Outerra forum

Outerra Engine => Development screen shots and videos => Topic started by: angrypig on August 02, 2011, 05:35:46 pm

Title: Low flight above forest...
Post by: angrypig on August 02, 2011, 05:35:46 pm
Here is a short video with the latest version of trees, let's say version 0.3  :). There is still a lot of work to make it ready for the demo. But not so much as with the unlimited detail tech :)

Here is the basic info about the tree rendering:

- 3D trees are enabled at the distance of 250 meters, this will be variable in the future and will depend on how many trees in what quality are being rendered in total.

- the generator also produces billboard textures from various angles for more distant trees (not used yet)

- there is a bug with 3d leaves - they are incorrectly positioned

- video was captured in realtime as usually, on my Nvidia 460 1GB in Full-HD resolution at 30 FPS

- not all optimization are implemented yet, but in current state the FPS in Full-HD resolution in this scenario is 50 to 65

-  in the worst case there can be up to 500 3D trees in the view. Trees are currently split into 7 LODs, the highest LOD0 has 15,000 branches and 15,000 leaves. This amount of detail is too high for a forest, but it will be used on standalone trees. In forest I am expecting the highest detail to be around 7,000 branches and the same number for the leaves.

- btw flying in such low altitude, a few meters above trees is the worst case, because leaves are close and culling for groups of leaves is not working properly yet

- and I will have to do something with the distant thin branches that pop up sometimes, which is annoying during such low flight. In normal cases it is usually not recognizable.

- and I almost forgot to mention that we switched our anti-aliasing method from MSAA to FXAA. A blog post about that will follow soon, together with comparison screenshots.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrOfGdfvX6c
Title: Low flight above forest...
Post by: C. Shawn Smith on August 02, 2011, 06:22:20 pm
Once again, I'm rendered (pun intended) speechless.

Question: How do the 3d trees react if you place an object like a building or road through a forest such as this?  In the previous road creation video, you can see the initial -- for lack of a better word -- rewrite of the affected terrain, and watch the trees disappear to make way for the road (I think it was most prevalent in the banked roads video).

I foresee a 2011 Retrospective Video with this clip :)
Title: Low flight above forest...
Post by: Redrobes on August 02, 2011, 06:53:15 pm
Nice - liking very much ! Is there any way to get a global fractal parameter to alter the absolute green colour of the trees ? Maybe a brightness or some kind of hue change to give them a bit of variance. Some kind of luminosity modulation based on tree position maybe ? I think the effect them would be highly realistic - not that its all that far off already.
Title: Low flight above forest...
Post by: sniperwolfpk5 on August 02, 2011, 07:06:41 pm
wow :o . The most realistic trees i ever seen in a game engine. This engine will revolutionize future games.  Angrypig it will be gr8 if you make a movie that shows complete tree rounding a camera around. Sorry for my bad english :lol:
Title: Low flight above forest...
Post by: Dmytro Lyakh on August 02, 2011, 07:49:05 pm
DEMO! DEMO! DEMO!

:)
Title: Low flight above forest...
Post by: monks on August 02, 2011, 08:41:48 pm
Awesome! I'm imagining flying on the back of a dragon...I've been reduced to childlike fantasies again  :lol: ...yes, the variation in hue in the canopy and also some enviromental sound would make a big difference. It's gonna be a very large slavering dog's boludas!

monks
Title: Low flight above forest...
Post by: RaikoRaufoss on August 02, 2011, 10:26:06 pm
Outerra just keeps getting better and better.
Title: Low flight above forest...
Post by: ZeosPantera on August 03, 2011, 12:26:38 am
I think its time for a test (drive) though the woods. With roads or no roads.. All the better. I suspect the shadows haven't been worked out 100% at ground level yet.

Also any chance of uploading the 1080p version somewhere for direct download. It looks like Youtube has put this through the ringer.
Title: Low flight above forest...
Post by: knackered on August 03, 2011, 03:26:05 am
jeez, what a bunch of sycophants.
the trees look ok, but it's hard to tell because of the video quality....sigh....once again, we need a demo - the videos don't allow us to come to an informed verdict. This project is the most hyped tech project i've ever come across on the internet without any form of demo ever having been released.
I notice you've chosen a flight path that (almost completely) hides the huge band of dramatic colour change that happens at the switch of lod. I suppose this is the switch to billboards? and you say you're still using the old billboard texture which will be replaced by an imposter system in the future? presumably this will be another excuse to delay releasing a demo?
Title: Low flight above forest...
Post by: ZeosPantera on August 03, 2011, 03:41:28 am
Wow knackered, wow.
Title: Low flight above forest...
Post by: cameni on August 03, 2011, 04:15:26 am
Quote from: knackered
and you say you're still using the old billboard texture which will be replaced by an imposter system in the future? presumably this will be another excuse to delay releasing a demo?
Tree generator already produces the billboards from the generated trees, but these weren't used yet, as was also written. The video tried to show the near tree range, and obviously we didn't want people's attention being drawn to the part that wasn't implemented yet, so yes, the flight path was carefully chosen. We apologize if it was poorly described.

