
Yes!, it looks amazing, even at this early demo stage (both engine and Middle Earth terrain model in development). Big thanks to Cameni!
Haha, yes seen that vid before. Taxi!!!! The Eagles would not have done it though because, being intelligent creatures, they would be also tempted by the Ring- although what a 40 bird does with a tiny lil ring I don't know
cshawn, from the pics of your model, I'm not sure if we can add anything to what you've already done. The ME-DEM model is still in development. My eventual goal is to use real world data combined with the basics that we already have.
Synthetic terrain doesn't stand up to scrutiny from extreme heights that you get in OuTerra in the way that real Earth data does. There are scarcely any game models that do. If you looked at Morrowind, Oblivion, etc and compared it to Earth at that high altitude, you'd see the difference. But I'm working on that, and OuTerra just gives me inspiration and the motivation to go to the next level.
...but then I'm a bit of a perfectionist, if you're playing the game at ground level or flying at sub orbital altitudes, then yes, you are in absolutely in Middle Earth and the landscape looks awesome.
I used the ridge patterns of the Alps to model the Misty Mts. That went some way to producing the visual effect. But I want to go the whole hog and use the actual terrain itself.
What I'd say is we use Global Mapper, and all of our terrain layers, features (forest cover, rivers, roads) are stored with the terrain in there as vector layers. If you can get your terrain in there, then vectorising is really easy. You'll also have georeferencing and tiled import/export as well. We store our project data in its basic form and then we can export at different detail levels for different things- visualisations, game data, etc.
We're happy to let people use our terrain to make a game or whatever. What we're short of is models for buildings, characters, etc. We can supply the terrain and positional info for vegetation, roads, lakes, towns, etc.
One of the most exciting things is that OuTerra is supporting vector data and in the tunnels/caves thread we were talking about getting underground areas into the engine. If we can input that as vectors, and then OuTerra flesh out the tunnels and caves procedurally to some degree, then we have the possibility to have really large underground cities like Moria and Gundabad. Obviously you'll still need 3D modelling for the areas of special interest- great fun making those too, but the bulk of the tunnels connecting those areas will be made easier to create. I've got massive underground maps of both Moria and Gundabad I'd love to see.
pdf of the Goblin city:
http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Temp/Gundabad1Version1.zip Also, the limestone canyon and tunnel complex that lies some way from the city- it provides access to both Gundabad by more secret means, and surrounding Orc fortresses/ holdings.
http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Temp/Gundalok.png Hfz is supported by Global Mapper, World Machine, L3DT, Wilbur, and soon Leveller. GeoControl as yet doesn't support it but the dev said he would add it.
monks