Outerra forum
User mods, screenshots & videos => Scenery => Topic started by: Acetone on August 29, 2015, 06:17:53 pm
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Hmm... How can I introduce that?
With the release of the new editor, I had something we can call a "binge building session". You need to realize that we can now not only copy and paste buildings, but also clone a selection of buildings and paste it. Most important, the default placement mode in the editor always set buildings to the terrain level, meaning that you can copy and paste a large section of buildings everywhere, and they will always be on the ground.
And of course, I started to test it.
And of course, it went too far...
At some point, my idea was to place buildings in order to see if I can kill my framerate.
Well, I can't.
Depending on your configuration, this scene may be too heavy to keep a smooth framerate, but for those with a decent GPU, you will only experience a lag when the tiles are loaded. I added a few roads and an airport to improve the whole thing, but it's not a real scenery, just a playground.
I thought that some of you may want to have fun with it, and see what Outerra has in the guts:
Download Chaos City (http://www.mediafire.com/download/85o097t9am9i0by/Chaos_city_v1.otx) v1 - 87mb - otx installer
(http://i.imgur.com/u0Rb067.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/btSohrL.jpg)
I need to repeat, the amount of objects here is insane. And if you want to experience it full size, set
min_obj_size to 1.0 in your eng.cfg.
Campos are included, this is close to one of the default scenery location too, by the way.
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Very nice! I figured you would do something like this.
As you said, FPS are barely affected, but as you said, there are noticeable hitches as tiles are loaded. (Reminded me of X-Plane)
I had no problem with maintaining 80FPS with this, and I think that bodes well for the program.
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Infrastructure seems a bit lacking. Would have to travel the last 1/4 mile over dirt to get home.
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And you have a problem with that?
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Infrastructure seems a bit lacking. Would have to travel the last 1/4 mile over dirt to get home.
It's called Chaos City for a reason :P
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Infrastructure seems a bit lacking. Would have to travel the last 1/4 mile over dirt to get home.
It's called Chaos City for a reason :P
So much potential.
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Playing around with this is fun, but the tile loading is nasty. I wonder what can be done?
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Playing around with this is fun, but the tile loading is nasty. I wonder what can be done?
I suspect the problem here is related to how Outerra loads data inside a tile. As you may notice, the game freeze a few frames in this area each time a new tile (with a ton of buildings) is loaded, but otherwise, framerate is good. I think this freeze happens because the engine is set to load the entire buildings data (type/position, stored in hex) as soon as the tile is inside the rendering range for this type of elements.
So I don't think it's a model related problem, but rather a read/write one (but I may be wrong).
The solution (and again, I don't know if it's technically possible) : rather than trying to load every buildings data in a single frame (=freeze in a heavy loaded tile), load object.bix elements during several frames.
If it's possible, it will also have a cool side effect : when tile objects are all loaded in a single frame, you'll notice it more than when these are loaded incrementally :)
BTW, here is what an object.bix file looks like:
(http://i.imgur.com/4D0Npsg.jpg)
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Which is kind of what I was thinking as well, but its also kind of strange. I remember when Levi first arrived with his ripped GTA buildings, I did some experiments where it seemed that his buildings were visible at a nearly infinite distance, and the same applies in the Talkeetna area, where buildings are visible as nearly single pixels at what has to be several tiles away.
Yet in chaos city, it does seem that large gobs of buildings suddenly all appear in one huge burst, and at relatively close range.
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Which is kind of what I was thinking as well, but its also kind of strange. I remember when Levi first arrived with his ripped GTA buildings, I did some experiments where it seemed that his buildings were visible at a nearly infinite distance, and the same applies in the Talkeetna area, where buildings are visible as nearly single pixels at what has to be several tiles away.
Yet in chaos city, it does seem that large gobs of buildings suddenly all appear in one huge burst, and at relatively close range.
As far as I know, objects are rendered depending of their size and of the value set for
min_obj_sizein your eng.cfg (in px).
As long as an object is larger (you can even set subpixel values), it will be rendered but right now these objects are only loaded when you are in some distance of the tile where they are stored.
A good example is the Chapala Lake mesh. If you load it, you can go up to space and you will still be able to see it. However, take a look at the lake in the LFNA scenery : it will appear only if you're starting to be close of the origin point.
Thing is, this scenery was made without any performance logic, and the surprise is too see that there is a framerate impact, but absolutely not where I expected it to be ┐(°ヮ°)┌
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Which is kind of what I was thinking as well, but its also kind of strange. I remember when Levi first arrived with his ripped GTA buildings, I did some experiments where it seemed that his buildings were visible at a nearly infinite distance, and the same applies in the Talkeetna area, where buildings are visible as nearly single pixels at what has to be several tiles away.
