SpaceSimCentral

sounds like yes what pioneer can acehieve long term the progress to date just about exceeds elite 3

Here's an early attempt at a better Earth:[attachment=490:pioneer-msvc-9 2011-01-30 23-50-59-12.jpg]Its basically just a new colour scheme for the terran world terrains that is more sensitive to height.

s2odan wrote:
Here's an early attempt at a better Earth:Its basically just a new colour scheme for the terran world terrains that is more sensitive to height.
That looks nice. Another problem with earth is it uses a limited resolution earth heightmap (and the next resolution up that I had was 25mb and I couldn't justify that - nor would it provide enough resolution). I couldn't find a fractal to modify the heightmap with that would retain the essential terrain details (ie keep the highlands of scotland rugged and norfolk flat).Perhaps feeding the heightmap point's normal to the fractal as a roughness value would be some use.

Thanks, I actually have some half-decent height-maps that can be manipulated by photoshop into various sizes, but I had trouble converting them into the required format. If its of any use I can send them to you.Edit// Ah, nevermind If I understand your post correctly they would be of no use anyway.Edit2.. This might work, if you can find a way to apply terrain settings to a planet after it has the heightmap loaded, then we could fake a nice looking earth using the fractal mountains and such tied directly into teh height of the map, I'm sure it could work, using a similar idea that I used to make the new colur scheme.

s2odan wrote:
This might work, if you can find a way to apply terrain settings to a planet after it has the heightmap loaded, then we could fake a nice looking earth using the fractal mountains and such tied directly into teh height of the map, I'm sure it could work, using a similar idea that I used to make the new colur scheme.
See the last line of the function double GeoSphereStyle::GetHeightMapVal(const vector3d &pt):return (v<0 ? 0 : v + 100*octavenoise(10, 0.5, 2.0, 1000.0*pt));This applies a sortof crap rolling hills perlin thing to the filtered height map value. You can replace this with a height map fractal of your choice. The trick is making it in keeping with the height map itself while adding useful detail (or masking the lack of detail...)

I have just tried to alter the part you suggested, but its harder than I thought to get the effect I was thinking of.I assumed that double = v is to do with the height value, but using that I was unable to change the noise values based on height... Like Noisy mountains but less noise around the coast and low lands.

It's Earth Jim, but not as we know it.[attachment=494:pioneer-msvc-9 2011-01-31 05-52-53-68.jpg][attachment=495:pioneer-msvc-9 2011-01-31 05-52-12-80.jpg]I was quite pleased with that. Thanks Tom for pointing me in the right direction.

I can't follow your technical discussion, but I can certainly appreciate the results!

:)Still needs a bit of tweaking but it turned out better than I thought it would.Here's some more pics just for fun:[attachment=496:pioneer-msvc-9 2011-01-31 06-23-25-90.jpg][attachment=497:pioneer-msvc-9 2011-01-31 06-10-04-02.jpg]

Is that first pic the result of global warming? Seriously, you've got the terrain looking plausible. Nice work!

ooooooh pretty! Nice work!

ooooooh pretty! Nice work!EDIT:oops sorry, double post

It is the original one. I just used a bit of trickery to fake a nice looking Earth. ;)Its all based on height, the higher up you are the more craggy and mountainous the landscape is. Low down is still as smooth as it was before, with just the rollng hills.So the normal height map is loaded, then this pattern is applied after.

The improvement in the view from afar is from the new colour settings which are tailored specifically for the heightmap, however they also look very good on the procedural worlds.Now you will appear to find sandy beaches, grass plains, forests, dirt/dry/deserty lands, brown rock, grey rock and of course frozen land.Whereas before, it was just grass, sand/dirt, rock and snow. So not only are there about twice as many colours but they are applied more frequently too at various points along the height.

Just call me SlartiBartfast. And wait till you see the fjords!
Quote:
I am really astonished about PIoneer´s terrain system malleability
Yes I like working with this planetary terrain system, it really is amazing.With the right math you can literally get it to do so many things.I also reckon the system could be coaxed into creating planet wide cities like coruscant, but a heightmap may be needed....In fact, I know it could. I just have yet to find the right equation that creates city blocks instead of giant spires.

s2odan wrote:
In fact, I know it could. I just have yet to find the right equation that creates city blocks instead of giant spires.
Just having large cities covering a flat plain would be good enough, with a star port nearby for good measure.Is a planet wide one likely to be a GPU killer?

I don't think so, there are planet-wide mountain ranges which are far more detailed. While a city would have more ups and downs so to speak, the space in between those points would be flat, so theoretically there would be less faces.At least thats how I think it would work.

Depends on how the starports are managed: does every building has its own LOD check, or does the starport get rendered as a whole?

Honestly I'm not too sure, I think its calculated as a whole. But thats one of the many sections of code I have yet to read through properly.Although, saying that. The models are all created in the .lua files which would have lod assigned to each individual model, so I suppose I have no idea :)But I was thinking of using the actual terrain engine to render the buildings using an equation to create square/rectangular blocks instead of say mountains or hills.What do you think, is this just a silly idea?

s2odan wrote:
Honestly I'm not too sure, I think its calculated as a whole. But thats one of the many sections of code I have yet to read through properly.Although, saying that. The models are all created in the .lua files which would have lod assigned to each individual model, so I suppose I have no idea :)But I was thinking of using the actual terrain engine to render the buildings using an equation to create square/rectangular blocks instead of say mountains or hills.What do you think, is this just a silly idea?
Not at all. If it'll work well with textures etc. that could be a great way to generate really big procedural citys. Coruscant like