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[HiFlyer]

Hi.

With the functionality of the updated location browser, its become much easier and more tempting to type in random locations to compare Outerra with real life. Its a lot of fun, but it it also makes it a lot more obvious how much Outerra coastlines deviate from reality.

I know that as far back as 2012, coastlines were on the Outerra radar, but I'm not sure at all where things stand now since I don't remember hearing about them in a very long time.

Any updates/progress on that front?

[cameni]

I bet there are many things where you could say "a lot more obvious how much Outerra xyz deviate from reality"

We haven't done much with coastlines yet. I planned to import coastlines as vector paths once the vector importer becomes ready. But I gradually grew unconvinced that it's the right thing, because of artifacts when wide and possibly quite curved vector paths are rendered. I'm now thinking that generating a distance field will be better, as it's already used (computed) to render the surf waves. That may also solve several other issues, like water flooding everywhere below 0 meters presently.

[HiFlyer]

I bet there are many things where you could say "a lot more obvious how much Outerra xyz deviate from reality"

I only thought of it after reading an X-plane thread where a college student was busy importing the Hawaiian Islands.

I went to several of the islands to see how Outerra handled them, and except for very large, broad features, they were only vaguely recognizable.

I had previously visited other island locations (Like St Maarten) that I thought might be good areas to build small local sceneries but found that the coastlines tended to make such efforts largely impossible. Even Manhattan Island appears different enough from reality that if you dropped a city mesh there, it simply wouldn't match.

At the same time, there is an Outerra thread on one of the X-plane forums, where a user asked in the last day or so about Outerras ability to provide recognizable landmarks for flyers.

Given all of the above, it seems certain that general users (and the military!) are going to eventually be asking you more and more about visual location confirmation in Outerra, probably sooner rather than later.

Lets hope for a good solution!

[cameni]

Looking at that, it's definitely about a better mesh resolution first, then coastlines, as the latter can't do magic on a coarse stuff ...

[HiFlyer]

Looking at that, it's definitely about a better mesh resolution first, then coastlines, as the latter can't do magic on a coarse stuff ...

And we have already had the "Mesh resolution" thread. 

I wish it was possible for us users to add higher resolution. I'm sure somebody (who wouldn't get much sleep, afterwards) would probably be working on it by tomorrow!! 

Save you guys some effort.

[josem75]

Looking at that, it's definitely about a better mesh resolution first, then coastlines, as the latter can't do magic on a coarse stuff ...

And we have already had the "Mesh resolution" thread. 

I wish it was possible for us users to add higher resolution. I'm sure somebody (who wouldn't get much sleep, afterwards) would probably be working on it by tomorrow!! 

Save you guys some effort.

I have a 5 meters Mesh for my region (Andalucía). I used in MSFS 2004
As u said. If we get that point where we can add meshes as users like in a flight simulator, this engine would be so epic.

[John514]

Idea: Cameni said that stuffing the whole world with high resolution mesh would be too much in terms of filesize and maybe the server could cope either.
So instead of getting the whole mesh at once, OT could:
1) use a higher res mesh that would be kick in as the user approached the area the the resolution was needed. Basically, this is like a step backwards from Outerra's technology, because it's closer to old - school LODs, while Outerra refines the current mesh using PG, BUT the higher resolution mesh could be used as a step in between the current 90m mesh and the procedural refinement.

Or

2) In uses for simulations where the route is predefined, like departure and arrival airports and the NavAids in between them, outerra could fill  the tiles containing the route with the higher resolution mesh.