As for the lamenting about hype and delays ... if people want a demo where 3D deciduous trees switch to coniferous ones in the distance, then no problem. Otherwise you simply have to wait, cause we are so damn slow even with coffee.

Stuff in development.
Title: Low flight above forest...
Post by: angrypig on August 03, 2011, 05:37:30 am
Quote from: cshawnsmith
Question: How do the 3d trees react if you place an object like a building or road through a forest such as this?

These 3D trees act exactly like our good old billboard trees :) because parameters like position and size are taken directly from them. I just render 3D tree with those parameters and with appropriate LOD. But not all values are properly incorporated into 3D trees and you can see it in video where billboards are darker. This is caused by one parameter that is telling that tree grows on unlit side of the hill.


Quote from: cshawnsmith
I foresee a 2011 Retrospective Video with this clip :)

I hope we will have something better for that :)
Title: Low flight above forest...
Post by: angrypig on August 03, 2011, 06:20:48 am
Quote from: Redrobes
Is there any way to get a global fractal parameter to alter the absolute green colour of the trees ? Maybe a brightness or some kind of hue change to give them a bit of variance. Some kind of luminosity modulation based on tree position maybe ? I think the effect them would be highly realistic - not that its all that far off already.

A slight hue alteration is already there but the video compression hid it somewhat. But these kind of parameters needs some proper tuning because they were set for our old billboard tree texture. I will create some screen-shots later when i fix bugs that i meant in first post.
Title: Low flight above forest...
Post by: angrypig on August 03, 2011, 06:57:50 am
Quote from: ZeosPantera
I think its time for a test (drive) though the woods. With roads or no roads.. All the better.

Good idea for next video :)

Quote from: ZeosPantera
I suspect the shadows haven't been worked out 100% at ground level yet.

There are no shadows yet, there is only the "ambient occlusion" that is darkening terrain under trees and inside the forest. We want to implement shadows for trees but it has to be done very carefully due to performance reasons. The quickest and probably the easiest way is to cast shadow from impostor textures, it is not accurate but can improve the experience factor a lot. The second stage could be to cast shadows from real branches and cluster textures with leaves in some detail.

Quote from: ZeosPantera
Also any chance of uploading the 1080p version somewhere for direct download. It looks like Youtube has put this through the ringer.

perhaps :)
Title: Low flight above forest...
Post by: angrypig on August 03, 2011, 12:36:23 pm
Quote from: ZeosPantera
Also any chance of uploading the 1080p version somewhere for direct download. It looks like Youtube has put this through the ringer.

Here is the direct link to video http://outerra.com/videos/trees11_hq.avi
Title: Low flight above forest...
Post by: SpaceFlight on August 03, 2011, 12:42:35 pm
Quote from: angrypig
Quote from: ZeosPantera
Also any chance of uploading the 1080p version somewhere for direct download. It looks like Youtube has put this through the ringer.

Here is the direct link to video http://outerra.com/videos/trees11_hq.avi


So much better.
Looks good.  :D
Title: Low flight above forest...
Post by: C. Shawn Smith on August 03, 2011, 01:00:47 pm
Heh, and perfect timing for me.  Just picked up a new set of loops and am practicing mixing them together for sound tracks :D
Title: Low flight above forest...
Post by: Abc94 on August 03, 2011, 03:23:31 pm
Wow, the trees already look really good!  It will look even better once the "tree popping" issue is fixed.  Be sure to post a video of it then!  :cool:

I know you want to add a few things before the demo is released, but what is the current state of the ATI drivers?
Title: Low flight above forest...
Post by: cameni on August 04, 2011, 02:32:26 am
ATI drivers are still buggy, and although we've reported all of the bugs and (hopefully) they will be fixed soon in beta drivers, there's no chance of fixed public drivers appearing in summer. So we are working around the buggy parts, coding different paths for AMD to take. I've coded my part of the workarounds, and now it's Angrypig's turn.

