Awsome Terrain Engine
Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Programming/Awsome Terrain Engine
| ||
| I think I have found the most awsome Terrain engine written to date. Check this out for yourself at this site. http://web.interware.hu/bandi/ranger.html If anyone has found a better Terrain engine let me know. I post this here because the source is available for this one and maybe someone can convert it for blitz3d. Or use it to make a dll to use with blitz3d. Anyway check it out, it's awsome. |
| ||
| Um, It says that it only works on Geforce, and that it uses special vendor specific commands (nvidia), so, even if we had these commands in blitz, it wouldn't be very useful, since many people including myself have ati cards. So, lets say you did some stuff different ways. ok. Now, It's probably be to slow anyway. Every single update you would have to delete the terrain and rebuild it. slow city..... |
| ||
| It's pretty nice, but nothing too special. |
| ||
| I thought a world 155km in size rendered at 120 fps was quite impressive. @ bot builder: Did you try running it on your system to see the fps you get? The docs explain why redrawing the scene is faster then modifying it like ROAM does. I only get the wire frame of coarse because I have a radeon 9800. But the doc files on the web site tell you how it is done. That could be usefull for us Blitz3d Programers. SOAR is faster then ROAM or Geomorphing methods. Has anyone written anything SOAR related? Did anyone read the docs yet? |
| ||
| It looks kinda crappy :\. |
| ||
| @ ShatteredReality: That's quite a harsh statement! I have been on this forum for 9 months now and I have not seen anything that comes close to this kind of quality 3D Terrain. So maybe you could enlighten me as to were I might find something better. Who else has written a 3D terrain engine that can display a 150km x 150km world in real time at 150 fps. Please share your knowledge with us. Before you say something is bad you should have something better to compare it to. Otherwise what you are calling Bad is the best there is, and that is a scary thought. That's only logical. True reality Established!! |
| ||
| Reality is right abba (tho I don't think it's crappy), we're both speaking from the same refrence frame, our Storm Engine has a terrain system that may not display 150x150 kilomters of terain, but it sure as hell looks a lot better then this and I'm willing to bet it's a lot faster too, a system like this might be nice for a flightsim, but I wouldn't concider it for anything else. |
| ||
| @ RetroBooster: Were can I find a demo of this legendary Storm Engine you speak of? I have never heard of it. I repeat, I have been on this forum for 9 months now and I have not seen anything close to this quality. Sorry if I have missed something. I have been posting here for 9 months asking if anyone has seen a good Terrain engine for blitz. And everything I have seen thus far is to slow or to limited in distance to be of value for anything but a fps. I am confident that blitz is capable of more, I just haven't seen anything to varify it yet. So please enlighten me! If there is. If you say it's junk because you only get a wire frame veiw. Well study the wire frame, how quickly it is updated, as you move thrue the terrain. If you only get a wire frame, I suggest you download the mpeg of a flythrough. That mpeg was made in real time. At the end he zooms above the earth and gives a large panaramic view of the earth below. Now that is awsome quality. If anyone says it's not, then please explain yourself. Every time I see it my heart yearns for something like this written in Blitz3D. But if you can even show me a Blitz3d Terrain engine demo that is in wire frame with the framerate displayed, I would be very interested. Then I would have something to compare it with. Thanks is advance. |
| ||
| No I don't say it's junk at all, infact it's realy nice for big terrains, but this technique is rapidly becoming outdated for upclose and detailed terrains, I wish I could release some screenshots and schematics or some of our internal development videos right now, but I'm afraid you'll have to wait for the techdemo which should release early may. It's no secret shattered and myself are developping a truely amazing engine that I guarantee will leave you stumped once it's released, but the reason it's not well known is because we aren't willing to release any material yet until we launch our techdemo. I did download an mpeg and I keep a close eye on ROAM and SOAR style terrain development, because I'm sure that in time, just like with many other terrain techniques a new technological advancement will make them standard again, for now I'm sticking with a hybrid technique for up close and detailed terain. This does not negate the fact that terrain like this is perfect for flightsims tho! I'm just not writing one. |
| ||
