15km x 15km Terrain

#1 Thats actually impossible. If you want massive landmasses then they have to be loaded all at the same time.

T3D has no streaming terrain system, if that is what you need, I would potentially go with TGEA and Atlas if I were you

#2 The last part about nice looking and low CPU/RAM usage is the problem.
To get a 15kmx15km terrain you can either have it nice looking and use a very large heightmap or have the textures blocky and use a larger m/pixel size setting.

either way has it's pitfalls with resource usage.

#3 Retracted.

#4 You can create multiple terrain blocks, and that is what you want to do.

#5 @Pat: Wouldn't that result in similar resource requirements as with just one massive one as collision and heightmap data are there anyway aren't they and all blocks are beeing loaded from the beginning.
Might not be as impacting on the rendering performance but the cpu and RAM requirements shouldn't be too affected?

#6 There was a bit of work in the occlusion process in the 1.0 release. Might not help with the actual physical RAM requirements as that gets loaded initially, but might help with the GPU memory. Loading time for the terrain seems to be marginal once you get the rest of the junk in it.

#7 Thanks for the replies. I hate to downgrade back to TGEA, after a grand investment. But if that is what it takes I guess that will haft to do.

#8 You know I was thinking, so 4 blocks at 3.75km x 3.75 km = 15km x 15km

But would that kill performance having four terrain blocks?

#9 I am also looking at larger terrain distances, can someone explain 9 briefly ) how you work with distances like these in T3D ?

#10 I will be toying with it for the next few weeks to see what can be done Andrew, I will post back here with what I find. Would certainly haft to go back to TGEA for Atlas which is defunct in itself.

I am sure four blocks of 3.75km x 3.75km would be feasible. If not back to the drawing board.

#11 You can have it with a single terrain block, though the "quality" will be less comparing to the "4-blocks".
Create a 2048 (height-map resolution) terrain block and set the "Square Size to 7.5, so this will give you 15360m x 15360m.
If you need "smoother" terrain, you can create four 2048 blocks, and set sq.size to 3.75 to all blocks.
Other options exists too:
1 terrain block 1024 with sq.size of 15
4 terrain blocks (2x2) 1024 with sq.size of 7.5
8 terrain blocks (4x4) 512 with sq.size of 15
etc, etc, etc.
Hope this helps.

#12 Fantastic! Works like a charm even on my commodore 64...... lol ok that last part was not true.

#13 Yea... bank has the right idea here. Adjust your square size to hit the size you want... if that doesn't give you a good resolution then go for multiple terrain blocks.

#14 4x4 gives 16 blocks, not 8 ;)

#15 When I use multiple terrain blocks I get a funky seam, I will post a SS soon but now it is bed time!

#16 Just need poor man's paging now :-).

#17 Honestly I say to just get more realistic expecations. Did you take the time to work out just how big that really is? If you make realistic walking speeds in your game, just to walk that distance on a FLAT surface alone will take you over 3 hours in a straight line. What game have you EVER played that it took you more than 3 hours to walk the straight-line distance of one single level? I know I've yet to find one.

Just try making multiple levels, there's no need to make it all one big terrain that large. It's just illogical.

#18 Guess their idea is to all have in 1 mission and get bitten badly in their backs by the cpu, RAM and rendering requirements.

#19 pikes peak implies its a racing game. why the terrain can't be 1500mx1500m and the models scaled down by ten to match is my next question.

just because the default player model is xyz doesn't mean your own stuff needs to be