Outerra forum
Outerra Engine => News => Topic started by: cameni on June 07, 2011, 02:39:13 pm
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I've never been much of a speaker, not in my native language and even less so in English. When Markus Völter, the man behind SE Radio (http://www.se-radio.net/) and omega tau (http://www.omegataupodcast.net/) podcasts, contacted me to make a podcast about Outerra and some of the technology behind it, I initially hesitated. But then I decided that it cannot hurt, and that I must force myself to train my tongue a bit.
So, after some time we recorded a hour long interview and you can listen to it here:
omegataupodcast.net/2011/06/67-rendering-the-world-with-outerra (http://omegataupodcast.net/2011/06/67-rendering-the-world-with-outerra)
Beware that I'm really slow speaker with pretty monotonous voice, and together with the technical nature it's probably not consumable for everyone. Enjoy if you can :p
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I'm enjoying it right now. :D
It's not always perfectly understandable, but I like your accent, hehe. :>
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Hehe, I said the same thing, Tottel. He sounds like a younger version of my ex's father (which isn't a bad thing at all ... love the accent). On a side note, you sound almost exactly like I imagined you would lol. Sort of like the Slovakian version of me.
Very well done, Cameni. +10 for a very informative interview. Look forward to seeing more!
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Listening to it right now also, cool stuff.
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About half way through now. Very interesting to listen to.
Kudos on deciding to make the podcast. Maybe we'll see more?
Or what about a daily blog? :P
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Good job. I didnt' really notice any bad sound, so i'm slightly confused about why he kept talking about it. You were perfectly understandable.
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Maybe we'll see more?
Or what about a daily blog? :P
So far there's nothing more planned for the near future. What would you like to see? :)
I don't feel like I'll have enough material for dailies, it would be more like daily *itching about fighting with OpenGL, libraries, bugs and Angrypig :)
Good job. I didnt' really notice any bad sound, so i'm slightly confused about why he kept talking about it. You were perfectly understandable.
I believe he's a kind of audiophile, and can hear issues where I mostly don't hear any :)
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the only sound issue i noticed is that the volume sometimes drops a little and that there are some gaps and breaks, but i could not hear the "noise" he was complaining about :|
also i found some questions not very well chosen ... "please tell me the prices for a good graphics card!" ?? or "flyghtsims must be much easier to develop then car simulations" :lol:
anyways thanks for this! listening to some background info while watching the screenshots and videos was realy cool!
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I wonder if my cousin would mind me playing this for the hour on a long car ride I'm taking today.
I will give the audio a strict going over when I get on my PC later.
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Wow, great interview, really enjoyed it.
But what is this talk about using your own compiler for gpu integration? I was under the impression you used OpenCL.
*cough*details*cough*blogpost*cough* ;-)
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Wow, great interview, really enjoyed it.
But what is this talk about using your own compiler for gpu integration? I was under the impression you used OpenCL.
*cough*details*cough*blogpost*cough* ;-)
Hehe, I thought someone like you would catch it :)
It's actually a compiler front-end, that parses the language and generates GLSL that is then used by OpenGL (not OpenCL).
Thing is, GLSL is a badly designed language, something that you get when graphics guys instead of compiler guys design the specs. We were using Nvidia's Cg language originally, but then again Nvidia doesn't care for making it an open standard, and getting it to work on on AMD with the newest features we are using was impossible. So we created a compiler that compiles language inspired by Cg, and generates GLSL and also all the glue code so that the integration with engine's C++ code is trivial.
Why no blogpost ... basically, it doesn't bring anything so new and useful for anyone else. We would even release it, but we absolutely don't have the time at the moment to make it general so it isn't tied specifically to OT, and without it it doesn't make much sense. Not even talking about the documentation ...
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Oh I see, so its a "code generator/transformer" more than a compiler, though I guess the line is somewhat blurry. Still very interesting.
Just out of interest, did you decide against OpenCL actively for some reason, or was it just because it wasn't on the table when you made that decision? I would assume its way too late at this point to make a switch (and for hardly any benefit I would imagine, aside from the hope of it being actively developed).
I also found it interesting that you called flightsimmers a "demanding crowd" (I believe those were the words you used). I would rephrase it to say we have "attention to detail" and an "appreciation for the beauty of nature" more so than FPS players.