| Well I know that an engine like that used for Age of Mythology are easy get a high frame rate for Because they only show a small area at a time. Smaller area = less polys and surfaces. If I wanted a closeup engine I would have my program well underway, I am getting over 500 fps with a closeup mesh terrain. BlitzTreeDemo is a good example of a closeup 3d scene. These type of displays are quite easy to design. But a large world 3d terrain is still lacking in blitz3D. They are the most difficult to design. Everyone from Tourism to Education is crying for a powerful 3d outdoor world. Removing distant and unneeded verts. is the main bottleneck. And todate that version of SOAR is the best I have seen. The source is written is C and uses OpenGL, both of which I know very little about. The only reason it's in wire frame is because he hasn't written the code to take advantage of modern gfx cards power yet. And this is still the best 3d Terrain engine Algorithm I have seen. If you press spacebar you can then move through the terrain with the mouse. Also if you press the number keys you get different views. Q and E control speed. R and F raise and lower your view. W and S move you forward and back. Try looking down on an area and pressing S and W. Notice how the dynamic mesh changes. (Wire frame) Rerendering the meshes each time, means, you don't need a remove verticies function. Just use new ones. It still blows my mind how far I can see. |
| ||
| Well, the one I'm working with right now is gonna give you maybe a 3x3 kilometer view range, there's rather few games which that aint enough for, I could modify it to support the kind of terain sizes (27x27 kilometers sound good enough?) you see in this demo using a hybrid LOD algorithm, but it'd be a lot of work to support for a small amount of potential users, so if there's actualy a large amount of people that want far more then the standard 3x3 kilometers, speak up and I will concider it. This stuff is mostly painfull on the physics/netcode integration tho I can't possibly explain all that in detail until you actualy see what it is that this thing does... :D So, who thinks 3x3 kilometer terrains aren't good enough for his project and would actualy BUY a high end commercial engine based off blitz that amongst a whole slew of other features included a terrain engine capable of providing you with larger, completely editable terrains with a view range of 27x27 kilometers or up? (with a far higher level of up close detail then the terrain engine showcased in this thread I might add) |
| ||
| 3x3 km sounds pretty good. Are you just releasing a game or are you also releasing a library or dll we can use to make our own scenes? 3x3 would cover an average viewing distance in the real world. And as one moves to the edges one could always load another 3x3 scene up. Anything past 1km and trees are only dots on the landscape. Something that would be nice though is if one could have a backdrop scene, like a skybox only with the preveous scene projected on it. So mountains could be seen in the distance. If you know what I mean. That would take care of the distance problem. Popup terrains as you walk in one direction are kind of rude. Interesting you jumped from 3x3 to 27x27. |
| ||
| Doesn't even work on. terrain.dll fails to load. (g5, so not my card.) anyone else have any probs getting it to work? shots look really nice. |
| ||
So your engine looks as good as this Retro? :P (Unless you're talking about your gl engine, then it could very well be..but I think it's next to impossible to get anything nearly as detailed using blitz's engine) |
| ||
| Otacon, you just click on ranger.bat. Nothing else. Even if you don't have the right gfx card it still gives you a wire frame version. Hit spacebar to get control of movement yourself. Then hold down R to rise above the scene. |
| ||
| Our terrain system has nothing to do with blitz's generic terrain system. |
| ||
| Abba, I did. Tells me it can't load the terrain. Might be because I'm using winME. Shattered, yes, but is it blitz's? My point is blitz3d just isn't nearly fast enough imo to generate terrains of that much detail. well, unless you use dot3/normal mapping on the terrain it's self. |
| ||
| Like I said otacon, it's viewrange is not as long as this, but it looks a lot better and yes it's made in blitz. It's not nearly as limited as you think it is, else I'd be using openGL myself right from the start. @abba: We will eventualy be releasing a full development solution based on blitz, that allows you to use the engine we've developed to the same extent we use it in making our game. |
| ||
| @Otacon Are the maps in the maps folder: Should be in: ranger_mk2_binary\maps\puget_sound_1k bunch of png files. Also try noise_land.bat Take a look at the videos. you may be missing one of the libraries it needs. Here is a list: OpenGL - Industry standard graphics library. OpenAL - 3D audio library. Lua - Powerful embedded scripting language. Zlib - For compression/decompression. LibPNG - Reads/writes Portable Network Graphics images. You can click on these on that website to download them. If that fails, it may be you don't have enough video ram to load the maps. |
