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Author Topic: How does Outerra handle populated towns?  (Read 10440 times)

Crimsonknight3

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How does Outerra handle populated towns?
« on: June 25, 2014, 01:12:32 pm »

I was wandering around the hills in outerra where my home town is, and I was wondering. How does Outerra know the terrain of my town? Is it from historic maps or current maps? E.g. The terrain in outerra looks how man has made it rather than natural? Also I was wondering, is there any way for outerra to see roads on the maps that is has downloaded for your co-ordinates and place them into outerra? It would be nice to see all of my streets and drive around them :)

Thanks
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John514

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Re: How does Outerra handle populated towns?
« Reply #1 on: June 25, 2014, 01:37:30 pm »

Welcome to the forums!

Outerra uses a modern digital elevation map. The way this works is, a plane or a sattelite flies over an area and records the vertical elevation of the gound. (Don`t ask me how, I think they use lasers or something!)
These datasets are available for free or at a price, depenting on their detail.
The way Outerra works is, it takes a relatively low detail dataset and then "thinks" how the elevation would be if the dataset was more detailed. In other words, Outerra takes the main elevation and adds the details itself!

Now, because the Earth in Outerra is 1:1 scale, in other words, same size as the real planet, you can apply any other form of data produced by studying the Earth itself, on top of it.

So, for example, there is an open source map service called OpenStreetMaps. Its like Google Maps, but since its open source, you can download their dataset and use it on your own. For example, you choose to download the dataset containing all the roads in the world (well, most of them anyway, there are some missing, but its very rare. Usually small dirt roads and alleys) and apply it ontop of Outerra`s elevation dataset and Boom! You have the whole world with the roads on top of the terrain.

Then, lets say you go and download the dataset with all the railway lines in the world! Apply that on top of the two previous datasets and you have the terrain, the roads and the railways! Its layers upon layers of datasets.
That is of course when the Outerra SDK arives, or the developers choose to add it themselves.

I hope that helped a little and feel free to ask anything else you need!
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CaptTrego

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Re: How does Outerra handle populated towns?
« Reply #2 on: June 25, 2014, 03:13:08 pm »

A question going the other way so to speak....

What if we want to resort back to a previous time in history to "build" the terrain?   
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John514

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Re: How does Outerra handle populated towns?
« Reply #3 on: June 25, 2014, 03:16:46 pm »

A question going the other way so to speak....

What if we want to resort back to a previous time in history to "build" the terrain?   

Very nice question. Although we cannot be certain on the actual shape of the terrain in years that are gone, there are plenty of historical data to generate an elevation dataset from.

Although, I may have not understood your question entirely. Are you talking about real-time editing the terrain inside the game/engine?
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PytonPago

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Re: How does Outerra handle populated towns?
« Reply #4 on: June 25, 2014, 03:31:20 pm »

A question going the other way so to speak....

What if we want to resort back to a previous time in history to "build" the terrain?

 ... best would be editing the main datasheet of OT (or the original one they used to process) on basis of historical records - on a global scale, it will be a pain. Some terrain deformations will be later added too, so changing the landscape will be possible ( maybe in chunks of terrain-data ). Doe, i have to say, trying to go further than 60 years whiteout detailed and verified field data at hand will be almost impossible from the realism side ... whats your plan in this ? Want to revert some modern history damage ? 
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HiFlyer

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Re: How does Outerra handle populated towns?
« Reply #5 on: June 25, 2014, 05:25:49 pm »

A question going the other way so to speak....

What if we want to resort back to a previous time in history to "build" the terrain?

 ... best would be editing the main datasheet of OT (or the original one they used to process) on basis of historical records - on a global scale, it will be a pain. Some terrain deformations will be later added too, so changing the landscape will be possible ( maybe in chunks of terrain-data ). Doe, i have to say, trying to go further than 60 years whiteout detailed and verified field data at hand will be almost impossible from the realism side ... whats your plan in this ? Want to revert some modern history damage ?

I'm hoping that the terrain can be updated to something with more detail. I know that in the sim world there are many high quality terrain data-sets, and it would be great if some of those were convertible to a format Outera could use.
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CaptTrego

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Re: How does Outerra handle populated towns?
« Reply #6 on: July 01, 2014, 12:17:50 pm »

I posed the question because of wanting to "sculpt" airfields for instance that were used in WW1 and WW2.   
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PytonPago

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Re: How does Outerra handle populated towns?
« Reply #7 on: July 01, 2014, 03:51:41 pm »

Well, then details should be in fair-enough quality for such objects. Think that OT will eventually have some tool to add certain area height-data profiles to do such stuff. Am sure ME-Dem guys will like that too ...
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CaptTrego

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Re: How does Outerra handle populated towns?
« Reply #8 on: July 01, 2014, 06:30:05 pm »

Thank you PytonPago! :D :D :D
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