Now that we cleared that up, I demand my alpha test version so I can see if you got the tree in my front yard in or not and damn it it better run @1000fps! ;-)
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OpenCL is a "computing language", but we are primarily dealing with graphics. We could use OpenCL for some parts, but there's additional penalty for context switching between OpenGL and OpenCL, so unless it brings a serious advantage we don't need it. I thought I will be surely using either CUDA or OpenCL for the new terrain mapping tool. But then it turned out that I could use our existing system and build it on top of OpenGL just fine. So, effectively we don't feel any pressure and need.
But it's not like we would switch to OpenCL, it's either DX11, or OpenGL+OpenCL. But as I said, we don't need the computing capability at the moment, or better said - computing capabilities of pure OpenGL 3.3 suffice us.
Well, flightsimmers ;)
What I was referring to is the urge to have every detail copied from RL, exactly. FPS gamers mostly don't care if the world they play in is an exact copy of something, as long as it's fun and a believable setting. But a significant portion of simmers ultimately want a copy of RL so they can continue with their hobby.
Otherwise, they are not that much demanding .. they are just not that easy to satisfy :D
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I know that you can render stuff in CUDA (prob OpenCL as well) to a data array and then use that in a form of render to texture in GL. So I know for sure that its possible to compute and GL shade stuff but I don't know what the penalty is for switching the kernel from a CUDA one back to GL. I would have thought tho that you could keep both resident on the card at once. The thing is, if your using OpenCL or CUDA your closer to the core of the card than GL is because, as you say, GLSL was not a card specific language but CUDA is and OpenCL is really close to CUDA. In other words, I think there would be a performance advantage to using OpenCL + GL instead of GLSL alone. Tho I would understand that there is more complexity to it by having the multiple languages to keep on top of.
One of the advantages of OpenCL over the other two is that it was "supposed" to be a language such that the CPU could run as well. So in theory you could do the compute over the GPU and the CPU concurrently. I would admit that I know of nobody that does it like that tho. The Intel Larabee was supposed to be all over that but it died a death.
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I don't feel like I'll have enough material for dailies, it would be more like daily *itching about fighting with OpenGL, libraries, bugs and Angrypig :)
Ah ok. Perhaps when you begin the working on the game there would be more interesting stuff to write about. To me though anything about Outerra is intersting to read. :P
BTW do you still think there will be a June release?
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The thing is, if your using OpenCL or CUDA your closer to the core of the card than GL is because, as you say, GLSL was not a card specific language but CUDA is and OpenCL is really close to CUDA. In other words, I think there would be a performance advantage to using OpenCL + GL instead of GLSL alone.
OpenCL or CUDA is indeed a lower level language, closer to the hardware, but I don't think it means that OpenGL would be slower. GLSL is compiled to a hw specific code, probably the same one as OpenCL. It's true that OpenCL comes with a finer control over what you are doing, but that's not necessarily a good thing in the sense that devs are likely to optimize it less than the vendor. In theory OpenGL could be done on top of OpenCL, but it will be certainly much faster when vendor does it than it would be if the devs had to it, IMHO.
Still, there are cases when using OpenCL together with OpenGL would be advantageous, but there's that factor of switching and syncing the contexts - though we don't know exactly how much it will cost us yet. One thing that we are missing in current OpenGL is the lack of in-GLSL synchronization, the instruction that is so common in CUDA that waits for all threads to come to the same point before continuing. For some reason this synchronization is available only from outside, from OpenGL.
One of the advantages of OpenCL over the other two is that it was "supposed" to be a language such that the CPU could run as well. So in theory you could do the compute over the GPU and the CPU concurrently. I would admit that I know of nobody that does it like that tho. The Intel Larabee was supposed to be all over that but it died a death.
Maybe for some tools, but just as a fallback for someone who hasn't got a GPU with the needed capabilities. For example, mapressor requires 64 bit floating point and math on GPU, and if it was written in OpenCL it could fallback to CPU if current graphics card doesn't support 64 bit math. Though, I think there is emulation and it's still faster, so it's probably a wrong example.
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BTW do you still think there will be a June release?
June? What year? :D
Seriously, I'm not aware we committed to any June anywhere, and it certainly won't be this June. I think we said that we'd very much like to release it in summer. We are spending a considerable portion of our time on the stuff necessary for the alpha release - implementing authentication and autoupdate, fixing data download issues, cleaning the editors and such.
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Think you said two months a month and a half ago. I don't hold anyone to their dates. Duke Nukem....
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June? What year?
Seriously, I'm not aware we committed to any June anywhere, and it certainly won't be this June. I think we said that we'd very much like to release it in summer.
Yeah sorry about. For some reason I was thinking from the Battle.no interview that you said June.
