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Outerra Tech Demo download. Help with graphics driver issues

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Author Topic: Images from ME-DEM project  (Read 55096 times)

cameni

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« on: May 02, 2011, 04:32:35 pm »

Here are few screes from ongoing effort to get data from Middle Earth DEM project into Outerra using the new terrain mapping tool. ME-DEM project is aiming to create a complex digital model of Tolkien's Middle Earth.

With Outerra one of the goals is to be able to set foot in virtual worlds of well known fantasy and science fiction works, with real scale and full details. The screens do not contain anything recognizable yet, it's one of the first imports of 4000km x 4000km area with original resolution of 100m, mapped to an equally sized area on earth-sized planet.

The terrain mapping tool has been extended to support HF2/HFZ format used in various terrain making software.








« Last Edit: November 18, 2013, 02:54:37 pm by cameni »
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C. Shawn Smith

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« Reply #1 on: May 02, 2011, 04:54:03 pm »

Outstanding!
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RaikoRaufoss

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« Reply #2 on: May 02, 2011, 06:49:47 pm »

Incredible!  Could this map be integrated into the Outerra demo as one of the planets the ISS Outerra visited?
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C. Shawn Smith

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« Reply #3 on: May 02, 2011, 08:54:46 pm »

Actually, I keep forgetting to contact these guys .. I need to get my hands on some of their elevation data so I can analyze it for my own fictional realm's purpose lol

Would love to see the areas of the Misty Mountains, Mordor (Barad Dur, actually), and the valley of Rivendel.
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ZeosPantera

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« Reply #4 on: May 02, 2011, 11:22:35 pm »

I don't see the black gates.. Or the mines of Moria. Or the white tower of... honestly can't remember don't have the Tolkien hotline on my speed dial. Good movies though, excellent surround sound mixing.
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cameni

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« Reply #5 on: May 03, 2011, 01:19:44 am »

Quote from: RaikoRaufoss
Incredible!  Could this map be integrated into the Outerra demo as one of the planets the ISS Outerra visited?
Probably not, it doesn't fit to the game setting, and it's not a complete continent, not mentioning the whole planet. And there's still a lot of work until it gets terrain detail levels approaching that of Earth data.
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PeterBitt

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« Reply #6 on: May 05, 2011, 09:08:38 am »

wow, i imagine a nice morrowind style rpg within a real huge world :o
with creatures and animals all over the planet, some castles and citys, spells to jump or fly over thousands of kilometers ... this engine is fantastic!
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« Reply #7 on: May 05, 2011, 09:21:35 am »

Quote from: PeterBitt
spells to jump or fly over thousands of kilometers ...

That seems counter productive toward using the benefits of this engine. If going from one end of something like middle earth to the other was that easy nobody but the super dedicated would hoof it. And they would be at a disadvantage for doing it properly.

GIANT EAGLES DO NOT APPLY!

[video][/video]
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PeterBitt

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« Reply #8 on: May 05, 2011, 09:57:31 am »

you played morrowind? i think its a nice feature to jump or levitate, especially if the world has 10000x size of morrowind.
for sure these spells must be learned and mastered over long time, not that frodo just jumps from his living room to mordor in 5 seconds  :D
i neeed a rpg with outerra engine!
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Tottel

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« Reply #9 on: May 05, 2011, 11:49:05 am »

Middle earth in Outerra? Yes.. YES!
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monks

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« Reply #10 on: May 06, 2011, 09:41:00 am »

:) 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  :P  

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. :D
 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
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Redrobes

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« Reply #11 on: May 07, 2011, 07:39:35 pm »

Those pics are really superb. I'm processing the next gen terrain now and its taking a few days on a quad and its been optimized as much as possible already. Kinda getting to the point we need a farm to do this... I'm not sure how much of this processing output Outerra can use but this will generate some good masks like vegetation maps, flow and sediment etc not to mention the snow and glacier flow. It will be rendered out using my programmable shader but I think Outerra uses all of its own. What we will get is a super sized middle earth map to look at as well as a pre cut selection of height tiles to use as the basis for the Outerra terrain compressor.

For Cameni and anyone else who might appreciate the nerd LOL...
[img=make make make...]http://www.viewing.ltd.uk/Temp/Outerra/makemakemake2.png[/img]

C. Shawn Smith

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« Reply #12 on: May 07, 2011, 09:31:28 pm »

Redrobes, I have a duo and am willing to contribute processor time when I'm asleep or not using the computer.  Just let me know :)

Would be cool to get something like Seti@home going for a project like this :D
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Redrobes

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« Reply #13 on: May 07, 2011, 09:46:46 pm »

Thats very kind and generous but the issue is also that once you have processed a load of data then you have to get it all back to one place. With a massive extensive cloud type thing that might work but for a few PCs its too much hassle to try and upload many Gb of results and then potentially have to download many Gb multiple times to all the different hosts running the farm. In effect you multiply the problem. I think this idea of processing on the graphics card to get your 100x speed up is more of the answer. When I wrote my app cards had about 256Mb of memory but now its also in the Gb so in theory it could be done and I could get a lot of performance back on it. Another huge hit on the overall speed tho is the write speed of the hard drive. When I write a very large file - larger than the file IO caches, it seems to stall the whole PC. I would probably get a load of speed back if I just RAIDed a load of drives together or sent all the file data across a gigabit network (with a hardware assisted network card of course). Then the compute PC could get on with the next bit of processing whilst another machine wrote it all away from its RAM to drives. If I implemented both of those things then I think I could get the 10 to 50 times overall speed increase that would make this process trivial.

The thing about SETI is that you download a load of data which is served out from a single source which has it all to start with and you do a lot of processing on the data and only if there is something significant does the PC send a little bit of data back to source again. So there is never an issue with collecting up all the results.

But yeah in principle it could be done. You could also buy cycles off of someone like google and write it all so it runs on thousands of computers and then wait a small amount of time and download the whole kaboodle back at the end. That download is probably less time than your one PC computing it all out with no download. Were currently running 1600 tiles so we could use up to that many PCs and do it in parallel.

C. Shawn Smith

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« Reply #14 on: May 08, 2011, 01:28:44 am »

I just developed a headache imagining it :)

What I can do to help though, let me know, no matter how mundane.  If I have the time, I'll do it.  Tolkien's world is very dear to me, and I like to support this kind of thing when I can. ;)
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What we think, we become -- Buddha
There is no spoon -- Neo, The Matrix
The Cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be. -- Carl Sagan
Outerra is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be. -- Me :)
- Yes, I'm still around ... just been busy with other projects ;)
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