Outerra forum

Outerra Engine => Ideas & Suggestions & Questions => Topic started by: HiFlyer on March 08, 2014, 01:06:03 pm

Title: A possibility......
Post by: HiFlyer on March 08, 2014, 01:06:03 pm
Right now it seems the developers are busy on the Biomes, but it seems to me that making whole world changes is going to be a pretty time consuming task.

I was wondering if besides the Anteworld itself, the developers ever considered making a small "product showcase" area, such as either an imaginary or real place with limited dimensions like an island where they could really go to town and try their latest tech while having users contribute by making their own towns, adding roads and infrastructure etc....

Someplace to preview the "best of the best" of Outerra. And the user that makes the best use of the resources and adds the most, gets his level used as the "Base" level for the next additions.

Aerosoft (a flightsim developer) did this with a project they called Andra's Field, and X-plane does something similar (in a sort of half-hearted way) with their Seattle area.

There are obviously things needing to be fleshed out to make it work, but it could be quite an interesting and creative project.

Just something to consider
Title: Re: A possibility......
Post by: John514 on March 08, 2014, 01:25:49 pm
That is actually a really good idea. Lets see what Cameni thinks.
Title: Re: A possibility......
Post by: HiFlyer on March 08, 2014, 02:27:57 pm
That is actually a really good idea. Lets see what Cameni thinks.

I remember them saying they wanted to try an area with a higher density mesh and other things; and it seemed an island (or other limited area) would be a good place to experiment and showcase stuff, as well have themselves and users populate the area with extensive buildings, roads, etc to show what could be done.

If a user creates a model for the area (like a bridge or dam or whatever) the model gets contributed to the basic Outerra models to be used by everyone else, and for inclusion (if its good enough and there are no copyright issues) in the final game tools.
Title: Re: A possibility......
Post by: soulunite on March 09, 2014, 04:56:35 am
Nice thinking HiFlyer! I would love for this to happen
Title: Re: A possibility......
Post by: christibbs on March 09, 2014, 05:30:04 am
I think that is a great idea. I'd like to see a whole town built (with interiors if possible). One of my biggest concerns for Outerra is how it handles large amounts of detailed models.
Title: Re: A possibility......
Post by: John514 on March 09, 2014, 05:59:42 am
I think that is a great idea. I'd like to see a whole town built (with interiors if possible). One of my biggest concerns for Outerra is how it handles large amounts of detailed models.

Well, someone imported the whole city of Paris as one model. Outerra was doing just fine!
Title: Re: A possibility......
Post by: cameni on March 09, 2014, 05:59:57 am
I think something along those lines will appear in near future, especially since our new guys are primarily going to work on the scenery and import tools. Imports will be global, but the scenery tools will be most likely tested on a smaller scale region.
Title: Re: A possibility......
Post by: PytonPago on March 09, 2014, 06:38:34 am
Good plans/news, looking forward for this ! Also, will there be some way or option to synchronize such "tweaked" areas whyte aether the server (just a on/off synch option maybe) or other peoples work when the multilayer mode comes later ? Would be handy for works like the ME-Dem guys have when serious city-building starts or for aviation folks to do realism-airport scenery-es (some blending way would be nice too, if two people work at one place together to merge the changes, or just a "online workstation" possibility). Wouldn't be bad to have something like a "scenery-pack" structure in thought for the future, where not just models would be for download, but whole scenery's whyte the handwork elevation data (free or payware base).

P.S.: New guys ! We want all the paparazzi stuff about them. :D
Title: Re: A possibility......
Post by: HiFlyer on March 09, 2014, 05:59:57 pm
Coolness!

Of course, the idea is the easy part. Now lets see how practical it is to implement!
Title: Re: A possibility......
Post by: foxfiles on March 10, 2014, 07:07:25 am
Well, someone imported the whole city of Paris as one model. Outerra was doing just fine!

any link to the related post?
because I doubt a lot about the quality of this model????
I know about a very large Paris 3D model, with textures, taken from an airborne photometry mission, but it is not something one can get freely or test anywhere...
Also I wonder about a "static model" of a full city in real time...
Title: Re: A possibility......
Post by: PytonPago on March 10, 2014, 07:37:06 am
any link to the related post?
because I doubt a lot about the quality of this model????
I know about a very large Paris 3D model, with textures, taken from an airborne photometry mission, but it is not something one can get freely or test anywhere...
Also I wonder about a "static model" of a full city in real time...