Not to add any more pressure (sorry!) but right now are the chances still good of seeing the demo (or Alpha) this summer?
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Not to add any more pressure (sorry!) but right now are the chances still good of seeing the demo (or Alpha) this summer?
Yes, summer still holds. Demo and Alpha should come together.
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Cool! :cool: I really can't wait to get my hands on the demo (and Alpha)!
So you're planning on using a pricing model similar to Minecraft's right? Also, are you planning on alowing people to buy it early or "pre-order" it as well? I'm ready to pay for it the day as it becomes available. :D
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It will be certainly very alpha when released, so it's the preorder-and-get-alpha model known from the Minecraft and and that Wolfire game, what'sitsname ...
I think it will be like this - the free demo will allow roaming around the world anywhere, and upon registration (through the in-game browser) people will get access to two prototype vehicles.
People who preorder the alpha will get more vehicles and the ability to build stuff in sandbox mode (locally), and then in the online game mode they will be able to claim their own land anywhere in the world (except game specific forbidden areas) and build their stuff there, following the economic game rules.
How does that sound?
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will be able to claim their own land anywhere in the world (except game specific forbidden areas)
How does that sound?
I love it.
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It will be certainly very alpha when released, so it's the preorder-and-get-alpha model known from the Minecraft and and that Wolfire game, what'sitsname ...
I think it will be like this - the free demo will allow roaming around the world anywhere, and upon registration (through the in-game browser) people will get access to two prototype vehicles.
People who preorder the alpha will get more vehicles and the ability to build stuff in sandbox mode (locally), and then in the online game mode they will be able to claim their own land anywhere in the world (except game specific forbidden areas) and build their stuff there, following the economic game rules.
How does that sound?
Great news.
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Very good idea.
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and that Wolfire game, what'sitsname ...
Lugaru :)
Just checked that game out, and watched the videos on their YouTube channel for the sequel, Overgrowth. Now THAT is an interesting editor they created, and would be an eventual nice addition to Outerra. Looks very mod-friendly. May have to fork over some cash to check it out.
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will be able to claim their own land anywhere in the world (except game specific forbidden areas)
So I am to assume the summit of Mt Everest would be off limits? I can only imagine the difficulty of getting there if the flying vehicles were limited to a certain realistic altitude. That's where I would build my retro 80's gaming bar.
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How does that sound?
Sounds great!
the free demo will allow roaming around the world anywhere
So you decided to open up the whole world for the demo? That's great news! :D :D :cool:
claim their own land anywhere in the world (except game specific forbidden areas)
Why are you planning on making certain areas unavailable? Is it just because they are landmarks?
Also how big of an area do you think players will be able to choose from the start? What will new players do when the entire Earth has been claimed, even though I would imagine that would take a VERY long time anyways. Maybe then you could add in the moon and Mars to be colonised? :P
And any hints on what the prototype vehicles are going to be?
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How does that sound?
That sounds fantastic! If the money is allocable, you can count me in!
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Why are you planning on making certain areas unavailable? Is it just because they are landmarks?
Because we want to use them later in game for special areas. For example, once we make the city generator, we want to have the large cities from the past present as ruins, with high concentration of things-that-want-to-kill-ya. One could choose the difficulty by how far from these one settles.
But that's for the final released game, and maybe for the alpha period we should just allow the whole world, and reset it or create a new realm for the release, though not everyone will like it so I guess.
Also how big of an area do you think players will be able to choose from the start? What will new players do when the entire Earth has been claimed, even though I would imagine that would take a VERY long time anyways. Maybe then you could add in the moon and Mars to be colonised? :P
That's open to consideration. The world is divided to tiles, and the usual tile we are using for various purposes in the engine is L12 which is roughly 2446m by the side. That is close to 6km².
Earth's land surface is 148,940,000 km², out of which the agricultural land is 48,836,976 km², making it 8,162,738 tiles where one can gather food, or 24,894,215 tiles total.
Now how much one can get? If we take the maximum number of players there could be, we could proportionally divide the area and get some limit. But more logical is to assume it will not be proportionally divided. Every player should get a certain starting number of tiles, and by growing economically he should be able to capture additional chunks, or, if he doesn't play, the chunks will be freed.
But since we don't have the numbers, we can only find it through the alpha/beta stage. So I guess for alpha we set the initial number somewhat higher, and adjust later.
Anyway, it's quite unlikely that the land would run out. Adding Moon and Mars is more likely to happen because of the "because we can" effect :cool:
And any hints on what the prototype vehicles are going to be?
