Hi folks,
after following the developments within Outerra silently for quite some time the Anteworld Tech Demo is now offering a completely new and higly anticipated approach to the Outerra World for "common people" as I would declare myself. My backbround is mainly derived from the world of Aviation as I am a retired Airline Pilot. Nevertheless I'm in the "Simulation Business" for quite some time also and I would declare myself as looking at things with the eyes of a practical user with some more than average background. In my free time I also work as a Co-Editor in the German Flight-Simmer portal "SimFlight.de" where I lastly also published the news about the Anteworlds Tech Demo - see here (unfortunatley in German
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http://www.simflight.de/2012/03/01/nochn-simulator-gefallig/Reading through the present Support Forum's threads I see a few suggestions that should definitely materialize within Anteworlds to bring it a few steps closer to what might become a milestone in future simulations. I can't cope with any kind of technical issues regarding the mathematical background of Outerra but - as mentioned above - I might see a few things from the practical level that might need some consideration.
One thing that came to my attention is the use of the mouse. At present it is locked to moving the view direction in any kind of cockpit. This should become unlocked and maybe only be used with one of the mouse buttons (preferably the right, as used in "designer view"). The main reason of this is that sooner or later the cockpits may become more functional and you will need the mouse pointer to activate instruments through clickspots. Use of the hat switch should also become popular.
Controlling the vehicles and setting up the controllers is very intuitive and IMHO already quite good. I would however propose a possibility to either a de-linearize the controller inputs or a variable null-zone (or both) to ease vehicle steering - be it a truck or an aircraft.
I have seen mentioning OSM for streets design. This might of course become a good standard however there are some stringent limitations when it comes to using it in mountaineous regions. If the underlying mesh is not sufficiently high in resolution the results will become ridiculous - to say the least
Of course I'm aware that you are still in a very early process of designing further developments. So take this just as a hint.
Sorry for stepping in here with soo many proposals as a newcomer. I'll do my best to be a bit more decent nest time...