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[cameni]

This forum is intended for developers who would like to discuss features and requirements of the engine. Suggestions and postings of interesting related information are welcome, too.

Welcome!

[pico]

I realy like ur Engine. Do u plan a simple FlyoverDemo like this?

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/downloads/6bb837ec-a2c4-4236-9e1a-de45144644e1/

[cameni]

I realy like ur Engine. Do u plan a simple FlyoverDemo like this?
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/downloads/6bb837ec-a2c4-4236-9e1a-de45144644e1/

We are going to release a demo in near future with possibility to fly around in there but also to drive a ground vehicle. Cannot say precisely when, though, there are still many things to do.

[pico]

This sounds great. I cant wait to explore this Landscape by myself.

[helio2]

I have a ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB and a Quad core processor with 4Gbs of Ram. Windows Vista and 7

Could i run this software?
what kind of frame rate could i expect?

[cameni]

I have a ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB and a Quad core processor with 4Gbs of Ram. Windows Vista and 7

Could i run this software?
what kind of frame rate could i expect?

The engine requires a SM4 class graphics card, so anything from 8800 cards from nVidia and 2000 cards from ATI will do. Although, we still have some problems with ATI cards at the moment, namely the asynchronous readbacks aren't much asynchronous and it results in twitching during the camera movement, as the driver syncs. But we should have a workaround, only very slightly slowing the rendering for ATI cards.
Or ATI fixes their drivers :-)

Frame rates aren't final yet, as there aren't all the optimizations yet, but it's normally playable even with the vast forests rendered.

[helio2]

Oh, well i can play Crysis on Max Settings @1440x900 at 50 fps.
Also how are you currently handling the camera movements in the game?
Can you like Look all around, for example look up with the mouse all the way until your upside down, or does it stop at 180 degrees?  Or Can you till the camera with the left and right arrow keys until your upside down? or does the camera track the planet's terrain? how does it work?

[cameni]

It entirely depends on the camera controller. The current one is free motion controller and you can do whatever you want, it only stops you one meter from the surface and adjusts the speed by the altitude (slower close to the ground), but otherwise you can turn around in any way and get all the motion sickness you want :-)

[helio2]

That's awesome i like motion sickness! Are the camera movements gradual or are they instant? Like when you are just looking around on a spot and you look left , is the speed gradual or instant? Also like when you come to a spot does it decelerate or does it just stop. I guess maybe the equivalent of a speed fade. Not sure if i made sense or not, dont know how to explain it lawlz.

[cameni]

As I said it's entirely dependent on the motion controller, so it will be probably different for different vehicles - just what we'll find appropriate.

[RaikoRaufoss]

The engine requires a SM4 class graphics card, so anything from 8800 cards from nVidia and 2000 cards from ATI will do. Although, we still have some problems with ATI cards at the moment, namely the asynchronous readbacks aren't much asynchronous and it results in twitching during the camera movement, as the driver syncs. But we should have a workaround, only very slightly slowing the rendering for ATI cards.
Or ATI fixes their drivers :-)

Frame rates aren't final yet, as there aren't all the optimizations yet, but it's normally playable even with the vast forests rendered.

Nice to know. I have a Radeon 2600 Pro with 256 MB RAM, a Core 2 Duo 2.66GHz, 320GB HDD, and 2 GB DDR2-800 here on my iMac.  What frame rate can I expect with such specs at say, 1024x768 with settings not cranked up too high?

[cameni]

Well I don't know what's the performance of 2xxx cards from ATI, never had one. The above statement was related to the pure possibility of running the code, as we require SM4 level graphics.
 But apart from the ATI driver issue and the state of OpenGL on Macs there is another problem with your setup - 256MB RAM is way too low. I didn't know they were making these with so little memory.

[RaikoRaufoss]

Well I don't know what's the performance of 2xxx cards from ATI, never had one. The above statement was related to the pure possibility of running the code, as we require SM4 level graphics.
 But apart from the ATI driver issue and the state of OpenGL on Macs there is another problem with your setup - 256MB RAM is way too low. I didn't know they were making these with so little memory.

The 256MB RAM on my graphics card is too low?  Darn.  In that case, I'll just have to dream that I have to get a new computer.

[RaikoRaufoss]

Sorry for double posting, but another question came to me.  I already know that Outerra fully uses multi-cored processors.  What I'm curious about is: Would a graphics card meant for gaming or for workstation applications be best, and would a regular CPU, or a CPU meant for workstations be best?

[cameni]

Outerra mainly utilizes the GPU, that's the component that makes the most difference. With a better GPU one can set a higher overall detail level or to get a smoother experience during dynamic motion in a difficult terrain (difficult to generate).

It is expected that the CPU side will be exploited more by the simulator or game code, so it mostly depends on the requirements of that part.