Hi all,
I happen to be one of the testers and I'm allowed to post my comment to public place.
As a flightsim enthusiast I'm looking at Outerra mostly as a future simulator of flight, though I have and some different ideas now.
So what we have in a beta of Tech Demo? We have very detailed terrain (especially in the mountains area), a lot of trees on slopes, detailed roads, and some buildings (a bit simple for now). How can we explore all of that? We can drive Tatra, fly Cessna and Apache, use "UFO" to move fast around globe, and we have first person view with avatar (but avatar is not animated in beta, which is looking funny). We don't have many sounds yet, only engine sounds for Cessna and Apache.
What else we can do? We can make different roads and put some static objects. Of course we can make a screenshots and even record a video.
There's a lot of menus where you can set up controls, select (or save) camera position, change time and play with some colors of fog, water and such.
How does it work? After starting the client fist time and logging in, the Outerra starts to download terrain files for your current location. That can take time if you have slow internet connection, though for one place the files are not very big. Default location is an airfield near Fractopolis town. Default view is UFO camera.
The most impressive part for me is a simple flight in the Cessna above forests and mountains. I'm spending a lot of time just staring at the window of Cessna (you can control view using mouse) while flying at low altitude above the trees. Though we have only one type of tree, a pine tree and no 3d trees in the beta, the forests look very realistic from low altitude.
What I missing most of all in the Tech Demo beta is the clouds, weather and rivers; variety of tree types and ground textures. I hope to see all that in the Game soon.
I believe there's a big future in this project, it definitely could be the "Simulator of Everything" eventually.