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[Edding3000]

Hi guys!

I am having a couple of technical questions about your future plans about the engine.

1. Will you be implementing DX10 / DX11 (or opengl equivalent) features?

2. How is rendering done at the moment? Forward or Deferred?
- Any updates about lighting other than sunlight? Spot/Point?
- Are you working on things like ambient occlusion?
- Terrain self-shadowing? What's the status on that one?

3. 3d Trees
- Will they be generated in a way such that not all trees are the same? Will it be about specifying parameters and supplying textures to create a type of tree? Or how will it work?

4. Biomes
- How will biomes be implemented?
- Will there be a 'seasonal' variation that works dynamic? Like progressing trough the day!

5. Rivers / Lakes
- Any thoughts about this already? Will you be using a vector system for lakes? How about rivers? Static, or will the have a flow direction?

6. Particles
- Any work already being done there?

I know this are a lot of questions but, im just really curious about them, and maybe we can share our thoughts about these matters!

Kind regards,

[cameni]

1. Will you be implementing DX10 / DX11 (or opengl equivalent) features?

Might use some parts of it to enhance certain aspects of our algorithms. But generally we don't feel the pressure, for example the engine already dynamically generates the terrain, tesselating it procedurally to the required quality, without the need for tesselation shaders there. But it may be used to suppress the artifacts of our shadowing and non-linear projection algorithms.

2. How is rendering done at the moment? Forward or Deferred?
- Any updates about lighting other than sunlight? Spot/Point?
- Are you working on things like ambient occlusion?
- Terrain self-shadowing? What's the status on that one?

I think Angrypig already had a working ambient occlusion test at some point. Everything else is in various stages of development, mainly waiting for every part of the rendering to get synced, since terrain and objects don't produce all necessary data yet. The rendering is forward now, we are evaluating the options and doing tests as to what method to use for additional lights, that will work right with the atmospheric rendering and fog. Lots of stuff is dependent on other parts, like the shadowing algorithms on implementation of non-linear shadow mapping able to cover large terrain more effectively, but then it needs additional measures to suppress the artifacts etc etc.

3. 3d Trees
- Will they be generated in a way such that not all trees are the same? Will it be about specifying parameters and supplying textures to create a type of tree? Or how will it work?

For performance reasons trees in distance will look the same, based on a few prototypes of tree of given type. Up close they are supposed to diverge a bit with procedural alteration of angles and lengths etc. The generator is procedural, so it's a bunch of parameters and a leaf texture that is then processed.

It's also connected to biome distribution rules, in development.

4. Biomes
- How will biomes be implemented?
- Will there be a 'seasonal' variation that works dynamic? Like progressing trough the day!

http://www.outerra.com/forum/index.php?topic=1420.0

5. Rivers / Lakes
- Any thoughts about this already? Will you be using a vector system for lakes? How about rivers? Static, or will the have a flow direction?

Vector system with riverbeds and flow direction. Unlike sea waves, that aggregate waves of different directions, rivers have only ones going down.

6. Particles
- Any work already being done there?

Just a few tests so far.