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[MatthewS]

I've read several threads where FS users talked endlessly about tweaking the parameters, and I have overall bad feelings about the system that allows to break stuff by allowing to twiddle with too many knobs. That kind of action is common in layered-type rendering where you can switch off this and adjust that, but our system is much more organic in order to get more natural results, so that level of tinkering is neither possible nor something we would want to have.

Great Idea and don't shift from that decision. or you will regret it.
The time wasted on M$FS forums by people who actually don't fly but spend all their time Slewing and fiddling with settings is pretty high.

Except the engine might get "canned" if people can't fine tune some basic settings to increase FPS, eg visible range/density of different object classes (buildings, clouds, trees etc).

[Beolex]

Where do you get the textures from? They look very appealing.
Also, what program do you use to model?

[Robert]

My apologies for the late reply.

The building was modeled in Audiodesk's Maya as a test case to investigate importing workflow.  However it was converted to .max and handed over to angrypig for final configuration and tweaking.

Due to the building being a test case, the raw textures were downloaded from an excellent site called www.cgtextures.com where they were then further processed and rearrange in Adobe Photoshop.  Soon we are starting work on a airport control tower that will have original textures that we will take with a high end DSLR.

The building model actually has three textures.  A tileable window and wall texture which covers a majority of the building.  This allows for high resolution so you can get rather close to the building without the texture pixelating. However, this method of texturing has a limitation of being too uniform and clean, no providing the variety of what you would actually find in a real office building.  A second texture was embedded into the first textures alpha channel and is used to control the specular channel (The shinny effect on the windows)  The third texture contains elements of the building not covered by the windows and walls, for the doors, roof concrete, and the air conditioning units.

[Alen Bajrovic]

You inserted a lot of buildings , NO MORE PLEASE ! , im just kidding.  Seriously it will be better than FSX flight simulator, I hope:), You made a big thing guys ,  just continue, I wish you luck and I hope that you will soon publish the Demo version

[Michal]

The building model actually has three textures.  A tileable window and wall texture which covers a majority of the building.  This allows for high resolution so you can get rather close to the building without the texture pixelating. However, this method of texturing has a limitation of being too uniform and clean, no providing the variety of what you would actually find in a real office building.  A second texture was embedded into the first textures alpha channel and is used to control the specular channel (The shinny effect on the windows)  The third texture contains elements of the building not covered by the windows and walls, for the doors, roof concrete, and the air conditioning units.

It would be nice to add second UV-channel support, and put ambient occlusion multipied to diffuse there.

[Beolex]

Well, I recently learned Blender 3D, and I could probably make some houses as test subjects. I will also be able to UV Map them and give them ambient occlusion. Do you want me to make a couple of houses as test subjects?

[cameni]

Angrypig is making buildings (for the sample location that will be included in upcoming video) with Blender too, I think he could release some instructions after that on how to make the buildings so they can be successfully imported, also with performance and memory consumption considerations included (hint hint)

The buildings are nearly finished now and we don't need another ones for now, but we may include more buildings for people to play with in the demo. So if you feel like you could make some generic ones that we could put in a package, go for it.
Kind of a pre-modding for the demo

[AWM Mars]

Looking at what has been achieved, it looks awesome.. something, like myself, a lot of people are interested in.

I did try and find a roadmap for development, along with a 'inclusion' list, is there one available?

[ZeosPantera]

Angrypig is making buildings (for the sample location that will be included in upcoming video) with Blender too, I think he could release some instructions after that on how to make the buildings so they can be successfully imported, also with performance and memory consumption considerations included (hint hint)

I have a friend obsessed with bridges. He would love to model bridges for outerra. Would the same modeling techniques apply for a model you have to drive over?

[cameni]

The road map isn't well-defined as we are still talking with various parties and deciding who to support and what direction to take it (first).
After releasing the demo we will be working on climate data and land class support, with additional vegetation types. Scene tools should be updated too, with possible shared world editing. A basic SDK should be created as well.

All this will be needed by some teams that want to work on games using it, and it's as far as we can currently see.
We want to produce a game on it ourselves, but it's not yet decided what form it will be. But it should be mod-friendly in any case, possibly leading to an open world sandbox game or more.

[cameni]

I have a friend obsessed with bridges. He would love to model bridges for outerra. Would the same modeling techniques apply for a model you have to drive over?

Yes, particularly with regards to geometry instancing, that will be used extensively on bridges I guess.

[AWM Mars]

Excellent, thanks for the update.
Our company are currently working with the MPEG Consortium on the next generation streaming formats. We are charged with developing the Virtual Reality Collaboration and Immersive Environment, elements of the MPEG formats. This will allow for 2 way data streaming using standard MPEG formats, for Collaboration.
We have developed the collaboration server-side software and are working on the client-side. The engine will allow full collaboration including text and voice communications. MPEG are native to almost every device with a chip embedded, so will run out of the box, using our thin-client.

Your solution, like a couple of others that we have looked at, lend themselves very well into data streaming formats. MPEG offering probably the best known and used, compression and streaming functionality. Are you considering incorporating your solution to the up and coming formats?

[cameni]

Our company are currently working with the MPEG Consortium on the next generation streaming formats. We are charged with developing the Virtual Reality Collaboration and Immersive Environment, elements of the MPEG formats. This will allow for 2 way data streaming using standard MPEG formats, for Collaboration.

I'm somewhat missing the context now, especially with respect to Outerra .. can you elaborate it more, like to give an example what it will be used for?

[AWM Mars]

Your solution streams data to the client for rendering, it is not a solid lump of data that has to be fully downloaded with all its content, prior to rendering the whole thing. MPEG, as you know is one of the worlds leading streaming formats. The recent move by the MPEG consortium is to develop more formats, but allowing for dual direction streaming, hence collaboration and interaction. MPEG-V and MPEG-U are being developed as we speak, for that very purpose.

[cameni]

Ah, thanks. Might be an interesting business model for some market segments.

 Is there an independent layer that would be handling it unobtrusively, i.e. capturing, processing and streaming the output on server and capturing input devices on client and injecting the events on the server?