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[MatthewS]

Not bad, although those screens can hide quite a lot. Popping objects and trees, for example.
Anyhow, it doesn't matter now :/
Yes, OSM should be usable here.

Though at ground level (in FSX) you cant really notice popup trees/objects as much since the distant objects are usually hidden by nearer objects.  It probably wouldn't have affected TS2 that much except I guess for very scenic distant views over a valley etc.

[MatthewS]

Like, scripting the avionics or the behavior of ground vehicles on an airport, and such.

Yes for airport ground vehicles but also for "AI Aircraft" that are flying real world schedules controlled by a plug-in.

Think how nice it would be to have all the models and schedules from World Of AI available in Outerra.  An "AI Aircraft" plug-in could then control these aircraft and the virtual skies of Outerra would be filled with AI aircraft in accurate liveries flying real world schedules!!!

http://www.world-of-ai.com/

[ZeosPantera]

I am completely 1000% more interested in car physics over the flight, train aspect. I don't really know of any opensource physics engines for racing games. I know ISI (rFactor Developer) did license their engine to other companies (SimBin) for modification and use in their games. Not sure how difficult it would be to implement into a round world.

You're using bullet physics currently for testing with the tatra aren't you? Any chance of giving a faster 2 wheel drive vehicle a few laps on a generated road? Just to see how it "handles". Even if its just a box with no model.

[cameni]

Well we are primarily focusing on the terrain and planet rendering, the vehicle simulation is only secondary now, though important - we want to test how it will look, and implement the functionality it will need with respect to terrain.

But we aren't going into a great detail with it at the moment, so for example the physics of wheels isn't as accurate as it could be. There's no big point in showing how such vehicle behaves now, it would just show how the current, simpler physics works, but not how it should/will work in a car simulator.

Outside of the car simulation domain, the current physics is sufficient for many other areas we are/will be working on.

[InviZ]

Hello,

Cameni, what about good bullet simulation and good human-models with animation?
I think, it could be good to give possibility to community to make mods like soldier sim! Like Armed Assault.
If you look for example to www.armaholic.com, you'll see a lot of content. These guys only need some tools and good engine

[cameni]

I see no big problems there, apart from the amount of work it needs.
 Due to the lack of time, and because our first potential licensees don't need it, we postponed character animation to a later time. But of course once it's in there will be no stopping them army guys

[tasmanet]

I would stick to AI vehicles, planes , trains ,animals etc.

And a  simple AI every developer could use as the default

[tasmanet]

Well you can give up on the FS bit as M$ are back in the Game

I would stick to a good Train Simulator

Give up on anything to do with war as it is well served already
and why waste a quality product like this on idiots who want
to blow thing up.

Anyhow time for me to move on

Best of luck

Tas

[Timmo]

It will be interesting to see what MS does for sure, however, if history is anything to go by they won't be going down the fractal route.

As an FSX scenery developer, ideally what I would look for in a sim is fairly much what MS did with FSX but with a few tweaks- Better physics, better crash/surface detection and fractal enhancement for the algorithmic real world data and textures.

FSX does a lot quite well, particularly in how it allows enhancement of various components of the sim using real world vector data and aerial imagery. It has proven that if you provide the tools, SDK and a decent engine, then developers will support it well with addons.

I firmly believe that the future of simulation lies with combining algorithmic data with fractal enhancement. I.e. lowish (~1km) resolution landclass layers providing different terrain and texture sub-routines for rendering- A rock landclass is tied to a different terrain 'roughness'  value and texture.

I'm watching this site with great interest

[McArcher]

I have learned about Outerra project just a few hours ago and I want to say that this project seems to be what I have been tinking about for years.

Looking at such PC games as OFP, Arma2, NWN2 and other cool games with cool editors, I think that every one of us have ever wanted to create something or take part in creating something. As for me, I used to create in NWN2 and make some game mission for Arma2. Looking at popularity of Arma2 addonmaking, I think people need a GLOBAL PROJECT, such as Outerra, for which they will write addons and contribute to game engine.

I want Outerra to be a universal simulator in nowaday computer world, simulating many aspects of life. It means that it will be some kind of open source project, and people from all over the world will contribute to it, I think it is the key to success.

For example, if Outerra has a perfect universal physics engine, then the community will only write addons for it and expand the game.

I'll give some examples. For example, if a railroad type of objects, locos and wagons are included into game, the railsim fans will start porting their models to the game. When tracked vehicles are introduced, we can include tank, BMP and other vehicles from military games or self-made models. Airplanes, cars, people, animals, buildings.... many other things will be ported from other sources or created from scratch...

I think this engine needs to be very realistic in many aspects to make it popular. Just imagine, one simulator for all kinds of games...

It will simulate wet road and mud traction, bullet flight trajectory, rails, interracting with water, wind, graphical FX like smoke and so on, realistic collisions, material penetration, explosions, to simulate armored vehicles with different types of armor, every vehicle and object will contain sub-objects with working physics... the future of engine is infinite... Look at Operation Flashpoint game... its engine is very ugly, but it lives now as Arma2, though it lacks very important moments, and it lives with a great commnity, because they are free to contribute to it.