The prototype vehicles are for the freely registered users to experience some driving/piloting in addition to free ufo-style flying around. There should be two - probably the truck and an aircraft.
They are called prototype because, you know, our engineers had to fit various instruments there and consequently the gas tank had to be shrunk, you know, so you'll have to fill it from a canister every 15min or so. Sorry about that :D
People who bought the game will get normal, non-prototype vehicles, and a wider variety of them.
As always, everything is subject to change.
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So tiles are 600ha. I don't know, i might need more space.
I don't know if this has been mentioned before, but whats going on with minerals in the ground? Given what little i know of the game backstory, wouldn't most, if not all, minerals be gone? If they're not gone, are we gong to have some kind of way of determining where they are? Additionally, it would be completely awesome to have to smelt/refine minerals yourself (or trade it to someone else to do it).
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The tiles are just atomic units of land. One player will be given, like, 20 or 100 of them, initially?
Or more precisely, player can claim the number of tiles corresponding to what his economical status allows, those initial 20 or how much is just the basis.
Minerals - there's enough of minerals everywhere, it's just that the profitability of mining becomes lower after you exploit the easy sources. It will need a better tech for it, ore enriching etc. For some materials the technology will be only available at Mothership, that will trade with you.
There should be way of determining the quality of the ore, the percentage of precious stuff contained within it. Technically, if you filter a ton of common dirt you'll still be able to extract some small amount of metals from it, but of course you'll be motivated to find a better source. The distribution of these richer ores will be determined by fractal, and you will have to make measurements and infer the location of deposits from them.
There will be mines that can be built, upgradable by enrichers so that it's possible to reduce the volume needed to be ferried to the base where the separator is stationed ..
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What about combining the various economic benefits to different types of industry? For example, aluminium refining takes a large amount of electricity. Therefore it would be cheaper if the electricity is cheaper. Also, is pollution going to be in at least in some form (even if not graphical)?
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What about combining the various economic benefits to different types of industry? For example, aluminium refining takes a large amount of electricity. Therefore it would be cheaper if the electricity is cheaper. Also, is pollution going to be in at least in some form (even if not graphical)?
In most instances, the economy looks like it will be mostly player-driven, although the above scenario will happen as well.
In Star Wars Galaxies, player economy was driven by rarity of resources + quality. High quality items made for better quality gear and structures ... which came at premium prices when sold on the market. If there was a glut of high quality resources, prices would inevitably drop because everyone could make similar quality items and had to compete. If the resource was extremely rare, prices would skyrocket.
Although SWG didn't have a great economy, it worked. From what I understand though, Eve Online has the best economy of any game ... so much so that economists look at trends there and relate it to real-world phenomena.
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It will be certainly very alpha when released, so it's the preorder-and-get-alpha model known from the Minecraft and and that Wolfire game, what'sitsname ...
I think it will be like this - the free demo will allow roaming around the world anywhere, and upon registration (through the in-game browser) people will get access to two prototype vehicles.
People who preorder the alpha will get more vehicles and the ability to build stuff in sandbox mode (locally), and then in the online game mode they will be able to claim their own land anywhere in the world (except game specific forbidden areas) and build their stuff there, following the economic game rules.
How does that sound?
Yaa Hoo ... its a plan that gets my vote ;-)
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So, I don't understand this.
I just want to get into vehicles and fly/drive around (anywhere in the world). I don't really want to "claim" any land or anything like that.
I'll be able to do that, right?
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So, I don't understand this.
I just want to get into vehicles and fly/drive around (anywhere in the world). I don't really want to "claim" any land or anything like that.
I'll be able to do that, right?
In the tech demo yes.
BUT, if you want to drive and fly in multiple vehicles then you will be purchasing the Alpha Game where claiming land and updates and awesome will occur.
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Hmm, well I don't know. Will there be some sort of offline version of the "Alpha Game". I want to buy it, its just.....well I'm not into the whole strategy stuff or buying things. I've always looked at this as an awesome, tranquile as you like, way to explore the world. Maybe build a few roads here and there, and sure, install other peoples work or even join a server now and then to do stuff together. But when I get home from work I want to relax and fly a heli through some vally in new zealand or something and not log onto a server and manage my land and worry about who build that ugly tower next to me.
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There will be offline sandbox mode with the game, so you can go anywhere alone and build only your stuff.
But I expect that soon enough there will be a group of people wanting to create their own world together. Online world may become "instanced", let's say a group of flight sim people will see only their own modifications there, and such instance will be likely stripped of any game rules. This is also in line with our plan to allow other developers to create their own games/apps in Outerra world.