His swearings already echo in the halls of Outerra, with one particular keyword in abundance :D
Title: Low flight above forest...
Post by: ZeosPantera on August 04, 2011, 04:36:23 am
Give those Canooks hell boss.
Title: Low flight above forest...
Post by: necro on August 04, 2011, 03:42:26 pm
thats looking cool. Are they in your collisionable objectlists, or could you pass through the trees as air?
Title: Low flight above forest...
Post by: Jangalomph on August 04, 2011, 08:42:24 pm
Wow this is looking great!  :D
Title: Low flight above forest...
Post by: Redrobes on August 05, 2011, 05:54:56 am
I have had another thought. I think I read somewhere that you set the sun for a particular time of day and time of year and it gets the right angle. If you know the time of year have you thought about using that colour control to make the trees much more yellow for certain latitudes based on time of year so that N hemispheres go yellow in autumn ?

In my GTS there is a parameter for the sun direction such that it melts snow on the sunny side of mountains but its not a dynamic/interactive app. If it were, then I think that sun direction would change per year and then the snowline would change as the mean solar heating changes. Of course we don't have procedural trees tho but if we did then I would imagine that your climate model could change them depending on the season.
Title: Low flight above forest...
Post by: cameni on August 05, 2011, 05:56:11 am
Quote from: necro
thats looking cool. Are they in your collisionable objectlists, or could you pass through the trees as air?
Not yet, currently you'd just pass through.
Title: Low flight above forest...
Post by: cameni on August 05, 2011, 06:10:50 am
Quote from: Redrobes
I have had another thought. I think I read somewhere that you set the sun for a particular time of day and time of year and it gets the right angle. If you know the time of year have you thought about using that colour control to make the trees much more yellow for certain latitudes based on time of year so that N hemispheres go yellow in autumn ?

Yes, that's the plan once the basic stuff is in place. There should be a coarse model computing the mean temperature for given latitude, altitude and current earth's inclination, later augmented by a differential map that brings the effects of things like ocean currents, mountain range air current shields and such.

From the mean temperature we'll also derive probabilities of vegetation types occurring - survival of plants depends mainly on minimum temperatures during year that the plant can withstand; I guess the minimum can be roughly computed from the mean value somehow, or it will be computed&stored separately. Mean can be used for snow coverage and for many other things, so it will be computed in parallel with terrain data in sufficient resolution, since it's expected to be used a lot. Together with precipitation maps. Basically, the idea is to provide the data so one can query the values for mean and min/max values at given place, and use it for vegetation and weather phenomena and whatever, in further development.
Title: Low flight above forest...
Post by: Redrobes on August 05, 2011, 08:20:48 am
Ohh this posted today as well - how convenient:

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0020551

Max tree height as a function of terrain, climate and other params which you probably have a good idea about. :)  It is supposed to have been checked with reasonable correlation with US tree height measurements as shown in this diagram.

http://www.plosone.org/article/slideshow.action?uri=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0020551&imageURI=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0020551.g001

I.e. bake this into mapressor to generate a useful world wide tree height param.
Title: Low flight above forest...
Post by: Abc94 on August 05, 2011, 01:49:24 pm
Well, I hope that these next beta drivers are "the ones".  The demo would be an awesome christmas present!
Quote from: cameni
His swearings already echo in the halls of Outerra

Have you had any more thoughts on the "making a live stream of debugging Outerra" idea?   :P
Title: Low flight above forest...
Post by: cameni on August 05, 2011, 02:01:09 pm
We hope we'll encounter no further problems and the workarounds will work. They may be a bit slower than the approaches we are using now, but nothing terrible. Once the right drivers become public we'll merge the paths.

Quote from: Abc94
Have you had any more thoughts on the "making a live stream of debugging Outerra" idea?   :P
No, but yesterday I was thinking if it would be a good idea to make a page displaying recent comments from our source code revision control system. Not sure :D
Title: Low flight above forest...
Post by: C. Shawn Smith on August 05, 2011, 02:38:36 pm
Quote from: Abc94
Well, I hope that these next beta drivers are "the ones".  The demo would be an awesome christmas present!
Quote from: cameni
His swearings already echo in the halls of Outerra

Have you had any more thoughts on the "making a live stream of debugging Outerra" idea?   :P

Heh, that actually made me think of something that might be cool for some of us.

Recently, a game-related e-zine I co-run/own has been experimenting with some private game streams on Twitch.tv (a subsidiary of Justin.tv), in preparation of doing a full scale launch at the end of the year.

