Sphere terrain How many would use it?

#21 Hans, You're right... it's a balance between detail level, and "mass". For now, I don't think someone can pretend doing a very detailed map, only by computing dynamically heightfields. A flight over the planets could be easy to do(2 weeks to one month of work), but not so as detailed as actual Atlas engine.

#22 I would like to see something that would use something like this

sphere planet devided up into sections like on a globe.
so one could edit each of those sectors editing the terrain and adding lakes rivers and sea's
so one could make a nicely detailed earth model.

one way is haveing the farther you get away from the planet the les detaled it makes the terrain.
so if you where down on the planet like your camera was at ground level there terrain would be ninely detailed but it would only render what was in site. but from space the terrain is less detailed.

just how I saw it being done

#23

Quote:so one could edit each of those sectors editing the terrain and adding lakes rivers and sea's
so one could make a nicely detailed earth model. .

edited detail = data to store ! Totally inverse of computed terrains (which use nearly no data, but CPU)
Remember 8 GB for a 524x524km with spacing between "dots" of heightmap of 8 meters.

#24 Spherical terrain would be an extremely cool feature, I would certainly buy a content pack providing that functionality.

#25 Happy to ear you Midhir. It gives me wings to do this... I think go to this problem, but i don't know when.

#26 I would be willing to also buy a content pack, even do a few free models for you also if you would do the plugin :D

#27 Yeah I would probably buy a content pack you should have it so you can have gravity points normally at the center of a world that pull everything in a defined radius towards them.

#28 Yep gravity is another problem. Because actually, if we theorically can make a terrain, player object will fall if it is putted on the lower part of the planet :).

#29 At work I am using data supplied by the National Geospatial Agency. I have two 200Gb disks packed full of stuff that is a directory structure hell. This includes DTED (terrain height info), maps, and satellite imagery.

#30 I was thinking having it have an "atlas" terrain for a sphere.

Ie you have the texture, and you have the height map. You could make the scale factor high or something to allow for a very large planet.. but again it would have very low resolution height layer up close.

However, it would be neat to have a loadable mission so that when you got near a point of interest, it could then load up a high resolution map for that specific area. And the rest of the world would be plain.

Or even do a dynamic loading in of the detailed section.. and have the UI let the player know where the points of interest are.

#31 I am thinking more of a hybrid of the procedural method and the height map method, this way you still have an artistic component but also save on storage space. You would have a rough (1km or more between height fence posts) height map that is artist (or other method) created, and then have a procedural algorithm that creates smaller detal (1m or less). The procedural part would have to start from the same seed for a particular planet so that it would be the same for all players. You could probably have different seeds for each height map to create geographic specific detail (rough or smooth mountains, same with coastal areas).

#32 I have looked a little more about procedural generation of spherical terrain. I think now it's possible to have low detail on a planet (procedurally generated), but this will require Atlas modification... I will speak of this with Ben.
For some areas edited and stored, it's another question, I will also speak of it with Ben.

#33 -snip-
Double posted!

#34 Speaking from expereince. If you're planning on doing this with TGE you're in for a world of pain.

Have fun :P

#35 Chris, In fact I was thinking using HTC (www.garagegames.com/blogs/51584/8672). :)

#36 @Chris: Yep. I am doing this outside of Torque for work anyway with real-world data in DirectX as I cannot use shareware/freeware or anything that was developed on an untrusted (from DoD point of view) system. My code and project are not classified, but the data I deal with is.

@Vincent: The HTC looks really promising! Have you heard of a product called Fractal Terrains?
I have been playing around with it with some really nice results.

I just purchased the TSE this weekend too! :)

#37 Just saw this thread, and I'd like to add my 'vote' for spherical world support as a resource or part of a content pack. Especially with procedurally generated terrain support.

#38 Guys keep us up to-date on how things go with the coding.

#39 Very very interested in either colaborating, or buying this as a mod...

I need it for my current project....

#40 Bump.
Vincent BILLET Any more ideas on inplementing sphere terrain into your terrain tool???