But, of course, it will take some time to fulfill it.
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Ok then.
Will you take my money now? ;-)
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There will be offline sandbox mode with the game, so you can go anywhere alone and build only your stuff.
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does this mean completely offline? can we download the whole dataset to our hdds and dont need to be online to enjoy outerra?
i think processors could handle the streaming alot better then my lame 200kb internet connection, or does it have nothing to do with the speed of the internet connection? i have no knowledge about such things.
i dont like to play online often because playing games is my personal "human free time" and i dont like to interact with other people while gaming ;)
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Well, in the first phase you won't be interacting with people, just seeing their creations if you ever happen to their places.
Main load are the terrain data, and they won't be streamed, but rather downloaded and cached on demand. For a single place on the ground level it downloads around 100MB, after that it downloads additional small chunks of data only after some 20km. Actually, after the initial download you won't even notice it downloading further data. Well, with a normal internet connection you won't.
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ok just to make sure i got this right, outerra will require a internet connection to play?
and what do you mean by "normal internet connection", will my max of ~250kb be enough? loading 100mb at full speed needs around 5 minutes at this "speed" :/
how ever outerra will be worth the few more bucks a month for a faster internet connection, iam sure of that!
btw what is the recomended bandwidth for outerra?
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If you can download at 250 kilo Bytes which is kB. You would refer to your internet connection as 2 Mega-bit per second. Which should be fine for streaming Outerra's land data under normal circumstances if I understand how it works correctly.
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So it's 250kB (kilo bytes), not 250kb (kilo bits, 8x less).
250kB is fine for Outerra. Our current server caps the speed per download to around 250kB, so that's what we are getting too when testing the initial download, except that at the end it spawns more (3) downloads in parallel so it goes higher than that.
For alpha we will be using cloud servers where the speed is much higher so people with better connection can get it faster, though it's not really a problem - only the initial download makes you wait (once), but then, with normal speeds achievable with vehicles in game, you don't have to wait for a download anymore, it gets delivered on the background by the time you need it.
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and that Wolfire game, what'sitsname ...
oh, those violent rabbits give me nightmares. ;)
with normal speeds achievable with vehicles in game, you don't have to wait for a download anymore, it gets delivered on the background by the time you need it.
I would not mind downloading the whole thing if it is necessary for flying supersonic jets. :D
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So it's 250kB (kilo bytes), not 250kb (kilo bits, 8x less).
a small "b" means bits and a big "B" means bytes, i didnt knew this, sorry.
250kB is fine for Outerra. Our current server caps the speed per download to around 250kB, so that's what we are getting too when testing the initial download, except that at the end it spawns more (3) downloads in parallel so it goes higher than that.
cool :)
i dont want to criticize your work at all, but iam just curious what holds you of to release an offline version too?
it would be great to be able to roam through outerra on my laptop with no internet while on vecation or something :)
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i dont want to criticize your work at all, but iam just curious what holds you of to release an offline version too?
it would be great to be able to roam through outerra on my laptop with no internet while on vecation or something :)
Oh, come on, Outerra on a vacation? I assume you have a high end laptop :)
You will be able to roam through Outerra world in the offline mode. Roaming doesn't require you to log in, so in this case offline puts you into the free roaming mode. Any areas you've visited (thus downloaded & cached) while in online mode will be available to you in the offline mode, we only need to come up with a way of notifying the users that some areas of terrain weren't downloaded. The terrain will not be refined in that case, which can be mistaken for a bug.
Also, free mode will use the built-in bittorrent service to get the data when connected to internet, which is less reliable but reduces the load on our servers.
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Oh, come on, Outerra on a vacation? I assume you have a high end laptop :)
depends on how many options to lower the graphics quality will be implemented :)
Any areas you've visited (thus downloaded & cached) while in online mode will be available to you in the offline mode, ...
now i have a good reason to visit as many places as possible, to get the full offline experience :D
thank you for the fast replies, much appreciated.
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Oh wow Outerra demo in the summer? It's like a dream come true.
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IT'S THE FIRST DAY OF SUMMER! WHERE IS IT?!?! :P
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Which year's summer ? ;-) ... just joking ... ;-)
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It will be certainly very alpha when released, so it's the preorder-and-get-alpha model known from the Minecraft and and that Wolfire game, what'sitsname ...
I think it will be like this - the free demo will allow roaming around the world anywhere, and upon registration (through the in-game browser) people will get access to two prototype vehicles.