It would be fairly cool if you guys could do something similar during the creation of a video sequence, or when you're just relaxing and flying around.  An "Outerra LIVE!" channel would be interesting :)

The feeds for some of these streams are generally low quality when there's a lot of movement, unless it's one of the "premium" channels.  But it could still be pretty fun.
Title: Low flight above forest...
Post by: Abc94 on August 05, 2011, 04:09:14 pm
Quote from: cshawnsmith
It would be fairly cool if you guys could do something similar during the creation of a video sequence, or when you're just relaxing and flying around.  An "Outerra LIVE!" channel would be interesting :)

Yeah something like that would be pretty cool.  Or get one stable version and make the ufo just fly around randomly by itself and have that on a stream.

That or you could hire someone to fly it around all day.   :P
Title: Low flight above forest...
Post by: Jagerbomber on August 05, 2011, 05:40:28 pm
Quote from: Abc94
That or you could hire someone to fly it around all day.   :P

Dibs!
Title: Low flight above forest...
Post by: tknudsen on August 11, 2011, 11:31:18 am
+1
Title: Low flight above forest...
Post by: Tottel on August 11, 2011, 12:52:49 pm
Actually.. an extension of the "request a screenshot of a certain location":

Outerra broadcasted live, and you can request a location to fly to! :D






.... I would gladly volunteer to fly around and take people's requests.. ;D
Title: Low flight above forest...
Post by: ZeosPantera on August 12, 2011, 06:07:41 am
Not to knock flight simmers much.. But this is the least climactic video I have ever seen...

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKI3jtoltqg[/video]

Thousands of dollars and that is literally as exciting as it gets.
Title: Low flight above forest...
Post by: Tottel on August 12, 2011, 08:43:34 am
... Seems like a very exciting person.

Not to be rude, but the first thing I'll do when an interactive outerra demo is available is crash the plane. ^^
Title: Low flight above forest...
Post by: corona on August 12, 2011, 09:04:04 am
Quote from: ZeosPantera
Not to knock flight simmers much.. But this is the least climactic video I have ever seen...

Thousands of dollars and that is literally as exciting as it gets.

So what, different people like different things.
Nobody mocks you for shooting the nth bad guy of the day while proclaiming l33t victory.

I would love to have a setup like this, and the guy probably enjoys himselves. As would I. I'd rather practice ILS approaches than run around fragging people. You may find that boring.

Title: Low flight above forest...
Post by: OGREMAN on August 12, 2011, 02:40:21 pm
Ohh no ... this Vid gives us a view into the world of a particular catagory of simmer, I call them the "rubber dogsh*t out of Hong Kong brigade", they are into the system monitoring thing of the sort that long haul freight and passenger pilots do. Its all very technical and severly tedious, certainly NOT representative of flight simmers by any stretch.

If you would like to see examples of a true state of the art flight sim on PC view the fan videos on you tube for the latest DCS sims of a10c or Black shark, this one is more like it....  http://vimeo.com/14706257
 Point to note about the sim in the Black Shark is that you are sitting in a fully 3D interactive virtual cockpit where every switch dial and button actually functions correctly and the flight dynamics is so close to the real thing that pilots use the sim for training puposes.
Title: Low flight above forest...
Post by: ZeosPantera on August 12, 2011, 04:39:49 pm
Well considering I am the one who is recommending Airships as a travel option in outerra slow and boring seems to be right up my alley. And I am terrible at FPS games to the point that I find it offensive to judge me otherwise.

Helicopter sim's are a bit more active and engaging. Guess it comes down to the amount of time you are alloted not actively participating at the controls before death occurs.

This is more how I spend my weekends.  [video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_P8S-XpT0Vc[/video]
Title: Low flight above forest...
Post by: richiebogie on August 12, 2011, 08:09:46 pm
Hi Angry Pig,

That dense foliage is great for rainforest.

In dry sclerophyll forest, or what I call fireforest, the eucalypts have sparse leaves. They grow fast and slender, often dropping flammable material which resists decay!

Dangerous stuff.

In relation to dropping leaves in winter, remember this is only deciduous trees. Evergreen trees with regular leaves (not just needles) are found near the equator and southern hemisphere... both rainforest and fireforest.

You may already know all this, or expect to find out when you are ready!

Richard.
Title: Re: Low flight above forest...
Post by: Averythegreat on October 31, 2016, 11:59:36 pm
hello, very much enjoying the tech demo but i only have 2D trees. How do i get 3D trees?
Title: Re: Low flight above forest...
Post by: Jagerbomber on November 01, 2016, 12:42:05 am
No 3D trees yet.