Sphere terrain How many would use it?

#1 If the terrains were large enough I would try it.

Ari Rule

#2 I would be EXTREMELY interested in something like this. I have had a game idea for a while that would really benefit from this. Without this I do not know how I could achieve it. Still thinking about a possible solution. But if someone could modify TGE (or preferably the new TSE Atlas ;) ;).... ).. well that would be like going to heaven =)

#3 Well the more people that support seeing this as feature or plugin the more likely we will see it become into being

#4 I have my theories as to how this would be done with Atlas... primarily, you map the terrain as a 1x1 grid (shrinking it down to float), then you use triginometry to map the positions around a sphere of each portion of the terrain, then multiplying the resulting vector by the height. You -should- end up with a wrapped sphere.

#5 This would be great for an elite style game.

#6 When I purchase the TSE in the next couple of weeks I am going to see about including Sean O'Neil's procedural planet stuff from Gamasutra.

Here are the links:
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20010302/oneil_01.htm
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20010810/oneil_01.htm
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20020712/oneil_01.htm

However, I want to replace his ROAM implementation with the one by Trent Polack from 3D Terrain Programming which is using ROAM 2.0. I have been getting very impressive results with it. It still needs to have morphing vertices though as it suffers from a lot of popping.

#7 I would love to see rounded terrain. It would be cool if it could have lat long type coordinates as well.

#8 I am definately going to be doing this for my project, I cannot say when it would be complete, but I would definately make it available for the TSE.

Mike, it is a little more complicated than that, otherwise you end up with distortions. For my 'day job' I am developing something similar for a military simulation.

Here is a good starting reference:
http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/UsefulData/UTMFormulas.HTM

#9 This would be an interesting feature...I would definatly have a use for this in a seperate project.

#10 Scott one of the reasons I want to see sphere terrain implement is it would be a very good thing for people that where doing simulations, I am going to be using Torque for my missile simulator project. You can check it out here at this Link, look under gallery for images of some of the models I have gotten done. Let me know what you think.

Also Scott maybe you and mike could work together on making a sphere terrain plug in
It might go faster with two people working together.

#11 I am unfortunately working on other projects, such as Kuiper and it's related Space Content Pack.

#12 I think I'm going to have a look at spherical terrains as a possible extension of HTC (www.garagegames.com/blogs/51584/8672)

#13 Vincent that is a very cool tool you have there. Also another thing that is needed in a sphere terrain plug in is being able to edit the terrain in game like one can do now with flat terrain for make adjustments.

#14 I know I'm working on.

#15 Just plug-in the INFINITE UNIVERSE ENGINE and your set :)

IUE

#16 Yep.. I don't think it's so easy to do...:)

#17 WOW. How nice would that be to have the TSE engine with mods so it could render a solar system allowing you to go down to any planet surface!

#18 Yes would be great for doing space sims. something there has not been alot of latley.

#19 Problem with space sim and low detail level terrain, is disk space.
A 524x524km square size map takes 8 GB on disk. So if you want many planets on system (9 like our solar system), each ridiculously small, you'll 72 GB just for terrains. Spherical terrains might not be as detailed as FPS maps... Just good for flight travel, but not for "walking" on them. A solution might be to generate them during game, as long as the player go down to the planet, unfortunately, I think actual CPUs are not powerfull enough to perform this task in real time.

But if you can accept the idea of very small planet, yes it could be interesting to do this.

#20 *ahem*, I'd like to point out a little fact that Elite 2 sported a galaxy of millions of stars and planets which absolutely had terrain which you could fly over. Granted, it wasn't very detailed, but it was doable back then. It's moreso today.

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Hans