect.
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Cracks and wear.
That's one of the planned features too, with the cracks and holes appearing over time. The wear can be also set manually, the cracks and holes will be created procedurally.
The trouble with parallel dotted lines on roads.
Three-lane roads have these long dots (and in Sweden much of the smaller marked twoway (1+1) country roads (some in cities) uses dotted side-lines, ergo parallel).
Games usually depict these parallel marks always synced (easiest way for texture reasons).. but..
when the road curves the marks really does go out of sync. (although sometimes eg in berlin they can be sync adjusted).
Hmm that's an interesting problem :)
Technically, when the roads are being laid over the terrain, we compute a longitudinal and sidereal coordinate and from this are the textures and markings applied. That means that in a road curve the marking dots would be synced. There's no easy obvious way out of this - there's only the central line length being tracked, whereas this would require there to be multiple ones. Or an additional parameter accumulating the shift of the right side over the left one.
One possibility would be to use the ability to split the road lengthwise in two sides, and have different settings for each half. This is going to be done anyway to support different parameters for road sides. But maybe I just extend the internal format (effectively doubling the space the roads take because of hw alignment rules) to make additional space for these things, in which case there could be also a space for the marking curvature shift.
Hmm.
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The trouble with parallel dotted lines on roads.
Ah well.. it's mostly only noticeable when it's not synced on highway straights, and they often adjust the marks after a curve or after a while.. (sometimes even constant sync-adjusted through the curve, but maybe rarer).
And even if the smaller (Swedish) roads mostly go non-adjusted it's still less noticeable.. because the 2 side lines are further from each other (one on each side), and the marks are only 1 meter long with 2 meter spacing. And at the next curve they might sync again.
So it's quite OK without also. :)
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Well calculating two roads would also make Side markers and indicators like racing curbs or even guardrails follow the road parameters.