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[cameni]

1. What are the system requirements to run this engine?
The engine is GPU-centric and requires a DX10-class graphics card with OpenGL3.3 drivers and 512MB of GPU memory.
As the minimum should be considered an Nvidia 8800GT. Although the engine can run on lesser cards, it can affect the overall smoothness. Alpha builds don't contain all optimizations yet so this recommendation will likely change for finished product.

2. How does Outerra engine work?
It takes elevation data with arbitrary and optionally also varying resolution, that it further dynamically refines using fractal algorithms. The fractals try to mimic natural processes, generating fine, believable terrain with high resolution. The world is also being dynamically textured and populated with vegetation using predefined land type material sets and the computed terrain attributes.

3. What is the format for in-game models?  Can I use Maya/Lightwave/3dMax to create models and import them within the engine?
Engine uses its own format optimized for the rendering, but Collada files can be converted to it using a separate tool.

4. What physics are employed by the engine?
The engine currently integrates Bullet physics library for general physics and JSBSim library for flight dynamics modeling.
Practically any library can be used as long as it's able to cope with spherical worlds and huge terrains and has an interface capable to handle dynamically generated terrain in an effective manner.

5. What about water? Rivers, lakes and oceans.
In development. Vector data will be used for rivers and lakes.
...

6. Will there be weather? Clouds ..
In development.
...

7. Will there be particle effects?
In development.
...

8. Will terrain be destructible?
Destructible terrain is possible; dirt roads can be seen as an example of this too. Heavier modifications are not a problem as well. We have been thinking also about having destructible trees, this may be possible too once all other more significant issues are resolved.

9. Will there be artificial planets, asteroids or moons and other star systems
Support for artificial planets will be added later after maturing the Earth and close bodies - Moon and Mars.
The process will work by employing a generator in place of the external planetary data. The generator will mimic the characteristic patterns of topographic features on a planet - continents, mountain ranges, water drainage networks, volcanoes etc. generating them randomly but keeping them believable and natural for given planet type.

It will be also possible to combine this approach with the data-driven planet creation. With procedurally generated planets you could still want to influence the shapes of the continents or to place/move the mountains or to define the climates so that it all lines up with the game setting. You should be able to mod specific locations by smaller height field patches as well.

10. Will interplanetary travel be possible?
Yes, the engine is designed to allow this.

11. Will underground caverns and tunnels be supported?
Underground caverns will be supported by employing a tunnel/cavern generator, that will be using vector data to generate the geometry and blend it into existing terrain.

Note: members can post replies to this topic, these will be later deleted and answered or used to refine the existing answers if deemed worthy.

[Morcrist]

Has any consideration been given to converting terrain data to voxels? I'd imagine it would greatly enhance/ease the creation of underground cave systems and/or terrain deformations. Would this not give the "best of both worlds"? Terrain as voxels with poly models on top? One could imagine an entire planet being blown up/carved away if it was composed of voxels.

Thanks for your time.

[cameni]

Voxels would take enormous space. Use of voxels is problematic even on "normal" game levels, on a planetary scale (with full visibility) it would be insane. While they would definitely ease the creation of complex underground caves, they would complicate pretty much everything else ...

[shinseitom]

Since it hasn't appeared to be mentioned in a while, will there eventually be support for non-spherical planetary shapes, such as a ringworld or other oddities?

[cameni]

It is possible, though I guess it will only come into a planet creator based on OT engine, which will have a different focus than the Anteworld game (which is centered around Earth).

[A7M16]

Will there be terrain destructibility like when I'm flying In my space ship and I drop a bomb or accidentally crash my plane into the ground or what ever will there be a Crater?   YES/NO ?

[ZeosPantera]

Will there be terrain destructibility like when I'm flying In my space ship and I drop a bomb or accidentally crash my plane into the ground or what ever will there be a Crater?   YES/NO ?

I can answer this one. Yes. It is planned to have all sorts of things affect the ground. Even to the point that vehicles driving over soft ground can leave physical tracks behind only to be worn away by time and weather.

[A7M16]

Does the engine support wildlife like bears, cows, horses, dogs, wolves, snakes, fish, sharks ETC.   and if it did would that be something default like trees in the engine or would that be up to a game developer to add that.

Also Not that i would really care to much but how would biome specific plants like cactus or palm trees be handled. Basically will there be different specie of plants or just one tree re-textured to fit where its at?       example:  Say one tree textured for a Snowy place and then re-textured for non-snowy place.

[cameni]

Not sure about the wildlife and the extent of its support directly within the engine. Many games won't need it, and it would be a lot of work to add animals and realistic models of behavior and all that. But it may be covered by another developer who would make it as an addon.

There will be different tree types to fit the environments and also to fit various conditions, i.e. the same tree type inside forest looks different than a tree standing alone, or at the forest border.

[ChookWantan]

I have a question about multiplayer. How many people could populate one Outerra server at a time? I know you are ironing other things out, but even a rough guess would be appreciated!

[cameni]

There's no Outerra networking server. Networking is something that's independent of the rendering engine and will also depend on the type of the game.

[ChookWantan]

Ah, that makes much more sense 

[Klugschwätzer]

Don't get me wrong. The idea for an engine that mirrors an entire planet is splendid. I really hate those 50m wide levels where I feel kind of trapped all the time.

But the engine atm looks very sterile somehow. Probably because everything is procedural and cloned.

Do you plan to change that? By overlaying an additional layer with random noise (like in a field of gras there are patches of flowers here that are missing over there, or patches of deep green gras at the bottom of a valley where there is more water than on a steep climb, or undergrowth in the forrests, or random pools, streams and so fort). The engine sure is great and looks great, but only from far away so far.

Thanks for your time.

[cameni]

Well it's not fault of it being procedural, but of it not being procedural enough

At the moment there are several detail levels that are missing, and biomes and variety within the biomes (at 500-1000m scale) are missing more than the ground level detail you speak of. But yes, eventually there will be more detail at that scale as well. Vegetation, but also things like rocks and terrain fault lines etc. It will derive from the biome data, so that's why these must come first.

[Klugschwätzer]

Splendid. Looking forward to seeing it in action.
Then all we need are some physics like seen here:
.. and then we have the perfect sandbox game.