Outerra forum

Outerra Engine => Off Topic => Topic started by: 2eyed on March 13, 2015, 10:55:21 am

Title: Impressive open terrain world creation with UE4
Post by: 2eyed on March 13, 2015, 10:55:21 am
UnrealEngine devs are showing what they did to make a vast and "living" landscape. It's a quite different approach compared to OT and an expensive task, but it's worth to watch.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/clakekAHQx0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Title: Re: Impressive open terrain world creation with UE4
Post by: HiFlyer on March 13, 2015, 11:21:53 am
UnrealEngine devs are showing what they did to make a vast and "living" landscape. It's a quite different approach compared to OT and an expensive task, but it's worth to watch.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/clakekAHQx0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

This sort of thing is why I said (when a timeframe of ten more years of further development was mentioned) that Outerra simply could not coast along indefinitely at a rather leisurely pace, or somebody else faster and with more resources would eventually shoot right past them.

The world won't wait.

Thank goodness the range is only 100 miles for now.

EDIT: Consider it a warning shot across the bow.
Title: Re: Impressive open terrain world creation with UE4
Post by: 2eyed on March 13, 2015, 01:02:35 pm
UnrealEngine devs are showing what they did to make a vast and "living" landscape. It's a quite different approach compared to OT and an expensive task, but it's worth to watch.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/clakekAHQx0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>



Thank goodness the range is only 100 miles for now.


not 100 miles but 100 square miles (10*10). Planetary scale is another dimension.
However, I agree, there is no way the OT Team could compete with companies like Epic.
They have to go a different way.

Title: Re: Impressive open terrain world creation with UE4
Post by: josem75 on March 13, 2015, 01:31:53 pm
This is impressive, but its still artist dependent and by short terrains. The impressive is the real time ability. Because this is not far (if even better) from what Vue can do for example, with long render times.
Also, a key for the results is a great photography-texturing-mesh job.

What outerra is doing for the entire world is also impressive and totally diferent. The interesting here is to catch ideas for improve the details.
Of course we need the small foliage for cover all the world (not only the grass), and rules for use one or another specie in any case (for the foliage can be rules based in material or terrain colour, as they used and explain in the video). And the same for trees species, rocks, Snow, ice..
And here it will depend also in how that job is realized. Colecting textures, doing mesh, adding variety, etc.

In that job i know many of us are able to help (as Kelvin did). So this can be a nice weapon for "fight" against those giants too.

After the result out of the box. We need to count with (future) tools we will have for the artist dependent job too, for cover certain areas "manually". This will mean that the entire comunity can "build" many places, so many parts of the world can be covered.

Title: Re: Impressive open terrain world creation with UE4
Post by: HiFlyer on March 13, 2015, 02:01:20 pm
I'm weird. Actually most impressive to me is that they nailed the colors. (even if they had to take photos to do it)

Outerra is stunning, but the colors have always been a bit odd. (to me)
Title: Re: Impressive open terrain world creation with UE4
Post by: josem75 on March 13, 2015, 03:03:20 pm
I'm weird. Actually most impressive to me is that they nailed the colors. (even if they had to take photos to do it)

Outerra is stunning, but the colors have always been a bit odd. (to me)

Yes. They are using really powerful weapons.  1 M terrain Mesh, terrain texture (i dont know the resolution of the texture, but outerra is using 500m).
So the colors and variety of colors match better with the reality than in outerra.
But still, having all of those advantages (also adding 3d foliage, 3d trees, wind, animals), i think outerra is not even far from how they both look..
Still outerra looks impressive, the images are more clear (less fog if u reduce sccatering). The close up terrain is better (more than 1M with fractals). ETc.

