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[BlankCache]

I would vote for the many different classes being avaliable and fidelity aded as it moves forward. Having different classes of vehicles avaliable might help narrow down the ones less used so as not to waste resources developing fidelity on classes not used or wanted. Ultimatly I think Outerra is going to be epic no matter how its transversed.

[krz9000]

i think outerra should make deals with plattforms like openstreetmap. like becoming the "google earth" of openstreetmap. on top of that make deals with companies like laminar research to ask them to write sim modules for your engine that you add via an api system. have deals with weather companies and news shows to visualize locations and so on. i dont think there is a chance for you to catch up with sim development on your on and surpass the big dogs. better work together with them

[DarkDXZ]

Well, I still think that Outerra will be the most versatile, beatiful, optimized and overall perfect engine ever.

I guess it's no more just a dream of a naturally-scaled RTS games or flight simulators.

I dare you that sooner or later players would recreate whole damn world, including all kinds of vehicles ever made (from a Ford T to Concorde to Titanic), massive amounts of...Weapons? Monsters? Vegetation types? Replicas of worlds from other games and franchises (Equestria, Middle-Earth, Tamriel...)

All we need now is a bit of patience and wish the best of luck for "Slovakian gods of programming"...

Wait, a movie? Somebody, call Cameron and tell him that he should end his job the next day, as movies made in Outerra would be far more bad-ass than all of his movies he made! (not to be rude, Cameron makes epic movies, but with Outerra we could make even more epic). Even the God wouldn't know what happened if Cameron or Lucas touched Outerra to make a movie... (Star Wars: The New Trilogy anyone?)

PS: Am I going off-topic now?

[PRiME]

I think a global simulator with many class types would be ideal, with the ability to add in modules depending on each business idea(s). However many will want Outerra to go exclusive, lets look at the issue; If its sold to bigger companies they will not like the idea of an open ended mod-engine/community, we all know the public can make some great stuff; look at Armed Assault series of games which also has MANY classes for simulation, allot of the content made surpasses the original developers work. Now that's ok as its a exclusive product to them.

So all in all I believe it may not be as attractive to a developer as having exclusive control over content such as landscape assets etc... 

Not sure if I'm making sense here, but basically its a great idea (World Module Simulation for any gaming business model). Most content will likely come from the public, IF you permit that (sounds like you are in the alpha?). I like how Unreal engine is done, fully open to community. However they don't provide you with a planet to do things on so no two mods/games look identical content wise.

Essentially you will be selling access to the landscape and basic assets, not sure if you will see allot of AAA developers jumping on it at the start (Indie developers will be jumping for joy however ). As for the AAA developers, they may feel unconfortable having such a uniform base product to start with, especially since other titles can possibly look very similar to their own; However a good developer will see that making unique modules for their game(s) will set it apart from all the other clones. The landscapes will still look very similar, unless they modify it enough that is .

PS. Not sure if the above is valid input or not, I'm just trying to answer more critically.

[mctash]

I mostly agree PRiME. I think if released right though, with a clear separation between commercial usage (i.e. high end simulation environment) and community usage ( a la udk) the folks at Outerra are on to a clear winner.

Something to note, the people at Lockheed Martin acquired the source to FSX (and created Prepar3d) and have done something pretty clever in my opinion. They charge around $500 for a single client license(I think one of the terms is it can't be used for gaming, so think FAA approved sims here). However, they only charge $10 a month access to the developer network which affords you two client licenses for development purposes. I'm sure in the long run this will mean loads of additional content being created/converted from FSX which in turn will attract the corporate/commercial business for the standard client license.

Perhaps a similar model could be used with Outerra? Cheap/free sdk/developer license and use of engine , which in turn will hopefully spawn loads of additional content which in turn again will attract clientele for the full commercial/corporate license.

McTash

[neopangaia]

kickstart an open source project

[Oldtown]

That could be my ultimate game. I like it to move big things around in simulations. Moving a train in one moment and get to a plane in the next would be great. If these addons are also well designed with a look on the technology-part then I would be very happy.