... i think he mistook the post of the few elevated streets posted some + year ago - just two small blocks of low buildings actually.
Title: Re: A possibility......
Post by: HiFlyer on March 10, 2014, 09:35:00 am
any link to the related post?
because I doubt a lot about the quality of this model????
I know about a very large Paris 3D model, with textures, taken from an airborne photometry mission, but it is not something one can get freely or test anywhere...
Also I wonder about a "static model" of a full city in real time...

... i think he mistook the post of the few elevated streets posted some + year ago - just two small blocks of low buildings actually.

This is one of the burning questions, though. On many flight sim sites, there remains a stubborn perception that engines like Outerra simply cannot handle large areas of civilization the size of a city.

There is also the perception that complex avionics systems etc would drag Outerra to a standstill. There is a response akin to exasperation at the frequent mention of Outerra as a possible sim, and Outerra has (to date) shown little, at least publicly that puts these persistent doubts to rest.

It was also as a partial answer to that skepticism that I suggested this, as a concrete demonstration of capability would challenge critics (if they are indeed wrong) as well as give an undeniable proof of concept that might go a long way in encouraging fence sitters to take a serious interest.
Title: Re: A possibility......
Post by: PytonPago on March 10, 2014, 10:37:20 am
No need o worry about avionics - its still one of main aims to be a Sim-engine. As for large rural  and city areas - its all on the well planed LOD-models of them, maybe even in combination whyte procedural city generation on non-city-characteristic structures and landmarks surroundings. I would not get much headache from such ... Cameny and his friends surely have already lots in minds for handling these pity problems.  ;)
Title: Re: A possibility......
Post by: John514 on March 10, 2014, 11:52:50 am
Well, someone imported the whole city of Paris as one model. Outerra was doing just fine!

any link to the related post?
because I doubt a lot about the quality of this model????
I know about a very large Paris 3D model, with textures, taken from an airborne photometry mission, but it is not something one can get freely or test anywhere...
Also I wonder about a "static model" of a full city in real time...

Hmm. My mistake. Here it is. Read for yourself: http://forum.outerra.com/index.php?topic=2022.msg21732#msg21732 (http://forum.outerra.com/index.php?topic=2022.msg21732#msg21732)
Title: Re: A possibility......
Post by: foxfiles on March 11, 2014, 06:19:54 am
Hmm. My mistake. Here it is. Read for yourself: http://forum.outerra.com/index.php?topic=2022.msg21732#msg21732 (http://forum.outerra.com/index.php?topic=2022.msg21732#msg21732)

Ah yes thanks for the link, now I remember having seen this, but the model is of a very low & "bad" quality...

One can surely manage good LOD properties on very large models, using tools like simplygon.com
but for a complete city, I wonder, because if we want to have a convincing representation of such a city, close to the real place, at low altitudes or at ground level, then it means a lot of facets and pixels.

Today it's easy to find this kind of accurate representations of large urban areas, the trick is to extract vector datas from these huge models for procedural usage (generation of roofs, facades, roads,  poles, etc).

By the way there is a lot of research on this : of course it is feasible by hand (but so time consuming) so if it would be automatic, with smart recognition + extraction, it would solve the issue.
Title: Re: A possibility......
Post by: foxfiles on March 11, 2014, 06:45:18 am
few images taken from a 3D model of Paris (it was not done in OT...),

1rst picture, seen at an altitude of 2314 meters,
(http://www.cadasys.com/files/3d-city-paris-2314meters-alt.jpg)

then, same area, but at 666m, you can see that the plausibility is starting to be lower
(http://www.cadasys.com/files/3d-city-paris-666meters-alt.jpg)

then the same at 666m in textures + wireframe, only to show that it's a 3D model...
(http://www.cadasys.com/files/3d-city-paris-wireframe-666.jpg)
Title: Re: A possibility......
Post by: HiFlyer on March 11, 2014, 07:49:42 am
I would be doubtful of any current engine, including Outerra, being able to handle that at acceptable frame rates.
Title: Re: A possibility......
Post by: foxfiles on March 11, 2014, 09:20:51 am
I would be doubtful of any current engine, including Outerra, being able to handle that at acceptable frame rates.

