Outerra forum

Outerra Engine => Development screen shots and videos => Topic started by: cameni on May 03, 2011, 04:31:37 pm

Title: Banked roads
Post by: cameni on May 03, 2011, 04:31:37 pm
Support for banked roads has been added to the engine. The same mechanism will be also necessary to implement support for superelevation on railroad tracks.

A few screenshots:

(http://www.outerra.com/shots/slant1.jpg) (http://www.outerra.com/shots/slant1.jpg)
(http://www.outerra.com/shots/slant3.jpg) (http://www.outerra.com/shots/slant3.jpg)


Here's also a video showing the creation of artificial banked road with editor and a short drive. There are still some bugs introduced as side effects of banked road support, for example some trees near the road are dislocated and appear in the air.

Banked roads (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zL-2jNdknQ#ws)


Extreme angles are possible too, although they make the road system somewhat unstable with several defects appearing on the road surface, mainly near the center line.

(http://www.outerra.com/shots/slant2.jpg) (http://www.outerra.com/shots/slant2.jpg)
Title: Banked roads
Post by: C. Shawn Smith on May 03, 2011, 04:37:39 pm
Very very nice!  I foresee the Texas Motor Speedway being rebuilt in Outerra: The Game's future :D
Title: Banked roads
Post by: Grind and Click on May 03, 2011, 08:31:43 pm
If Operation Flashpoint came from this-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Zfyrp7zCHE

I cant wait to see what this engine with all the textures and everything fully finished looks like.
Title: Banked roads
Post by: Wass on May 03, 2011, 08:38:40 pm
what about automatic generating a mound for compensate height difference?
Title: Banked roads
Post by: cameni on May 04, 2011, 01:22:21 am
Quote from: Wass
what about automatic generating a mound for compensate height difference?
That's what it does, it will dig you a trench or heap a mound before placing the road, or both if it's on slope.

Edit: this bug (http://www.outerra.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=72) actually demonstrates it nicely :)
Title: Banked roads
Post by: ZeosPantera on May 04, 2011, 01:42:26 am
Wow. So close to perfect. Most maps with nice twisty roads have 3d tree's and someone spending hours pouring detail over it and this is still nicer.

Thank god that tatra has a ricer spoiler to add downforce! Just a suggestion it may be time to create another test vehicle. Something more sporty.
Title: Banked roads
Post by: C. Shawn Smith on May 04, 2011, 01:52:09 am
An Aston Martin, maybe, or a Lambourghini Countache :D
Title: Banked roads
Post by: ZeosPantera on May 04, 2011, 01:54:38 am
Quote from: cshawnsmith
An Aston Martin, maybe, or a Lambourghini Countache :D

Eh, V8 Supercars is more like it.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpEp3janpEU[/video]
Title: Banked roads
Post by: cameni on May 04, 2011, 03:31:59 am
Well, we could test model importer and vehicle configuration on another vehicle or two, it you've got something that you want to see there and it's legally ok for us to use it, just point us the right direction. We'll have to prepare the app for modding anyway, so we might as well start testing it now.

Quote from: ZeosPantera
Thank god that tatra has a ricer spoiler to add downforce!
Its center of gravity is way too low :)
Title: Banked roads
Post by: Jak_o_Shadows on May 04, 2011, 03:50:26 am
+1 to V8.

Great work, quick question. How easy is it to do proper line markings? I've seen line markings change 3 times in 200 metres on certain roads  (mostly due to sharp corners where it's unsafe to overtake) and it would be nice to do proper line markings. It has to be easier than drawing new roads each time, maybe painting over segments of roads?
Title: Banked roads
Post by: cameni on May 04, 2011, 04:01:34 am
Markings are configurable per road node; if you watch the video in 720p and pause it when the editor window is visible, you'll notice there's a combo box for selecting markings that are to be used for the following road segment, up to the next way point. In fact all of the parameters you can see there can be changed per road node, without the need to terminate and start another road type.
Title: Banked roads
Post by: Chris M on May 04, 2011, 04:21:03 am
The car should be an BMW X6 M (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/BMW_X6_M) - that's fast enough (> 250 km/h), accelerates like hell (0 - 100 km/h in 4.7 sec) and has a 4WD :)

How do you calculate the curvature of the road? Just splines or a combination of real straights, clothoids (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Euler_spiral) and circle segments as real roads do?
Title: Banked roads
Post by: cameni on May 04, 2011, 04:44:21 am
Quote from: Chris M
How do you calculate the curvature of the road? Just splines or a combination of real straights, clothoids (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Euler_spiral) and circle segments as real roads do?