[PTTG]

I think that the best way to take advantage of Outerra is something that fully shows the totally smooth transition from space to centimeter-level detail.

To do that best, some kind of first person, multiple-vehicle game is a must. Sometimes you want to drive a dragster though the flats of death valley. Sometimes you want to try piloting a sailboat through the northwest passage. Sometimes you want to ski down Mount Everest. Sometimes you want to take off from Australia and fly your space fighter up until you can see the whole planet.

Outerra is quite possibly the only game engine where you could do it all.

The only thing I really ask is, license the engine but keep it available for indie use... I want a chance to use it myself!

[PRiME]

Hmm Kerbal Space Program?

[KelvinNZ]

Guys, we are not talking here about the engine, but about a simulator built on the engine.

And anyway, it's not just a graphics engine, at minimum it will also provide the data for collision handling (since it generates the world when refining real data), object management, spatial queries, and many other tightly tied services for the possible addons.

And since directly upon the start there won't be many addons right away, it would have to provide default implementation of physics for the supported vehicle classes.

I agree with you here, I do think that with just a base it is not viable to just leave it as that.

I think for a flight simulator alone this will need such attentions to Weather, Flight Dymanics (which it has already), Aircrafy modelling (which should be left up to 3rd parties), Aviation data such as the entire world of Airport locations and runway data along with taxiways and ground handling vehicles. I think if you can provide this then you are pretty much there to run as a Flight Simulator alone as land classes can be developed by 3rd party developers and even airports can be enhanced by them aswell.

Things like dynamic water and livestock will add to the immersion also Cloud shadows moving accross the land. All these would be the base package and then Developers can build ontop as they please and ignore the weather system if they want to because perhaps the particular game will not need to draw on it, OR, perhaps they will making racing games for example more challening with the visual and traction issues that can result.

I think there can be a base system that has the world and all it's elements and 3rd parties can add as they see fit but the base would allow for a great experience by default. Look at Flight Simulator X, other than it's horrible graphics you see that it has all airports (although not sloping which would be great) it has airport activity and air traffic control (which could perhaps be left up to an addon developer with Outerra). FSX does have everything that, as a base, does it's job.

In all my years of Flight Simming and gaming I believe that this as a Flight Simulator would be a healthy choice. But that's a little biased because that's what I would like to see come out of it.

The Flight Simulation community is i'm sure a multi million dollar industry and to be a part of that in a new era of visuals you would have a monopoly and even outrun Microsoft Flight. Simmers want serious and a professional experience with the micro details available to them.

[C. Shawn Smith]

The Flight Simulation community is i'm sure a multi million dollar industry and to be a part of that in a new era of visuals you would have a monopoly and even outrun Microsoft Flight. Simmers want serious and a professional experience with the micro details available to them.

I'm not so certain of that anymore.  From my 12-years of gaming experience, both in Flight Sims and other genres, I'm seeing a fundamental shift among developers and audiences in the nature of gaming.  First Person Shooters used to be the rage, and everyone copied them.  Then Real Time Strategy was the rage, and everyone copied them.  Then Sims were the rage, and so on.

I think what we see is that the disparity of genres has created a niche set of groups, who look for one particular thing in an engine, not matter what it is.  Outerra is unique in that it has the potential to satisfy ALL niche groups, and bring them closer together.

Imagine and RTS game, that you can play in FPS style, and then hop a plane sim-style, to get to the next battleground.  Imagine getting to the battleground and building via a sim-style interface, your fortifications, and playing both RTS, FPS, and Sim, all in one.  That hasn't been done before, except in a rudimentary scale.

Ultimately, Anteworld the Game will be a combo of all of this, and a platform that could host all styles via portals (similar to how Second Life runs).  I'm envisioning a possibility that Outerra could be sort of an "operating system" on which multiple games are based.  Just click on the style you want to play, and voila!  You're there.  In this way, it could cater to everyone, but it would need to have the backing of a community, as well as several developers.