So Outerra just need to add some more things as i said. Foliage, real looking Rocks etc.
But firstly, before add, Outerra need to solve how will build the world. The 30m Mesh will be the great first step. The other should be the world textures.
At the moment using 500m color texture produce a nice results, but not enough for match with the reality. When this main aspect is solved (maybe vectorizing a bigger resolution global color map, lets say 100m), then the result will look similar adding all the foliage details. 
Title: Re: Impressive open terrain world creation with UE4
Post by: HiFlyer on March 13, 2015, 03:05:03 pm
Thats what I've been hoping.
Title: Re: Impressive open terrain world creation with UE4
Post by: PytonPago on March 13, 2015, 03:16:55 pm
Not bad ... most assets are actuall models, witch they somehow combine to not get repetitive patterns. Would be interesting to see in detail how different mountains are build up thanks to them. Who knows if that could be based on real topographic data. But true, 10x10 isnt much for flat landscapes whyte mountains at distance. Its a more artistic, than mathematical approach ...
Title: Re: Impressive open terrain world creation with UE4
Post by: KW71 on March 13, 2015, 10:47:18 pm
It looks fantastic, but we are talking about oranges and apples, or should I say hammers and screwdrivers... Different tools for different works.
Title: Re: Impressive open terrain world creation with UE4
Post by: 2eyed on March 14, 2015, 08:37:23 am
It looks fantastic, but we are talking about oranges and apples, or should I say hammers and screwdrivers... Different tools for different works.
I don't think so. Although they use different tech the goal could be the same: simulate the world from high above down to the grass blades. I hope, these techs will converge. We need both, procedural algorithms and photogrammetry with sophisticated shaders to get a lifelike result.
Title: Re: Impressive open terrain world creation with UE4
Post by: HiFlyer on March 14, 2015, 09:20:49 am
It looks fantastic, but we are talking about oranges and apples, or should I say hammers and screwdrivers... Different tools for different works.

Disagree. You can clearly see sophisticated techniques applicable to large scale worlds like Outerra. Techniques that despite years of development Outerra doesn't appear to have any hope of matching in the short term because they simply don't have the resources. They will likely never ever have even the beginnings of the necessary resources unless something changes in their financial backing (maybe something already has and we just don't know about it) or that long talked about kickstarter finally gets a move on.

Outerra started out early, with a big lead, a great idea and an innovative approach. But history shows that developing the tech and being able to actually effectively take advantage of the tech are not always necessarily the same thing. I repeat: They do not have all the time in the world.

I'm rooting for them, though.

By the way, all this this is just my own gut feeling/instinct. YMMV
Title: Re: Impressive open terrain world creation with UE4
Post by: 2eyed on June 15, 2015, 09:52:17 am
The  tech demo "A Boy and his Kite"  with Unreal Engine 4 is available. We can now compare it to OT.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/unrealengine/marketplace_samples/KiteDemo_Runtime.zip?utm_source=launcher&utm_medium=ue&utm_campaign=uelearn
Title: Re: Impressive open terrain world creation with UE4
Post by: Acetone on June 15, 2015, 12:13:41 pm
The  tech demo "A Boy and his Kite"  with Unreal Engine 4 is available. We can now compare it to OT.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/unrealengine/marketplace_samples/KiteDemo_Runtime.zip?utm_source=launcher&utm_medium=ue&utm_campaign=uelearn

Quote from: styckx
Just revisited the demo.. I'm just not getting it.. I know it's a tech demo.. But tech demos are usually made to impress people.. This tech demo.. Sucks to be honest. I can't even begin to guess why it's so large.. It reminds me of Outerra but more crappy looking.. It's as if FXAA was loaded up with steroids and injected into a tech demo. I could achieve the same look if I loaded up Outerra and smeared Vaseline all over my monitor and cut the draw distance in half.
Here (http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?p=5096026#post5096026)

Made me laugh, I need to test it  :D
Title: Re: Impressive open terrain world creation with UE4
Post by: 2eyed on June 16, 2015, 05:01:59 pm
Give it a try. It's not bad at all. The guy (stycks) is completely wrong.
Title: Re: Impressive open terrain world creation with UE4
Post by: HiFlyer on June 18, 2015, 09:38:06 am
Tried to download several times and get unidentified network error.
Title: Re: Impressive open terrain world creation with UE4
Post by: necro on June 18, 2015, 10:45:04 am
Lol this will never be concurrenting OT. This single 10x10 level looks very nice. But its made by hand, which is no option for planet sized worlds. The graphics are nice, but each single piece is human placed. So this engine had to be compared to crytek or unity.