People who preorder the alpha will get more vehicles and the ability to build stuff in sandbox mode (locally), and then in the online game mode they will be able to claim their own land anywhere in the world (except game specific forbidden areas) and build their stuff there, following the economic game rules.
How does that sound?
Money is really just a proxy that represents energy and resources. What functional level of simulation will the game be? Is it going to be like there are only so many trees, oil, resources in the ground and that dictates larger macroeconomic forces from a bottoms-up perspective, or are you going to do some sort of divine intervention and enact a top-down fiscial policy like in 2nd Life by arbitrarily printing gaming currency? Or will you let "emergence of complex systems" happen and allow a natural world-central-reserve and monetary policy to form based on the available resources on planet earth and the population?
If the latter, does this mean if someday the mmorpg gets too popular we will have to deal with "peak oil" and other resource limits to growth? Or will you magically create oil "out of thin air"?
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will be able to claim their own land anywhere in the world (except game specific forbidden areas)
So I am to assume the summit of Mt Everest would be off limits? I can only imagine the difficulty of getting there if the flying vehicles were limited to a certain realistic altitude. That's where I would build my retro 80's gaming bar.
Is this simulator supposed to be exactly a replica of Earth, like a Google Earth but for gaming? Since the planet is 70%+ water/ocean, couldn't a "game specific forbidden area" simply be an "artificial" island created in some sea/ocean somewhere? If this is really going to be as large as the earth, why would the developers worry about ever running out of "land"?
If spaceships are allowed (like OrbiterSim), it should be quite easy to orbiter into space and reentry on top of Mount Everest. Incidentally, the Quterra "Earth" in its current form does not look realistic from the vantage point of outer-space/orbiter... compare to OrbiterSim's "earth".
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The tiles are just atomic units of land. One player will be given, like, 20 or 100 of them, initially?
Or more precisely, player can claim the number of tiles corresponding to what his economical status allows, those initial 20 or how much is just the basis.
Minerals - there's enough of minerals everywhere, it's just that the profitability of mining becomes lower after you exploit the easy sources. It will need a better tech for it, ore enriching etc. For some materials the technology will be only available at Mothership, that will trade with you.
There should be way of determining the quality of the ore, the percentage of precious stuff contained within it. Technically, if you filter a ton of common dirt you'll still be able to extract some small amount of metals from it, but of course you'll be motivated to find a better source. The distribution of these richer ores will be determined by fractal, and you will have to make measurements and infer the location of deposits from them.
There will be mines that can be built, upgradable by enrichers so that it's possible to reduce the volume needed to be ferried to the base where the separator is stationed ..
So maybe this could be a lesson in 2nd law of thermodynamics, entropy, EROEI (energy returned on energy invested), quality of resource inflection points, and Peak Oil, etc
This can be an economic simulator too! From micro to macro scales!
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Incidentally, the Quterra "Earth" in its current form does not look realistic from the vantage point of outer-space/orbiter... compare to OrbiterSim's "earth".
That is due to the fact that you are missing.. And by you I mean CLOUDS are not yet present. I am sure those are somewhere on the to-do list.
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Money is really just a proxy that represents energy and resources. What functional level of simulation will the game be? Is it going to be like there are only so many trees, oil, resources in the ground and that dictates larger macroeconomic forces from a bottoms-up perspective, or are you going to do some sort of divine intervention and enact a top-down fiscial policy like in 2nd Life by arbitrarily printing gaming currency? Or will you let "emergence of complex systems" happen and allow a natural world-central-reserve and monetary policy to form based on the available resources on planet earth and the population?
If the latter, does this mean if someday the mmorpg gets too popular we will have to deal with "peak oil" and other resource limits to growth? Or will you magically create oil "out of thin air"?
I'm imagining that for gameplay's sake there could be some resources sparser than others, and technologies that use one material while it can be more easily used, available and cheap, but switching to another material (+tech development) as the first one is getting depleted. Cost of input materials can be determined by market, but ultimately (minus market speculations and niches), and for self-sustained economy it's driven by the energy needed for the extraction: if there are mines with 3% content of some metal, the overall energy needed to extract it will be considerably less than what you have to put into filtering out 3x that much gangue.
I don't think we should be afraid of total resource depletion, like say in the old AoE. First the land is enormous and civilization will be sparse, and second the economic model will be able to adapt, as in RL.
We aren't thinking of making an artificial game currency there. We would really like to leave it on the people and the game. Though there probably will be an artificial entity trading with energy and precious materials - the mothership - but I'd like it to be a part of the game as far as the economic rules go. Basically, adapting to the market. Losing and winning.