I also see entities such as NASA and military around the world wanting it for simulation purposes.  In NASA's hands, they could pre-explore potential planets for landing zones, by inputing their own height data into the engine.  Imagine a pre-flight training sim where an astronaut landing on the Moon or Mars could literally VISUALIZE down to 2cm detail where he was supposed to go.  Survival just increased 90%.  Imagine a soldier in the back woods of some obscure country, having done a simulation at this level of detail.  Again, he knows the terrain as if he'd already been there, since he's been trained using the Outerra engine.

If I was either NASA or military, I'd be jumping on this engine in a heartbeat, for what it could provide.

[KelvinNZ]

Nice point. And like i said i am biased towards a flight sim but realise the potential in the engine. Hmmm an "operating system" to drive a specific world of simulation, yes, that means that any developer could in fact build a flight simulator (in its many forms) on this engine, now that has never been done before in this case. Especially when all the right elements are available; the world for starters, then, land, water, shore, and vegetation classifications... weather, procedural methods to place all this data globally. etc...

I will follow this concept moving forward. Man, it just seems such a huge undertaking, but never been done before...it really does feel like the idea of this technology will shift to the next level.

[C. Shawn Smith]

I will follow this concept moving forward. Man, it just seems such a huge undertaking, but never been done before...it really does feel like the idea of this technology will shift to the next level.

And now you know the TRUE power of Outerra

As I said a LONG time ago:

One Engine to rule them all,
One Engine to find them,
One Engine to bring them all
and in the pixels bind them.

[ZeosPantera]

When the modders get a hold and start making just small concentrated games.. Paintball in the forest. Baloon races around the world. Drug Running across the border. The Interstate76 Redux Project.

That is when it gets interesting.

[emils]

Hi! I "found" Outerra a few weeks ago and I am deeply impressed!

I work in the simulator business and would like to express my "wet" dream about this project.

• Visualization
    Earth
  Oki this you are already doing great, with lots of ideas to do it even better!
   
    3rd party objects via some 3d format, for static and dynamic objects
  
• Physics
  Not really needed, but data to support physics.
  Collision detection.
  - Ie line of sight support.
    In LOS possibility to set a max distance.
    In LOS possibility to get a collision type, i.e. did I hit terrain and what type of terrain or an object.
    gravity direction and size given a WGS84 position.
   - Terrain height and distance to terrain at a given longitude latitude. (i.e. a possibly a faster LOS for ray cast in gravity dir)
  - Altitude above sea level given a WGS84 position.
  
  Other related terrain info
  Get north direction vector, and compass north direction, given a WGS84 position.
  Get sun direction of current time given a WGS84 position.
  
  Gravity model should be pluggable.
  
  Ie we want stuff that relates to the terrain.
  
  Atmosphere
  Just an option. Could quite easily be handled outside of outerra. But if included it should be pluggable (or we would chose to use our own layer)
  
• Integration
    Library
     With cross platform support. (as you have)
     Ie you could integrate it in your own software.
     This really is the best!
  
    As a standalone application
    If you choose not to make it available as a library, but only as an application with an SDK to support plugins, one need to be able to control cameras etc, either from the plugins or via some network layer that you provide. This is not as good but could possible be ok to.
  
    You could take different amounts of money depending of what solution and if redistribution is allowed or not.
    We could live with no redistribution rights. (we just want to use it in our own internal products).
  
    For redistribution rights (own app with integration of the outer engine) you could probably charge a really hefty sum. ;-)
  

So to sum it up. A product that handle world visualization and terrain info, that can be integrated into your own application using an Outerra  library, and you would have, I say, a killer app. Especially when you also have cross platform support.

As a separate app, still ok.

Complete physics engine, not needed for us, and I think this would drive a possible community much better.
Still outerra could provide one as long as all the hooks mentioned above still exists.
But I think an engine should just do a few things and then do it good. This should be the core of outerra.
Everything else are extensions to the core. Which could be separate products for you (or others).

Just my 2 cents. Thank you!