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[mctash]

Hey everyone,

Seems to have been a fair bit of talk about various different apps utilizing Outerra on the forum so perhaps with the looming release (I hope its soon ) maybe now would be a good time to start trying to sub divide things on the forums? For instance it seems that there are a few fly boys (myself included) here chatting about stuff specifically related to the mechanics of flight etc. Perhaps a flight board, with sub boards including physics, 3d modelling, coding etc etc would be a good idea in anticipation of whats to come? Same goes for any other frequently discussed application area.

Maybe I'm jumping the gun a little bit here but I'm chomping at the bit waiting for Outerra Apologies if your already on this or someone else has suggested it already.

McTash

[cameni]

Not sure about how to subdivide the forums yet, but some subforums will be surely needed. For example, we mean to add a "simconnect" mode to the game later on, that would allow using OT as an image generator for other simulators. Surely there will be a subforum for that one.

Suggestions are welcome.

[mctash]

Hey Cameni,

Assuming that a lot of projects will probably involve recreating parts of Earth (including man made stuff like buildings) it would be cool to have a 3d objects sub-forum/library full of community created (and therefore hopefully not license restricted) objects ready for use.

Have to admit I'm not to up speed on how Outerra would handle "designed" areas so maybe the above isn't feasible.

I think one of the problems with choosing how to divide the forums is the fact there is massive potential for the engine. Soooo many varied applications.

Maybe then having your own github/sourceforge type thing would be a better way to handle it. Outerraforge or something more imaginative That way you wouldn't have to sub divide the forums to some huge level but people would find interesting projects to track or help with by browsing or searching the project site. Each project could have its own homepage/message board/issue tracker/code - asset tree etc etc.

McTash

[cameni]

Yes, too many possibilities
I guess it will show up in time. A subforum for objects is expected, too. There's one related thing - since OT embeds the chromium browser, you can browse stuff directly from within the app. This begs for the ability to import objects directly from the web - we just need to come up with a format that could be recognized automatically by OT, when you click on a link. For example, a properly named zip file with the right content could be automagically caught and offered to install the model/mod ...

[mctash]

I'm going slightly off topic here but with regards to the inevitable flight sim style app, how would one go about designing the airports and and major cities etc?

I guess there is a shit ton to do before that point but it would be really cool to see some of the suggested file formats for such entities with a view to start designing tools.

McTash

[cameni]

Well I guess the airports should be done in a "normal" way, making models for the buildings and all, except for the runways that are to be modeled directly in engine since they are using special data structures optimized for seamless integration into the terrain. There will be importer for the models, you should be able to convert from Collada format. There will probably be also an importer for the roads and runways, to get them all in, but we have to make an interface/SDK for it, so that skilled people can feed the data from their sources.

Another path is importing OSM data. OSM has a huge database (150 GB uncompressed XML), and for an effective import we'd need to partition the vector records into tiles that roughly cover terrain tiles in our projection, for the importer to process it effectively.

There are also other types of data in OSM that could be used. Ultimately we'd like to feed city/building generator with the polygons defining the city parts. The effectiveness of OSM importer is crucial here.

[mctash]

Certainly its all a bit over my head at this level.

 A kind of general question I have (last one for now I promise ) is how does the engine handle non-generated building groups with regards to performance. As far as I can gather from the tech talk here the fact that stuff is procedurally generated is really great for performance over the standard 3d engine way of doing things (like the id-tech or unreal engine).

Say for instance we have a very large airport like Heathrow London. To have it accurate it would be good but it would mean explicit placement of unique objects within the worldspace. Would this equal a performance hit like you see with other engines where the more complex the scene becomes the more fps you lose? (I'm really referring to fsx here).

Apologies for the noob questions.

McTash

[cameni]

Custom placement means the models and instance data have to be stored somewhere, and uploaded to the GPU for rendering. FSX is a streaming type engine, everything is streamed to the GPU and the neck is CPU->GPU bridge and the management of the stuff for the rendering.

In Outerra the load is relieved by using procedural generators and vector data. However, custom models in the scene that are unique and non-instanced have to be treated in the classical way. Managing the used memory, LOD levels and all. At the moment we aren't handling LOD on objects, just doing something very basic - turning off rendering of meshes if they end up smaller than a certain pixel threshold on the screen. If we were to handle cities this way, it would become the weak spot of the engine, really contrasting with the surrounding stuff. Though not that much as in FSX I guess, since the ground doesn't have to be handled the way FSX does it.

[mctash]

Many thanks for your answers today Cameni.

Now the hard part.... waiting patiently for demo