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Is this simulator supposed to be exactly a replica of Earth, like a Google Earth but for gaming? Since the planet is 70%+ water/ocean, couldn't a "game specific forbidden area" simply be an "artificial" island created in some sea/ocean somewhere? If this is really going to be as large as the earth, why would the developers worry about ever running out of "land"?
The forbidden land is not because we need a piece of land for ourselves, we can always create a different realm on the same Earth and have it all for ourselves.
It's going to be there because the game has a story and these places will be special, controlled by ... something :)
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Sorry i think this may of been mentioned, but will there be PvP combat? Or i think you said for now there will be AI that attack your base?
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No PvP initially, but some AI creeps will be coming - probably not right from the start though.
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Is there any chance that you'll be at the GDC in Germany next week?
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No, not this year yet. Hopefully the next one :)
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Hi Brano,
The podcast and this game news is interesting. I have a few questions:
1) Will people be able to create their own COLLADA 3d objects and import them to their piece of the world?
If so, do you then embed that in the server copy of Outerra?
As these are probably not fractal-compressible, I am wondering how quickly you could find the world growing from the base 12GB...?
2) Will you have some village tiles where small parcels of land are sold off for community based housing, shops, schools etc, or can people subdivide their own tiles?
3) I see you have done sand, grass, water, rocks, pine trees and snow. Have you done dry regions like in the Middle East or Central Australia? Eg. Red iron-rich sands of northern Western Australia.
That land should probably be paired with the occasional stunted bush, or maybe a mini-pine tree! :)
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Once the demo / game are released, you will be busy with support, customer feedback, etc. Should be an exciting new direction.
Richard
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1) Will people be able to create their own COLLADA 3d objects and import them to their piece of the world?
If so, do you then embed that in the server copy of Outerra?
As these are probably not fractal-compressible, I am wondering how quickly you could find the world growing from the base 12GB...?
We want to enable the import in the game, so that people can test it and test how their stuff will look like there. Whether it will also automatically replicate to others so that they can see the object is questionable, because of the possible legal issues when someone uploads a model for which they don't have the rights to distribute. Usually when you buy a model you can't distribute it in its original format, but when it's converted to a proprietary format from which it cannot be retrieved back, it's usually ok. But it's a bit questionable. In any case, we'll need to implement a mechanism that allows pulling off the infringing model upon request from author. Alternatively there's possibility for the server to function just as a tracker, in which case the actual model would be hosted elsewhere and our server will contain just a link to it, but that's not ideal either.
Will you have some village tiles where small parcels of land are sold off for community based housing, shops, schools etc, or can people subdivide their own tiles?
For the demo game we plan to assign a bunch of tiles to players where they can build their stuff however they want. No sub-parceling in common tiles is planned for the beginning, it's more like that a whole city can be owned by one player. But it may change later.
I see you have done sand, grass, water, rocks, pine trees and snow. Have you done dry regions like in the Middle East or Central Australia? Eg. Red iron-rich sands of northern Western Australia.
That land should probably be paired with the occasional stunted bush, or maybe a mini-pine tree! :)
Much more climates and ecotypes will be coming once full climate support is finished. People who then appear in a desert will be probably given a chance to relocate :)
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Thanks Brano.
A few questions on the engine.
Currently, is it just world elevation data you pack into 12 GigaBytes of tiles?
Will you soon be packing climate/land class, rock colour, etc?
Are those procedural / fractal calculations mainly used to fill in detail between sampling points? Are they performed during packing or during displaying or during both?
Does the use of fractals mean that viewing-from-a-distance calculations are much more efficient? ie Did that enable the continuous zoom from orbit to ground level? Would you need about 6GB of data loaded to do this? ie not part of the demo?
Would procedural & fractal-generated trees (not just location) be more efficient and smoother to zoom in and out from than using 7 different tree 3d objects with different levels of detail?
Can you pre-calculate or compute on the fly the width and placement of rivers from land contours and catchment sizes?
Sorry if I have exceeded my question limit, but it is fascinating, and I have always loved looking at maps.
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I will try to answer a few of those.
Yes..
Yes..
Maybe..
Yes.. See every video with space to ground transitions http://www.youtube.com/user/cameni47#g/u
Trees are Procedurally Generated now it has just started testing.. http://www.outerra.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=390
There are certain resources available for river placement and size and also to smooth the shorline.
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Currently, is it just world elevation data you pack into 12 GigaBytes of tiles?
Will you soon be packing climate/land class, rock colour, etc?