Yet in chaos city, it does seem that large gobs of buildings suddenly all appear in one huge burst, and at relatively close range.
As far as I know, objects are rendered depending of their size and of the value set for
min_obj_sizein your eng.cfg (in px).
As long as an object is larger (you can even set subpixel values), it will be rendered but right now these objects are only loaded when you are in some distance of the tile where they are stored.
A good example is the Chapala Lake mesh. If you load it, you can go up to space and you will still be able to see it. However, take a look at the lake in the LFNA scenery : it will appear only if you're starting to be close of the origin point.
Thing is, this scenery was made without any performance logic, and the surprise is too see that there is a framerate impact, but absolutely not where I expected it to be ┐(°ヮ°)┌
I wonder if it would be better to have all objects out to a certain preset distance render regardless of tiles..... Like maybe everything within a circular radius of the viewer out to a distance of 20 miles, with new objects loading incrementally as they enter that range and match the set pixel size limit....
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I wonder if it would be better to have all objects out to a certain preset distance render regardless of tiles..... Like maybe everything within a circular radius of the viewer out to a distance of 20 miles, with new objects loading incrementally as they enter that range and match the set pixel size limit....
Maybe, but I have no idea if it's possible with the way this data is stored.
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At the moment the size of the objects doesn't affect when the tile gets loaded. Actually, the world has no idea that there's something large on given tile, it will only learn it when the tile gets loaded. For perf reasons it can't take a peek at every tile out there just because there might be some huge objects that needs to be seen from much farther than "normal" objects. Stuff like that will have to be attached to a coarser tile level to load earlier.
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X-Plane 10 decided to address this by loading more tiles out to a further distance, but it eats memory like pac man, and I think only the fact that the sim is 64 bit allows them to pull it off. =|
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X-Plane 10 decided to address this by loading more tiles out to a further distance, but it eats memory like pac man, and I think only the fact that the sim is 64 bit allows them to pull it off. =|
Obviously, there's more to it than just loading tiles into memory.
For example here's an interesting quote (http://developer.x-plane.com/2007/03/lod-part-1-what-lod-really-does/) by Ben Supnik on the subject of LODs:
Not drawing an object is great for framerate. Not only do we save the time on the animations and attributes, but X-Plane never has to process the texture or geometry data, and that’s where the real framerate win comes from. Therefore the most important question for object LODs is “what is the maximum LOD” – that is, what is the farthest distance before X-Plane can stop drawing your object. X-Plane is pretty efficient at recognizing cases where objects, or even whole classes of objects, are simply too far away to draw.
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X-Plane 10 decided to address this by loading more tiles out to a further distance, but it eats memory like pac man, and I think only the fact that the sim is 64 bit allows them to pull it off. =|
Obviously, there's more to it than just loading tiles into memory.
For example here's an interesting quote (http://developer.x-plane.com/2007/03/lod-part-1-what-lod-really-does/) by Ben Supnik on the subject of LODs:
Not drawing an object is great for framerate. Not only do we save the time on the animations and attributes, but X-Plane never has to process the texture or geometry data, and that’s where the real framerate win comes from. Therefore the most important question for object LODs is “what is the maximum LOD” – that is, what is the farthest distance before X-Plane can stop drawing your object. X-Plane is pretty efficient at recognizing cases where objects, or even whole classes of objects, are simply too far away to draw.
Honestly, they cheat a bit, even with extended DSF. Buildings not all that far away are transparent, and only solidify as you get closer, and a good example of that is New York's Jfk, where the city itself, which is perfectly visible from there in real life, is invisible in X-plane until you are pretty darn close.
Try flying from JFK in FSX, and the City is easily visible.
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Honestly, they cheat a bit, even with extended DSF. Buildings not all that far away are transparent, and only solidify as you get closer, and a good example of that is New York's Jfk, where the city itself, which is perfectly visible from there in real life, is invisible in X-plane until you are pretty darn close.
Try flying from JFK in FSX, and the City is easily visible.
I don't want to take this too far off topic, but the effect you're describing is reproducible for seemingly large objects that are actually a composite of many smaller ones. This is often the case with converted scenery and objects. Therefore it's really important how the objects are constructed and how their LOD levels are configured. And of course, it also depends on the rendering settings as they influence the dataref sim/private/controls/reno/LOD_bias_rat (among other things) - it's interesting to play with it in real time using dataref editor to see how the max LOD distance changes and how it influences FPS.