We are using cubic splines with optional control of tangents at the way points.
Title: Banked roads
Post by: AKNightHawk on May 04, 2011, 08:29:19 am
Pretty awesome indeed.. Great job :)
Title: Banked roads
Post by: OGREMAN on May 04, 2011, 03:00:48 pm
That is so cool, so much flexibility and ease of construction... I be there are countless game designers out there green with envy.
Title: Banked roads
Post by: ZeosPantera on May 04, 2011, 03:57:08 pm
A suggestion I will make is have an option to have the camera jump to the node you are editing while looking down the road and also add a next-previous node button so you could just scoot down the road making the adjustments instead of chasing it manually. Also can you adjust how often a node is placed? is it the transitional option?

also hotkeys for adjustments and node jumping would be faster then using the mouse to select.
Title: Banked roads
Post by: cameni on May 04, 2011, 04:12:13 pm
The editor will be reworked, that there is just the first basic version.
Jumping to the edited node, that's a good idea. It could preserve the distance and orientation wrt the edited node the same as the one used at the previous one, it would be annoying if it always reset you to a top down view when you are adjusting the slant, for example.

There's a maximum allowed distance between nodes, if you jump too far it will add additional nodes in between. The transitional distance tells the width of area that is used to blend between road sides and the original terrain. Larger values make the corridor wider and the side slopes less steep.
Title: Banked roads
Post by: razgriz 53992 on May 08, 2011, 05:32:14 am
Quote from: ZeosPantera
A suggestion I will make is have an option to have the camera jump to the node you are editing while looking down the road and also add a next-previous node button so you could just scoot down the road making the adjustments instead of chasing it manually. Also can you adjust how often a node is placed? is it the transitional option?

also hotkeys for adjustments and node jumping would be faster then using the mouse to select.

With regards to making road placement quicker, what would be cool is if you could select a start and end point for the road and the road is automatically created using the path of least resistant, like IRL, so it curves round hill and mountains. I think having to place and track every node would take a while to build full roads.
Title: Banked roads
Post by: Chris M on May 08, 2011, 06:23:08 am
That would be a very hard task to do automatically, as you'd have a few contradicting optimisation targets:
[list=*]
Basically you'd have to create an algorithm that does exactly all the planning that a real road designer has to do...

What I could imaging would be an interactive tool that helps by automatically suggesting an trivial route and where you can interactively refine that route, e.g. by manually telling to to avoid areas, to create serpentines, to build a bride, tunnel, sunken lane, ...
Title: Banked roads
Post by: cameni on May 08, 2011, 06:36:28 am
Or he could hire another player who specializes in road planning :)

Yes, it would be a hard task to do automatically, but maybe there will be someone who'd write a script for that purpose. It won't be trivial because of the complexity Chris mentioned.
But I think many people will enjoy designing the roads by themselves.
Title: Banked roads
Post by: razgriz 53992 on May 08, 2011, 08:05:54 am
Quote from: cameni
But I think many people will enjoy designing the roads by themselves.

I for one certainly will, I'll be building full on road systems, towns and airports.

Outerra has always given me a vision of finding a remote little island, building a town/airport/road network round it and it'll be MYYYY island :D
Title: Banked roads
Post by: Jagerbomber on May 08, 2011, 01:18:32 pm
I know I would.  :D
Title: Banked roads
Post by: ZeosPantera on May 08, 2011, 03:17:45 pm
the question is what happens when you set a node then set one 10 miles away or 100 miles away or on the other side of the globe?
Title: Banked roads
Post by: AKNightHawk on May 08, 2011, 07:40:06 pm
Quote from: grabacr 31770
Quote from: cameni
But I think many people will enjoy designing the roads by themselves.

I for one certainly will, I'll be building full on road systems, towns and airports.

Outerra has always given me a vision of finding a remote little island, building a town/airport/road network round it and it'll be MYYYY island :D
Until I come to your island with a full army of mechs and take it from you :D lol
I made a pic about it lmao..

(http://www.assaultknights.net/AssaultKnights/NightHawk/Funpics/AKFunny1.jpg)
Title: Banked roads
Post by: razgriz 53992 on May 09, 2011, 02:10:36 pm
Quote from: ZeosPantera
the question is what happens when you set a node then set one 10 miles away or 100 miles away or on the other side of the globe?

The bridge'll be bloody huge :D

You could race across the atlantic... on a pushbike?
Title: Banked roads
Post by: ScorpyX on May 20, 2011, 12:19:53 am
I think the auto focus or hotkey focus (camera) will be very useful for
working with individual cells of the road..

and hotkeys for jumping to the next and previous road-cell