Yes, just the elevation. But land class/climate will take much less. The demo will come without them yet, will be added after that.
Are those procedural / fractal calculations mainly used to fill in detail between sampling points? Are they performed during packing or during displaying or during both?
Yes, they compute the missing higher-frequency detail using fractal probability models. They are performed during rendering, the packed dataset only contains the remapped original data (from 90m to roughly 76m)
Does the use of fractals mean that viewing-from-a-distance calculations are much more efficient? ie Did that enable the continuous zoom from orbit to ground level? Would you need about 6GB of data loaded to do this? ie not part of the demo?
The use of fractals has brought in the missing detail below 76m. Continuous zoom is possible thanks to effective LOD management. You don't need 6GB of data when looking from orbit - it only needs data of required level of detail. You would force it to download half the dataset only if you scanned half of its 510,072,000 km² surface in detail sufficient to fetch 76m-gridded level. There's 1,572,864 of these tiles so that's plenty of scanning to do.
Would procedural & fractal-generated trees (not just location) be more efficient and smoother to zoom in and out from than using 7 different tree 3d objects with different levels of detail?
Procedural trees are generated in discrete steps of level of detail as well, what they bring is an automated process, better transitions between LOD levels and more effective rendering.
Can you pre-calculate or compute on the fly the width and placement of rivers from land contours and catchment sizes?
In theory could be possible, but we are going to use the existing vector data for rivers. Smaller tributaries that aren't covered there could be computed using an analysis, but it wouldn't be on the fly, but an off-line process whose output is another vector database.
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See, my response word for word!
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ROFL!
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Thanks guys. Comparing the 2 responses illustrates the level of detail concept quite well!
So is the planet from orbit a sphere with elevations sampled at say 300m squares plus atmosphere?
Any lower uses flat tiles which overwrite the near bits of the low-resolution sphere...?
... Or are there 7 planets worth of resolutions...?
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I must say I don't know what you mean.
Anyway. Here's a shot from above with some debug info:
(http://www.outerra.com/shots/far.jpg) (http://www.outerra.com/shots/far.jpg)
The tiles directly below have resolution of 2.5km/pixel. As you get closer they are being refined, but it's still five more subdivision steps until we get to a tile that runs out of dataset resolution and starts to generate additional data using fractals. However, as you get closer the visible range shrinks and the outer tiles recede behind horizon, and so the amount of tiles doesn't grow exponentially.
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Cool, I think I get it!
There is one 12GB dataset, but the engine serves up the needed subset of that data as your viewpoint zooms in and out and moves across tiles. In your image above you only need 1 in 33 of the east/west elevation points and 1 in 33 of the north-south datapoints, making approximately 1 in a 1000 or 12MB of the 12GB dataset, but the engine probably sends more data in anticipation of all possible changes in view: north, south, east, west, or change of zoom.
Each tile is flat, but together they form a polyhedron resembling a sphere.
Is that correct?
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Nope, tiles aren't flat, their mesh is curved properly to the radius of earth.
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So I couldn't tile my bathroom floor with them! They're like pieces of orange peel.
I guess I was thinking of a sphere in blender, where objects are ultimately composed of flat polygons... but that isn't needed on this scale!
Thanks for your patience. I will let you do some developing now! I hope I haven't held up the demo!
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I can see that the server sends a user's computer the minimal data it requires to move from viewpoint to viewpoint. Eg. View from the moon changing to view from the surface.
But does the server require the entire dataset in memory?
If not, how does it efficiently get the data it needs out of files on the hard drive?
Are there separate sets of files for different resolutions? Eg multiple quad tree mapping could map the globe onto 6 files for least resolution for viewing from space, 24 files for the next resolution, 384 files for the next resolution for views maybe 200,000 ft above the surface etc?
For each of these resolutions you would only need to load a subset depending on viewpoint.
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The server of static planetary data is actually just a simple http file server. Clients know what they need for a given viewpoint, and simply request the chunk if they don't have it already. The dataset is cut into pieces in such way that is (nearly) optimal for the progressive download of data that you need - a balance between the size of chunks and the overhead of bigger blocks.
The whole thing is just for convenience - we don't have to distribute the whole dataset, when in fact people will progressively use only a small portion of it.
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Clever. I imagine that is how google earth or google maps works!
I guess you will need a system to check for file updates, with configurable frequency of updates.
Do you expect Earth from space will look like this when you add climate and clouds, and ocean depths?
http://www.weirdwarp.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/view-from-the-space-station.jpg