| ||
| I think it looks great, personally, up close and from a distance. Also looking forward to the storm engine... |
| ||
| If anyone gets the full colour version going instead of the wireframe version let me know. Also let me know what video card you are using, and framerate you get. The algo, and it's discription is given at the following web site: http://www.gvu.gatech.edu/people/peter.lindstrom/papers/tvcg2002/ Download: Technical report UCRL-JC-147847, May 2002. PDF (2.9 MB) And readup on how it is done. Maybe someone can write a blitz3D version of this, or something simular. |
| ||
| Works fine for me, looks awesome!. Specs in sig. Tom |
| ||
| So huge amounts of polyons stretching for hundreds of virtual miles with a few textures blended onto them. You'll excuse me if I don't jump out of my chair with excitement. What about foliage? Indoor areas? Water? Call me when they finish it. |
| ||
| Dunno if this was in regards to the Storm Engine or the terrain screenshot someone posted above, but EpicBoy is right, the the terrain and even the foilage, water and indoors are just a miniscule portion of a real engine! |
| ||
| What about foliage? Indoor areas? Water? They aint there in Blitz terrains neither. I thought the point was 'wouldn't this be a nice alternative to BBs terrain engine?', in which case, it does look much better. Tom |
| ||
| But it's not that special. Just a lot of polygons with textures blended on them. If it had grass or something built in, I would say it has a serious advantage but as it is ... meh. And hey, honestly, who's making a game that needs that size of a terrain map? Anyone making a flight sim? And by "making" I mean actually writing it and not just talking about it? If not, it doesn't even matter in the end. |
| ||
| Oo oo, but you know what that terrain system would be really useful for? Making another tech demo! |
| ||
| @ RetroBooster An idea concerning: 3x3 or 27x27 Something I have thought of doing with an outdoor scene is using a very close high quality scene while moving through a scene, and then when one stops moving for a certain amount of time, have the scene start filling in into the distance. Also if one is climbing up a hill or mountain, after getting to a certain height above the ground, where distance matters, have the scene start filling in. In both these cases the frame rate would not be a factor, climbing a mountain is expected to be slower than walking on a level surface. Another time for larger scenes is when turning around past a certain point. Also when one is walking in the real world, you don't notice distant objects as much because you are so busy watching your steps, so you don't trip on something. But when you stop to take in the scenery, then distance matters. And after having stopped for a while, the distance view could be projected as a horizon on a sky box, so it's still there after you start moving. So rendering in the distance would only be done periodically. On the other side: While walking through a forest, a closeup detailed scene is best. Also, while in the woods one doesn't expect a fast frame rate either. Running in the woods isn't a good idea. So maybe the ability to dynamically choose between 3x3 or something farther. I have tried this approach with Blitz's terrain function, and the distance view fills in almost instantly. I used 1500 units of distance while walkiing and when I stopped for 2 secs, I had it do 300,000 units. I never started the skybox idea, because I decided the Terrain function was to limited, because of a lack of texturing ability. If there was a way to tile a blitz terrain of any size, with different texture tiles, my problems would be over. These were just ideas for your consideration, for the Storm Terrain Engine. |
| ||
| So ... LOD, then? |
| ||
| People are just saying it looks like crap because it's different. I thought the range was awesome, and the layout of the rivers and ridges was much more realistic than typical CG terrain. |
| ||
| Nobody is saying it looks like crap. Just that it's really not worth wetting your pants over at this point... |
| ||
| I took a look at torque's engine and I came away really impressed by the terrain engine. The main thing I liked was the interactivity - you pull and push your heights. Second I really liked the texturing. And the way they blended. It fired my imagination, and that sort of terrain is impossible to do in blitz without custom meshes... |
| ||
| As far as I can see (and trust me, I'm posting out of ignorance here) that's just heightmap based, which really isn't that impressive. Show me one that does caverns, arch-like stone structures, etc. and I'll be happy. Doesn't look bad or anything, but I certainly don't think it looks the best. |
   |