Outerra forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

News:

Outerra Tech Demo download. Help with graphics driver issues

Pages: [1] 2 3

Author Topic: Saabs Rapid terrain scanning...  (Read 25970 times)

Redrobes

  • Member
  • **
  • Posts: 73
    • http://www.viewingdale.com
Saabs Rapid terrain scanning...
« on: August 04, 2011, 07:49:46 pm »

Ravs off of the Cartographers guild (dot com for all those not familiar...) has posted an interesting page about terrain scanning and 3D terrain vis.

Its a Swedish company processing data from either Saab or a Saab based technology outfit. Check it out.






flightmaster

  • Jr. Member
  • *
  • Posts: 28
Saabs Rapid terrain scanning...
« Reply #1 on: August 04, 2011, 10:51:37 pm »

i hate tech like this not being used in a flight simulator  :(  :mad:
Logged

bakho

  • Jr. Member
  • *
  • Posts: 13
Saabs Rapid terrain scanning...
« Reply #2 on: August 04, 2011, 11:51:45 pm »

Nokia maps is using this technology, they already scanned a few entire cities and their surroundings. Here you can appreciate the level of detail of the moutains next to Cape Town : http://maps.nokia.com/3D/#|-33.95580122|18.413001786|13.92|76.67|69.58|0|26| (it will ask you to install a little plugin)

Indeed it would be perfect for a flight simulator, but it's not very flexible if you need more interactivity (lighting, physics...)
Logged

ZeosPantera

  • ||>>-Z-<<||
  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2520
  • #1 Outerra Fan Boy
    • My Youtube
Saabs Rapid terrain scanning...
« Reply #3 on: August 05, 2011, 02:13:08 am »

That's some crazy stuff. Wonder how much it costs to sample a city like that. Probably alot.
Logged
"Fear accompanies the possibility of death, Calm shepherds its certainty" - General Ka Dargo

PeterBitt

  • Member
  • **
  • Posts: 62
Saabs Rapid terrain scanning...
« Reply #4 on: August 05, 2011, 05:32:54 am »

how is this possible??
how do they know the exact shape of each house, and where the heck do the textures come from?

i can understand googlemaps 3d buildings as they are handmade, but i cant understand this...
Logged

Redrobes

  • Member
  • **
  • Posts: 73
    • http://www.viewingdale.com
Saabs Rapid terrain scanning...
« Reply #5 on: August 05, 2011, 06:06:06 am »

They fly a plane over the terrain in some kind of raster flight path. The plane has a number of camera on board. The number was said to be secret but I could believe it to be a lot - like 16 or something like that. They have been bolted down with fairly accurate position and such that they overlap. They did say they were digital SLR cameras.

So they know the planes position very accurately - probably to about a few cm's. They know the flight path at the time to a similar accuracy and they have the camera positions and directions known. Then they match up multiple photos from different shots at different times. Because you know where you were at the two times you can see the differences that show up on the spacing between features across two or more shots. This gives you Z depth. Working back from that plus the planes position can give the XYZ position of the ground terrain. Normally you still get shadow zones from the parts of the photos which were obscured but if your taking many many shots as part of a raster flight path then there is going to be very little left obscured. Basically only stuff underneath a cover.

You can do some of the math and processing to scan in a *sparse* point cloud easily using your own digital cam and some free software. I have wrote a blog about that - you might need a login to see pics, not sure:

http://www.cartographersguild.com/blog.php?1311-Redrobes-blog-about-playing-with-the-technical-side-of-graphics.

These guys tho are getting more than a sparse point cloud out of it and are post processing it a bit more to generate the buildings as vectored meshes. I can see from the video that they go beyond this to work out which meshes are buildings and which are roads or terrain etc. They are classifying the mesh output as well. So they are well beyond the normal consumer state. But then they are military and well funded...

I didn't realize Nokia have them. That's quite cool. All the demos were on iPads :o

PeterBitt

  • Member
  • **
  • Posts: 62
Saabs Rapid terrain scanning...
« Reply #6 on: August 05, 2011, 06:44:18 am »

thanks for the explanation, very interesting stuff!
Logged

OGREMAN

  • Member
  • **
  • Posts: 62
Saabs Rapid terrain scanning...
« Reply #7 on: August 05, 2011, 12:16:02 pm »

Damn ... it breaks my heart to see such lovely aireal 3d images and to know that its NOT available for Flight simmers.
Logged
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:All mimsy were the borogoves,
  And the mome raths outgrabe.
\"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!  The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun;  The frumious Bandersnatch!\"

tknudsen

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 106
Saabs Rapid terrain scanning...
« Reply #8 on: August 06, 2011, 04:35:28 pm »

Quote
Its a Swedish company

It must be, look at the title only..

Oslo, Norway  not Sweden

as of course Oslo resits in Norway  :P

KUDOS to the author :)
Logged

DuxDucisHodiernus

  • Newbie
  • Posts: 4
  • newbie
Re: Saabs Rapid terrain scanning...
« Reply #9 on: March 15, 2012, 01:40:58 pm »

Quote
Its a Swedish company

It must be, look at the title only..

Oslo, Norway  not Sweden

as of course Oslo resits in Norway  :P

KUDOS to the author :)

No, it's a Swedish company, i don't get how you made the connection "They showcased it with Oslo, that must make they Norwegian!" or what?   ???

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab

They also make cars.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_Automobile



Here, read this Wikipedia page and remember not to make stupid assumptions like that anymore.
« Last Edit: March 15, 2012, 01:44:10 pm by DuxDucisHodiernus »
Logged

[deleted]

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 232
Re: Saabs Rapid terrain scanning...
« Reply #10 on: March 15, 2012, 01:44:27 pm »

If this would be implemented in outerra, the game I always dreamed about would became truth....
Logged

DuxDucisHodiernus

  • Newbie
  • Posts: 4
  • newbie
Re: Saabs Rapid terrain scanning...
« Reply #11 on: March 16, 2012, 11:52:45 am »

If this would be implemented in outerra, the game I always dreamed about would became truth....


It's very expensive, so i don't really think outerra will use it.

To be honest, it's probably cheaper to manually model and texture everything than using this method.
Logged

[deleted]

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 232
Re: Saabs Rapid terrain scanning...
« Reply #12 on: March 16, 2012, 12:20:37 pm »

I saw it was very expensive, but I wanted to say my opinion.
Logged

Redrobes

  • Member
  • **
  • Posts: 73
    • http://www.viewingdale.com
Re: Saabs Rapid terrain scanning...
« Reply #13 on: April 05, 2012, 02:38:28 pm »

Hey you guys should take a peek at the new Nokia 3D maps using webGL. Its cool and try flying around NY Manhattan.

http://maps3d.svc.nokia.com/webgl/index.html

bakho

  • Jr. Member
  • *
  • Posts: 13
Re: Saabs Rapid terrain scanning...
« Reply #14 on: April 05, 2012, 05:18:22 pm »

No plugin is needed anymore, that's cool, and the point of view is less limited than before, otherwise no big improvement, except internally maybe.
« Last Edit: April 05, 2012, 05:23:45 pm by bakho »
Logged
Pages: [1] 2 3