To sum up, I think this project has a great future if it is made open-source or with a great SDK for making addons.

I, personally, want to see a realistic simulation of armored vehicles damaging (for Military Simulation), an ability to morph the terrain by a script or code (to simulate bulldozers, shovels, trenches making, holes after explosions, digging, ...), different types of rockets and ammo addons.... and of course, everything else...

My dream is that someday I will see a universal sim, that is made by all people in the world with physics like in real life, and no corporations making millions, no wars and no crime in real life When we are united, we are much stronger force than fighting with each other. Sorry if this seems to be an offtopic...

[cameni]

Basically it's what the platform should be about. The idea is that in the open world you'll be able to see a 3rd party made plane normally operating, whether by AI or other players, but you won't be able to fly it unless you buy or rent one. If it's a freeware or open source plane, you could do so without payment, of course.
This way the platform really becomes a universal platform in every sense, a simulator operating system of a kind.

Not sure yet if brand licensing will not be slightly problematic here, with the free/open content combined with commercial one.

My dream is that someday I will see a universal sim, that is made by all people in the world with physics like in real life, and no corporations making millions, no wars and no crime in real life When we are united, we are much stronger force than fighting with each other. Sorry if this seems to be an offtopic...

Sure sure, and free energy, lunches and chicks for everyone
We might unite against an alien invasion for a while, but otherwise it's always evolutionary fight for domination and survival, and no amount of idealistic thinking will change that, I'm sorry

[AWM Mars]

My dream is that someday I will see a universal sim, that is made by all people in the world with physics like in real life, and no corporations making millions, no wars and no crime in real life When we are united, we are much stronger force than fighting with each other. Sorry if this seems to be an offtopic...

Well, this would have to be hosted somewhere, which will involve a corp or two making several millions... Or... with the new MPEG formats, we may see a similar business model to the ilks of Skype... unicasting/cloud computing. Someone somewhere will still control the copper wire/optical fibre.. so a payoff is always on the cards.

[McArcher]

Well, this would have to be hosted somewhere.

Web-hosting, you mean? It is not so expensive, especially when cost divided between members of community. And earnings from that is not million

I'd like to take part in such community, but I don't know whether I will be usefull right now (I'm not a professional programmer or modeller, but used to learn this in the past as a hobby, and I don't refuse to come back to it in future again. At least now I'm learning Photoshop, Corel Draw, Lightwave. Maybe, I will revise C++ if needed, but it will take some time). Any chances to take part in this universal engine project in nearest future?

[ZeosPantera]

The way I see it. By ZeosPantera

The way I see Outerra coming to bear on our society as a system is a simple one. Take the model of efficiency and awesome that is Steam. Valve has done what was almost impossible. Corner the PC gaming market. You want a PC game what do you do. You see if it is on steam and then look elsewhere. Well now I am not saying outerra should be on steam. Hell that is just silly.

What I am proposing is that like the steam client. (That 700 Meg download you get before any games are installed) Outerra should be the client. Free of charge everyone on earth can download the entire world to their HD's 192 gigs once extracted if I am correct. A very large HD investment for some.

So now that 100,000 people have torrent'd the world what can they do in it? Well nothing really. It would come with maybe one plane or the tatra truck. The basic world editing tools would be there. But that is it. You can hook to other computers via the multi-player and walk through the forests for literally years if you like.

The key is when you load the outerra client program it will have a STORE/DOWNLOAD section just like steam.. And in this store all the commercially and freeware modifications that can be added to the empty world are kept neatly organized with compatibility notes and beautifully written descriptions. You want lavishly detailed cities? Buy one or two from pro modding companies or download the whole pack free made by some obsessive compulsive in his basement. Want the all the commercial jets ever made? Buy the addon. Cars, Buy them? Shooting packs with guns, artillery and the correct tweaks to make windage and such realistic? Buy the addons. Or download the free mods that are probably 90% as good. And each one is selectable.

Start Outerra and checkbox the mods you want to enable. Perhaps you just want to go fishing. Load the fishing mod and nothing else. You dont need complex cities or jets flying over to fish. Same goes for hunting. Now if I load my driving sim mod I will also need the Roads infrastructure mod enabled and detailed cities.

If you're a flight sim nut. Load the flight sim addon and roads if you like? Cities if your into it. The Cameni airport pack with all his Himalayan airports. Plan on landing and driving your celebrity AI somewhere? Throw the driving sim on as well.

Other details like communications with friends and managing different multiplayer worlds to join would be part of the client. Not sure how to go about hosting something like outerra.. I mean could standard client computers host the entire world with normal bandwith? Or is some $200 a month super computer at a hosting company needed?

Anyways that is really the only way I can see a system that needs this much hard drive space being run acceptably.

[cameni]

No, it doesn't need to unpack the data on disk, it uses the 13GB dataset in packed form. And it will use much smaller part of it normally (that can be downloaded on demand), according to what parts of Earth you are using in what detail.
 If you land vertically somewhere and run few tens of kilometers around, it will only download ~40MB of data, caching it. A mad traveler would have to visit every place on Earth, traveling on the ground, in order to force downloading the complete dataset. Needless to say, it would take a very long time