I don't know  :P

however for making the above screen shots I used a pretty old win xp 32 bits workstation, with 6 Go RAM, old disks, with one GTX 660 : so it is not a so powerful machine ...
and I am amazed by how my setup can easily manipulate (rotate, zoom in and out) this 6 km² model with decent performances :o
The time will come when we will be able to fly "over" such data sets with high count Fps.

 
Title: Re: A possibility......
Post by: HiFlyer on March 11, 2014, 10:53:22 am
I would be doubtful of any current engine, including Outerra, being able to handle that at acceptable frame rates.

I don't know  :P

however for making the above screen shots I used a pretty old win xp 32 bits workstation, with 6 Go RAM, old disks, with one GTX 660 : so it is not a so powerful machine ...
and I am amazed by how my setup can easily manipulate (rotate, zoom in and out) this 6 km² model with decent performances :o
The time will come when we will be able to fly "over" such data sets with high count Fps.

Maybe with more efficient models. Those shown above look like a nightmare of unnecessary polygons.........

I don't think a game designer would ever do things that way.

There was a topic on a Simulator forum where one of the mods was showing how a careful use of polygons could get almost the exact same result for much less overhead, and how important it was nowadays to hire experienced game designers to make the most of what was available without being wasteful.

(http://imageshack.com/a/img842/4011/2slf.jpg)
Title: Re: A possibility......
Post by: foxfiles on March 11, 2014, 11:24:32 am
This model has not been designed by a person, it comes from aerial photos, it's Paris in real and it was not obtained for gaming... but for urban planning, situation awareness, professional utilizations. Of course it can be improved and optimized, like using decimation or other retouch processes. One can even re-construct new polygons on it but does it make sense to spend a lot of time in re-designing ? and it would take months....
Title: Re: A possibility......
Post by: bugsblake on March 11, 2014, 11:47:23 am
hay there! do you have that 3D model of Paris? id be up for the challenge to get something like that in outerra! my system is top end so no worries there! and i have got a large model town (ment to be paris, but not really) in outerra already some time ago! its in the static models thread for download! id like to have a go with that model you show above, if you have it? its got a hell of a lot more polys and will prob need to be split many times but i think my rig has more then enough power to try something like this! it handels millions of polys like its nothing! im yet to find any program that can really stress this pc! :P
Title: Re: A possibility......
Post by: foxfiles on March 11, 2014, 12:06:33 pm
hay there! do you have that 3D model of Paris?

Unfortunately neither I can make this model downloadable nor I can disclose about this stuff/technology because we are in a professional context...I regret
Title: Re: A possibility......
Post by: M7 on March 11, 2014, 04:41:16 pm
Looks like the same technology as google earth or ios map
Title: Re: A possibility......
Post by: HiFlyer on March 12, 2014, 06:40:28 pm
Looks like the same technology as google earth or ios map

There was another engine once called Viewterra (They call themselves VWorld now) that had similar goals as Outerra, but now they are very much into the Google earth/Ios map market.

I guess the lesson is that you can never tell where things will go!  ;D

Back on topic, I took the low quality Paris model posted in another thread here and replicated it over a very wide area (multiple iterations) then flew over it. Things went fine until I went in at a low altitude, whereupon it became stutter-city. I suspect that result had much more to do with the inefficiency of the model than it did with Outerra, though.

We will need much more optimized models to make something like this work and really show what the engine can do.
Title: Re: A possibility......
Post by: foxfiles on March 13, 2014, 06:00:49 am
 ;) I had a meeting with viewterra's interesting people years ago, but, as long as I know, they do not target gaming... they come from the gaming industry, but they seem(ed) to work on more specific applications, for military purposes.
Back to the kind of city models above (Paris), I believe that the good route would be to try and use such models in soft like sympligon to see what it gives in optim / LOD creation.
A smarter route, but more time consuming, would be to import them in a strong 3D tool and extract/export vector informations that could be used for procedural generation...
I am quite sure that Cameni+Angrypig have a clear view about what is possible and what is not.
Title: Re: A possibility......
Post by: foxfiles on March 13, 2014, 06:27:22 am
I suspect that result had much more to do with the inefficiency of the model than it did with Outerra, though.

