Planetary Tech Improvements: 24hr stream

Red Anders

Red Anders
Cmdr. Heavenly said:
I'm not sure if this has been mentioned, but the "game" Outerra has added procedurally generated overhangs via Horizontal Fractal Displacement:

https://forum.outerra.com/index.php?topic=6.0

And I'm pretty sure Outerra uses height maps as a base layer too. Generally Outerra is really worth a look. Especially the mountain top regions with its rocks can be extremely convincing imho. Unfortunetaly it "only" simulates earth.

Edit: Our friend ObsidianAnt has made a very nice review of Outerra: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlKz6r1uCfw
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As someone who used to spend endless hours doing 3D landscape renders as a hobby, cheers for that - bookmarked for a proper look.
 

Mengy

Mengy
Red Anders said:
As someone who used to spend endless hours doing 3D landscape renders as a hobby, cheers for that - bookmarked for a proper look.
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Outerra is very impressive, I wish the Stellar Forge could do surfaces as well, but then Elite is a game with much more going on while Outerra is just a great tech demo, so the comparison is a bit unfair. Maybe someday though.
 

Cosmo

Cosmo
mojonaut said:
It's not impossible to generate, though the current engine and the need to allow a 'surface' for ships to land and srv's to traverse without disappearing into the terrain might add complications that make it so in ED's case. It is possible to add horizontal displacements to the procedural heightfield calculation allowing overhangs, whether the needed extra calculations can be done and still give a high enough framerate with their current engine only FD know the answer.

eg's below rendered in Mojoworld, they are spherical worlds completely procedural and this is 13 year old tech. probably took overnight to render with the computing power available at the time, would be pretty neat if today's improved hardware and software optimisation would allow this for realtime rendering in ED.

https://bw-1651cf0d2f737d7adeab84d3...15/be6fd0725eefb2ed18524819a03806ae_large.jpg
https://img09.deviantart.net/5f0c/i/2004/192/d/6/world_of_bondstones.jpg
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world_of_bondstones.jpg


This looks awesome and it was made in 2004. It's a truly alien landscape.
 
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MGB

M
Last I read about Outerra was that, though the fractal terrain is generated on the GPU, the main game code could query the terrain on the cpu side. So accurate collisions were possible but not sure about the cost. Presume the GPU would need flushing before a query so maybe expensive!
 

Cheapchips

Cheapchips
Outerra uses streamed elevation data to generate it's landscapes. The procedural bits are filling in the details finer than whatever meter sq this is. That's quite a leg up over ED, which has do the whole planet from scratch, and still look like coherent geology.
 

Genus

Genus
Do we have a line of the variety of planets, or are they all going to look like this?

hgWprMc.jpg


If still no variety...is that progress?
 

Ambroza

Ambroza
picommander said:
I want to believe these were just a few procedurally generated examples from a much greater variety of new planets to come. But if that's just a few more or less fixed types (performance sake, you know) of planets, I strongly doubt this will feed the explorers among us over the next few month. We've seen some nice, hype-worthy images at FX17 but no living, breathing procedurale engine. I don't say such an engine won't exist but why don't they show it in action then? And why not show their surfaces?
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Here's the closest surface shot we've been given so far: https://i.imgur.com/XlFbmNb.jpg

Also, what exactly do you mean by "show it in action"? Isn't that what they're doing by showing us these examples of the new procedural generation?
 

Ambroza

Ambroza
picommander said:
Just static images, art work. Doesn't really look like ingame footage. Show me an SRV cruising over these planet surfaces and I slowly start to believe it...
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Ah, so you haven't seen the Frontier Expo reveals then. Those images I linked to are stills from a video, I just made them into images for the sake of convenience. Here's the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCKUhmbyGdM

If what they've shown is so good that you believe it's concept art, I'd say they're on the right track!
 

Terry Bruge-Hiplo

Terry Bruge-Hiplo
picommander said:
I want to believe these were just a few procedurally generated examples from a much greater variety of new planets to come. But if that's just a few more or less fixed types (performance sake, you know) of planets, I strongly doubt this will feed the explorers among us over the next few month. We've seen some nice, hype-worthy images at FX17 but no living, breathing procedurale engine. I don't say such an engine won't exist but why don't they show it in action then? And why not show their surfaces?
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Not sure matey. It's WIP is all we know currently.
 

Ambroza

Ambroza
picommander said:
An example of a true procedural engine in action could show arbitrary changes to a given planet in real time, just for the sake of demonstration of the power of such an engine.
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If you want to learn more about the fundamental technology behind their planetary generation system, I highly recommend this pre-Horizons stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Et5Ivi_yIg

The system they're using is pretty robust, and has been for some time. The Q1 change will mostly just be changing coloration.
 

Ambroza

Ambroza
picommander said:
I've seen this stream, nothing new to me. Given that this is an older one (pre-Horizons) and if it's so 'robust' as you say, why haven't we got a comparable variety in the game already?
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Well, we do. There's actually a decent amount of planetary variation in the game already, but the problematic planets are the HMCs. Literally 100% of HMCs are beige. Anyway, I'm not really sure what you're after here. What would you like Frontier to show, exactly?
 
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Ambroza

Ambroza
picommander said:
Exploring is my main activity, including landing on many, many planetary surfaces. Such a statement makes me wonder if you really know what you're talking about.
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I mean yeah, me too. It's the only thing I'm Elite in. Probably have landed on over 1,000 planets. What would you like Frontier to show, exactly?
 

Genus

Genus
Terry Bruge-Hiplo said:
Did you see the FX17 video? There was a gorgeous reddish one too!


Skip to 3:12:45 :)
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Nice shout.

Looks like a more comprehensive RNG for planet colours and look across the board then. At least prior to release on paper.

I wonder if one can get a feel for what chemical makeup a planet will have from it's colour and veiny'ness?
 

CMDR ANCALAGON

C
In case you haven't noticed, this guy doesn't want to be convinced of anything. What is the value to you or anyone else in trying to change his mind?
 

Marc_Hicks

Marc_Hicks
I tell ya, between this, Civilization VI: Rise & Fall & the new Battletech Game, I may have to start calling in sick for work :p.
 

S3B4ST13N

S
IndigoWyrd said:
I hate to be the one who does this but...

There is this other Procedurally Generated game that includes not only cliffs, ledges and overhangs, but caves and deformable terrain...

It looks a good bit like this:

https://venturebeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/20160812155315_1.jpg?fit=1920,1080&strip=all

Just saying, there's a great deal that CAN be done with Procedural Generation. I have little doubt Stellar Forge could be further fine-tuned to generate caves, lava tubes, overhangs, and all that fun stuff that makes planets even more interesting. Pastel colors optional.
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The only thing missing are waterfalls, rivers, mountains (like .. real mountains) and more than a single biome on a single planet. One day. One day.
 
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