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[cameni]

I've never been much of a speaker, not in my native language and even less so in English. When Markus Völter, the man behind SE Radio and omega tau podcasts, contacted me to make a podcast about Outerra and some of the technology behind it, I initially hesitated. But then I decided that it cannot hurt, and that I must force myself to train my tongue a bit.

So, after some time we recorded a hour long interview and you can listen to it here:

omegataupodcast.net/2011/06/67-rendering-the-world-with-outerra

Beware that I'm really slow speaker with pretty monotonous voice, and together with the technical nature it's probably not consumable for everyone. Enjoy if you can :p

[Tottel]

I'm enjoying it right now.

It's not always perfectly understandable, but I like your accent, hehe. :>

[C. Shawn Smith]

Hehe, I said the same thing, Tottel.  He sounds like a younger version of my ex's father (which isn't a bad thing at all ... love the accent).  On a side note, you sound almost exactly like I imagined you would lol.  Sort of like the Slovakian version of me.

Very well done, Cameni.  +10 for a very informative interview.  Look forward to seeing more!

[SpaceFlight]

Listening to it right now also, cool stuff.

[Abc94]

About half way through now.  Very interesting to listen to.

Kudos on deciding to make the podcast.  Maybe we'll see more?

Or what about a daily blog?  

[Jak_o_Shadows]

Good job. I didnt' really notice any bad sound, so i'm slightly confused about why he kept talking about it. You were perfectly understandable.

[cameni]

Maybe we'll see more?
Or what about a daily blog?  

So far there's nothing more planned for the near future. What would you like to see?

I don't feel like I'll have enough material for dailies, it would be more like daily *itching about fighting with OpenGL, libraries, bugs and Angrypig

Good job. I didnt' really notice any bad sound, so i'm slightly confused about why he kept talking about it. You were perfectly understandable.

I believe he's a kind of audiophile, and can hear issues where I mostly don't hear any

[PeterBitt]

the only sound issue i noticed is that the volume sometimes drops a little and that there are some gaps and breaks, but i could not hear the "noise" he was complaining about
also i found some questions not very well chosen ... "please tell me the prices for a good graphics card!" ?? or "flyghtsims must be much easier to develop then car simulations"

anyways thanks for this! listening to some background info while watching the screenshots and videos was realy cool!

[ZeosPantera]

I wonder if my cousin would mind me playing this for the hour on a long car ride I'm taking today.

I will give the audio a strict going over when I get on my PC later.

[corona]

Wow, great interview, really enjoyed it.

But what is this talk about using your own compiler for gpu integration? I was under the impression you used OpenCL.
*cough*details*cough*blogpost*cough* ;-)

[cameni]

Wow, great interview, really enjoyed it.

But what is this talk about using your own compiler for gpu integration? I was under the impression you used OpenCL.
*cough*details*cough*blogpost*cough* ;-)

Hehe, I thought someone like you would catch it

It's actually a compiler front-end, that parses the language and generates GLSL that is then used by OpenGL (not OpenCL).

Thing is, GLSL is a badly designed language, something that you get when graphics guys instead of compiler guys design the specs. We were using Nvidia's Cg language originally, but then again Nvidia doesn't care for making it an open standard, and getting it to work on on AMD with the newest features we are using was impossible. So we created a compiler that compiles language inspired by Cg, and generates GLSL and also all the glue code so that the integration with engine's C++ code is trivial.

Why no blogpost ... basically, it doesn't bring anything so new and useful for anyone else. We would even release it, but we absolutely don't have the time at the moment to make it general so it isn't tied specifically to OT, and without it it doesn't make much sense. Not even talking about the documentation ...

[corona]

Oh I see, so its a "code generator/transformer" more than a compiler, though I guess the line is somewhat blurry. Still very interesting.

Just out of interest, did you decide against OpenCL actively for some reason, or was it just because it wasn't on the table when you made that decision? I would assume its way too late at this point to make a switch (and for hardly any benefit I would imagine, aside from the hope of it being actively developed).

I also found it interesting that you called flightsimmers a "demanding crowd" (I believe those were the words you used). I would rephrase it to say we have "attention to detail" and an "appreciation for the beauty of nature" more so than FPS players.

Now that we cleared that up, I demand my alpha test version so I can see if you got the tree in my front yard in or not and damn it it better run @1000fps! ;-)

[cameni]

OpenCL is a "computing language", but we are primarily dealing with graphics. We could use OpenCL for some parts, but there's additional penalty for context switching between OpenGL and OpenCL, so unless it brings a serious advantage we don't need it. I thought I will be surely using either CUDA or OpenCL for the new terrain mapping tool. But then it turned out that I could use our existing system and build it on top of OpenGL just fine. So, effectively we don't feel any pressure and need.

But it's not like we would switch to OpenCL, it's either DX11, or OpenGL+OpenCL. But as I said, we don't need the computing capability at the moment, or better said - computing capabilities of pure OpenGL 3.3 suffice us.

Well, flightsimmers
What I was referring to is the urge to have every detail copied from RL, exactly. FPS gamers mostly don't care if the world they play in is an exact copy of something, as long as it's fun and a believable setting. But a significant portion of simmers ultimately want a copy of RL so they can continue with their hobby.
Otherwise, they are not that much demanding .. they are just not that easy to satisfy

[Redrobes]

I know that you can render stuff in CUDA (prob OpenCL as well) to a data array and then use that in a form of render to texture in GL. So I know for sure that its possible to compute and GL shade stuff but I don't know what the penalty is for switching the kernel from a CUDA one back to GL. I would have thought tho that you could keep both resident on the card at once. The thing is, if your using OpenCL or CUDA your closer to the core of the card than GL is because, as you say, GLSL was not a card specific language but CUDA is and OpenCL is really close to CUDA. In other words, I think there would be a performance advantage to using OpenCL + GL instead of GLSL alone. Tho I would understand that there is more complexity to it by having the multiple languages to keep on top of.

One of the advantages of OpenCL over the other two is that it was "supposed" to be a language such that the CPU could run as well. So in theory you could do the compute over the GPU and the CPU concurrently. I would admit that I know of nobody that does it like that tho. The Intel Larabee was supposed to be all over that but it died a death.

[Abc94]

I don't feel like I'll have enough material for dailies, it would be more like daily *itching about fighting with OpenGL, libraries, bugs and Angrypig

Ah ok.  Perhaps when you begin the working on the game there would be more interesting stuff to write about.  To me though anything about Outerra is intersting to read.

BTW do you still think there will be a June release?