@ HiFlyer : it maybe related to your hardware configuration too ? please can you tell more about your CPU/GPU ?
Title: Re: A possibility......
Post by: HiFlyer on March 13, 2014, 10:10:19 am
I suspect that result had much more to do with the inefficiency of the model than it did with Outerra, though.

@ HiFlyer : it maybe related to your hardware configuration too ? please can you tell more about your CPU/GPU ?

i7 920 @ 4ghz \ Corsair H80 Cpu Cooler \ Asus P6T Deluxe\Sound Blaster Recon3D Fatal1ty
Nvidia 770GTX \ 6 Gigs Corsair Ram 7-7-7-20 1N \ Windows7 Ultimate 64Bit

By the way ViewTerra was eventually used in a large scale MMO by the name of Dark And Light

The game had many problems, and eventually ended in a nasty lawsuit. For the unaware, Viewterra was much farther along with some things such as biomes, lighting, clouds, weather and etc, but it was much slower and the graphics were not nearly as clear and polished as Outerra.

Still, there are videos of the game-play out there, and it kind of gives you an idea of how an Outerra-based RPG might work. Just imagine much better graphics.  ;D

(I still have Viewterra on my computer and mess with it from time to time as the world download still works)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_and_Light (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_and_Light)

(http://imageshack.com/a/img856/1390/u6pc.jpg)
Title: Re: A possibility......
Post by: PytonPago on March 13, 2014, 10:32:10 am
"" On 27 April 2007 VWORLD, LLC brought a lawsuit against NPCube and Farlan Entertainment for "software counterfeit, non-respect of the right to credit and paternity, unfair competition and parasitism." In September 2007, NPCube responded by suing VWORLD, on the grounds "of unfair competition and damage to NPCube's reputation", additionally claiming that instead of VWorldTerrain technology, they were using a technology called SCAPER, developed in-house by NPCube, and demanding €710,000 in damages.

NPCube's lawsuit against VWORLD was dismissed on 13 March 2008. Additionally, NPCube was found to be using VWorldTerrain technology, not SCAPER, and was liable for €50,000 in damages to VWORLD. ""


 ... wow, seems like a hefty way of ending.
Title: Re: A possibility......
Post by: foxfiles on March 13, 2014, 11:07:41 am
@HiFlyer : nice config that yours, so if you have performance issues? I am not native so by stutter-city you mean it was "flickering" ??

@PytonPago : yes you're right, bad stuff there, between small companies; if I remember well, NPcube was like a branch office of Vworld, or something like that... and the 2 bosses were friends at the beginning, not so much after...
Title: Re: A possibility......
Post by: HiFlyer on March 13, 2014, 11:21:35 am
@HiFlyer : nice config that yours, so if you have performance issues? I am not native so by stutter-city you mean it was "flickering" ??

@PytonPago : yes you're right, bad stuff there, between small companies; if I remember well, NPcube was like a branch office of Vworld, or something like that... and the 2 bosses were friends at the beginning, not so much after...

No, Outerra is very very smooth, and even when I pasted the city across the landscape until there were over a dozen instances very close together it was fine. It was only when I flew very low over the city(s) that the framerate changed and things began to jerk and stutter a bit until I flew higher again.

By the way, Outerra lists my system running the program at about 280 FPS
Title: Re: A possibility......
Post by: John514 on March 31, 2014, 02:18:20 pm
Back on topic here, I think this should be our technology showcase room:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKG2qH8778U (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKG2qH8778U)
Title: Re: A possibility......
Post by: HiFlyer on March 31, 2014, 05:20:40 pm
Back on topic here, I think this should be our technology showcase room:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKG2qH8778U (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKG2qH8778U)

Or maybe St Maarten? Airports, infrastructure, boats, mountains.......

http://youtu.be/SCIJ0F62og4 (http://youtu.be/SCIJ0F62og4)

Keep em' coming!!