Outerra forum

Outerra Engine => Technology => Topic started by: cameni on October 03, 2009, 07:59:58 am

Title: Welcome to the 'Technology' forum
Post by: cameni on October 03, 2009, 07:59:58 am
This forum is intended for developers who would like to discuss features and requirements of the engine. Suggestions and postings of interesting related information are welcome, too.

Welcome!
Title: Welcome to the 'Technology' forum
Post by: pico on November 13, 2009, 06:05:27 pm
I realy like ur Engine. Do u plan a simple FlyoverDemo like this?

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/downloads/6bb837ec-a2c4-4236-9e1a-de45144644e1/
Title: Welcome to the 'Technology' forum
Post by: cameni on November 14, 2009, 03:28:54 am
Quote from: Pico
I realy like ur Engine. Do u plan a simple FlyoverDemo like this?
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/downloads/6bb837ec-a2c4-4236-9e1a-de45144644e1/
We are going to release a demo in near future with possibility to fly around in there but also to drive a ground vehicle. Cannot say precisely when, though, there are still many things to do.
Title: Welcome to the 'Technology' forum
Post by: pico on November 14, 2009, 09:23:57 am
This sounds great. I cant wait to explore this Landscape by myself. :)
Title: Welcome to the 'Technology' forum
Post by: helio2 on November 20, 2009, 03:05:08 pm
I have a ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB and a Quad core processor with 4Gbs of Ram. Windows Vista and 7

Could i run this software?
what kind of frame rate could i expect?
Title: Welcome to the 'Technology' forum
Post by: cameni on November 20, 2009, 04:09:24 pm
Quote from: helio2
I have a ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB and a Quad core processor with 4Gbs of Ram. Windows Vista and 7

Could i run this software?
what kind of frame rate could i expect?
The engine requires a SM4 class graphics card, so anything from 8800 cards from nVidia and 2000 cards from ATI will do. Although, we still have some problems with ATI cards at the moment, namely the asynchronous readbacks aren't much asynchronous and it results in twitching during the camera movement, as the driver syncs. But we should have a workaround, only very slightly slowing the rendering for ATI cards.
Or ATI fixes their drivers :-)

Frame rates aren't final yet, as there aren't all the optimizations yet, but it's normally playable even with the vast forests rendered.
Title: Welcome to the 'Technology' forum
Post by: helio2 on November 21, 2009, 03:00:05 am
Oh, well i can play Crysis on Max Settings @1440x900 at 50 fps.
Also how are you currently handling the camera movements in the game?
Can you like Look all around, for example look up with the mouse all the way until your upside down, or does it stop at 180 degrees?  Or Can you till the camera with the left and right arrow keys until your upside down? or does the camera track the planet's terrain? how does it work?
Title: Welcome to the 'Technology' forum
Post by: cameni on November 21, 2009, 04:52:38 am
It entirely depends on the camera controller. The current one is free motion controller and you can do whatever you want, it only stops you one meter from the surface and adjusts the speed by the altitude (slower close to the ground), but otherwise you can turn around in any way and get all the motion sickness you want :-)
Title: Welcome to the 'Technology' forum
Post by: helio2 on November 29, 2009, 03:41:42 am
That's awesome i like motion sickness! Are the camera movements gradual or are they instant? Like when you are just looking around on a spot and you look left , is the speed gradual or instant? Also like when you come to a spot does it decelerate or does it just stop. I guess maybe the equivalent of a speed fade. Not sure if i made sense or not, dont know how to explain it lawlz.
Title: Welcome to the 'Technology' forum
Post by: cameni on November 29, 2009, 03:51:39 am
As I said it's entirely dependent on the motion controller, so it will be probably different for different vehicles - just what we'll find appropriate.
Title: Welcome to the 'Technology' forum
Post by: RaikoRaufoss on May 01, 2010, 02:53:15 pm
Quote from: cameni
The engine requires a SM4 class graphics card, so anything from 8800 cards from nVidia and 2000 cards from ATI will do. Although, we still have some problems with ATI cards at the moment, namely the asynchronous readbacks aren't much asynchronous and it results in twitching during the camera movement, as the driver syncs. But we should have a workaround, only very slightly slowing the rendering for ATI cards.
Or ATI fixes their drivers :-)

Frame rates aren't final yet, as there aren't all the optimizations yet, but it's normally playable even with the vast forests rendered.
Nice to know. I have a Radeon 2600 Pro with 256 MB RAM, a Core 2 Duo 2.66GHz, 320GB HDD, and 2 GB DDR2-800 here on my iMac.  What frame rate can I expect with such specs at say, 1024x768 with settings not cranked up too high?
Title: Welcome to the 'Technology' forum
Post by: cameni on May 01, 2010, 03:23:11 pm
Well I don't know what's the performance of 2xxx cards from ATI, never had one. The above statement was related to the pure possibility of running the code, as we require SM4 level graphics.
 But apart from the ATI driver issue and the state of OpenGL on Macs there is another problem with your setup - 256MB RAM is way too low. I didn't know they were making these with so little memory.
Title: Welcome to the 'Technology' forum
Post by: RaikoRaufoss on May 01, 2010, 03:26:44 pm
Quote from: cameni
Well I don't know what's the performance of 2xxx cards from ATI, never had one. The above statement was related to the pure possibility of running the code, as we require SM4 level graphics.
 But apart from the ATI driver issue and the state of OpenGL on Macs there is another problem with your setup - 256MB RAM is way too low. I didn't know they were making these with so little memory.
The 256MB RAM on my graphics card is too low?  Darn.  In that case, I'll just have to dream that I have to get a new computer.
Title: Welcome to the 'Technology' forum
Post by: RaikoRaufoss on May 01, 2010, 11:15:50 pm
Sorry for double posting, but another question came to me.  I already know that Outerra fully uses multi-cored processors.  What I'm curious about is: Would a graphics card meant for gaming or for workstation applications be best, and would a regular CPU, or a CPU meant for workstations be best?
Title: Welcome to the 'Technology' forum
Post by: cameni on May 02, 2010, 01:27:26 am
Outerra mainly utilizes the GPU, that's the component that makes the most difference. With a better GPU one can set a higher overall detail level or to get a smoother experience during dynamic motion in a difficult terrain (difficult to generate).

It is expected that the CPU side will be exploited more by the simulator or game code, so it mostly depends on the requirements of that part.
Title: Welcome to the 'Technology' forum
Post by: RaikoRaufoss on May 02, 2010, 02:42:52 pm
So, in that case, the ultimate GPU for running the engine would be Nvidia's GTX 480.

Edit: Silly me, mistook GPU for CPU
Title: Re: Welcome to the 'Technology' forum
Post by: Allen Bajrovic on March 15, 2012, 05:19:56 pm
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/06/nasa-satellite-maps-99-of-earths-topography/ (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/06/nasa-satellite-maps-99-of-earths-topography/)