posted 04-27- 11:10 PM            

Is 80 miles * 80 miles possible?
120 * 120?

It should be possible to automate making all the LODS with a DEM -> mesh
-> break up into 2 mile chunk program
but how do you texture it all?

We have lots of nice new planes now, but
I still hanker after new places to fly them over.

posted 04-28- 12:39 AM               

Heres a little picture using some textures 'borrowed' from EAW.

I had the terrain to 300kmx300km (actually had it to 1500kmx1500km but it took about 20minutes to load !), but the FPS was hit big time, which was one of the reasons I stopped working on it. Apperantly it has something to do with the collision detection code not being too optimised (could be wrong about that).

Other issues are proper file reference placement for airfields and towns etc (OPS can do it but its a pain), and becuase the DEM data is such low res (about 1km per sample) then you end up with EAW like terrain.

posted 04-28- 12:55 AM            

Do you think 80 mile by 80 mile would
work OK?

You can get higher res DEM data for
some parts of the world.

What is the big hit on FPS, the number
of LODS or the number of triangles/polys?

Can the LODS be made larger than
the normal 2 mile chunks?

Creating the textures will still
be a pain.

posted 04-28- 01:17 AM               

You can probably make the Tile as big as you want. There are a couple of things that might go against this:

1. I think distance culling of terrain is model based rather than a standard cliping fustrum i.e. a whole Model is culled when is is X miles away from the view point. Really large models would worsen the granularity of the far clip. Not sure about that but when I had my fog settings all mucked up it looked that way.

2. With the texture size limited to 256x256, and since you can only use 1 supertexture per model, and since I doubt all of the textures required would work individually defined... The resolution would suffer greatly. I was thinking maybe a concept of sub-supertexture or something, but of couse that would require SOS or a benevolent Inertia coder.

If you really want to experiment I can send you the DEM2SM source and you can play. I commented the actual height mapping out since it had a little problem and wasn't really required to test actual sizing or terrains. I think 80x80 mile which is about 128x128km might be OK. It will take a while to load but 300x300 was tolerable, albeit a "get a coffee and relax" kind of wait .

Then again, someone with a better PC than mine might find that its all a non-issue anyway

posted 04-28- 05:26 AM               

Boy would it be cool

I would personally be happy with some totally original. REALLY good 40x40 maps.

Heck a more detailed 30x30 for ww1 could be cool. Just to save FPS.

I think an 80x80 would be great. I know its not much area if your working to scale but if you don't then its pretty good.

Thats alot bigger then the current maps.

I wish we could make the map and hand paint in 3d. then we could be pumping these babies out.

posted 05-04- 03:06 AM               

Is this so and was it easy?