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Honestly, they cheat a bit, even with extended DSF. Buildings not all that far away are transparent, and only solidify as you get closer, and a good example of that is New York's Jfk, where the city itself, which is perfectly visible from there in real life, is invisible in X-plane until you are pretty darn close.
Try flying from JFK in FSX, and the City is easily visible.
I don't want to take this too far off topic, but the effect you're describing is reproducible for seemingly large objects that are actually a composite of many smaller ones. This is often the case with converted scenery and objects. Therefore it's really important how the objects are constructed and how their LOD levels are configured. And of course, it also depends on the rendering settings as they influence the dataref sim/private/controls/reno/LOD_bias_rat (among other things) - it's interesting to play with it in real time using dataref editor to see how the max LOD distance changes and how it influences FPS.
In my case I once did the experiment of converting Aerosoft's New York into XPX, and if I remember correctly, the city then appeared at the appropriate distances. X-Plane 10's native depiction of the city obviously handles things quite differently.
It was very interesting to me at the time, as I took lots of pictures of relatively nearby structures that even at max settings were already semi-transparent in X-plane, but which remained firmly visible at the same distances when the Aerosoft Scenery was active. It started me thinking a lot about how sims maintained their frame rates, and makes Outerras frame rates under similar conditions an item of interest.
Right now, Outerra seems to be doing things in yet a third way......
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Testing Chaos City. I7 920, downclocked to 3ghz from my Usual 4Ghz just to show that Outerra largely doesn't care about the cpu, as my frame rates were nearly identical at both speeds. Gpu is Nvidia 770gtx 2gb
Recorded with Nvidia Shadowplay, all shadow settings and ambient Occlusion were on. Resolution was 1920 x 1080, AA was at 2x, all other settings at default.
https://youtu.be/Sqb1pQLMA8U
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That's the Steam framerate counter right? Note that there is an option there to make the number green so you can see it better.
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That's the Steam framerate counter right? Note that there is an option there to make the number green so you can see it better.
Its the sims internal counter. I suggest watching at full screen/1080p and the framerates are very clear, often hovering around 100fps ^-^
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@Jagerbomber... what are your machine's specs? In particular your graphics card?
On an overclocked I5 (4.4Ghz) and a GTX 660 TI I get about half that frame rate.
I'm curious if an upgrade to a GTX 980 is worth it.
Thanks.
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Me or HiFlyer?
I haven't tested massive cities, but in a generally empty location (with trees), I generally get 45-60+ with a GTX 770 (4GB) and an i7, 8GB RAM.
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@Jagerbomber... what are your machine's specs? In particular your graphics card?
On an overclocked I5 (4.4Ghz) and a GTX 660 TI I get about half that frame rate.
I'm curious if an upgrade to a GTX 980 is worth it.
Thanks.
Outerra really doesn't get most of its "Oomph" from the CPU, so in that regard, it's much more like a modern game and a lot less like FSX.
I would say, yes, you will get more a lot more FPS out of a 980gtx, not just in Outerra but also in X-plane and pretty much anything modern.
In Outerra itself, I notice that, at least on my card, that there is a noticeable hit from Antialiasing' and that that is probably one of the biggest drainers on Outerra other than resolution.
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Hi,
Thanks to both of you. I actually meant HiFlyer but that would be admitting I was so dense I didn't see that he specifed them already in his post.
Having the specs from you both is good for a comparison.
Christmas is coming. I might have a splurge :)
That's the one thing that just kills FSX.
I could bolt a refrigerator to my CPU and maybe get a few FPS more.
With OT (or any modern software)
I can inprove the GPU and really affect the frame rate.
Anyone tried SLI yet?
L
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Hiflyer, how do you manage to record with shadowplay? It doesn't work for me... Any trick?
EDIT:
Never mind. I found it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HGj2CC7zaE
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Cool! =D
I actually had to figure it out by trial and error, because originally shadowplay caused artifacts, but then after a few updates from Nvidia it finally became compatible with OpenGL/Outerra.
Quality medium is more than enough for a great movie (and smaller files) and you can also set "status indicator" to "on" to get a visual cue of when you are recording or not.
Alt + F9 to start and stop recording.
I edit, add music/effects/titles etc in Windows Movie Maker, which works fine with windows 10 as well.
Download it free here: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/get-movie-maker-download
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Thanks for the tips, Hiflyer! :)