New Release / With clouds

[Jochen Stier]

Finally there is a new release of the runtime on the website. This one contains a few clouds; a new version of the editor will follow soon.

I tested this one on both, NVIDA and ATI. I hope it runs well for TorakunSama. It should fly on a GTX.

[StormGnu]

It looks great! I mean there is a lot of popping and it lags a little on my old ATI 2900XT but It looks incredible!

Nice job so far Jochen. Also it seems more stable and has not crashed yet.

[Tamarin]

I installed the new demo. I have to say it looks really amazing. My 8200 has support for the shaders but just cant work with all of the mesh in the game. Keep up the good work Jochen.

[Jochen Stier]

I am glad you guys like what you are seeing. Thx for the kind words! I am even happier that it runs without crashing on your machines. The performance can still be improved a bit. It will never run well on the lower end cards, but I am guessing that there is another 10-15% of improvements that can be had. Unfortunately I still have rare crash with the terrain tessellation that only happens in release mode and that is hard to reproduce. That’s a programmer’s worst nightmare; a problem in a multi-threaded App, that disappears even once you put a print statement into the code. It like the Heisenberg uncertainty principle

Anyways, as you may have noticed the cirrus clouds don’t look very good in the latest version. They have a very low resolution and thus appear bulky. The problem is that I could not tessellate the clouds sphere enough to get the proper resolution; that would just eat up too many resources. The only solution would be to create a level of detail algorithm similar to how the terrain works. I.e. tessellate more around the viewer. That in turn would require another complex algorithm and lots of triangle patches. After mulling over this for a while, I had this great epiphany! Why not use the triangle mesh of the terrain and adopt it for the clouds sphere. The terrain mesh already has a high level of detail around the viewer. The only problem is that it has the topography of the terrain and not that of an even cloud sphere. The solution I came up with was to push the vertices out to the could sphere using a vertex shader. Long story short, it took me less than two hours to implement and it produces amazing result. The following pics show what I am talking about. The clouds now have the same level of detail as the terrain which already changes appropriately as you are moving around. Have a good look at the cirrus clouds. In my mind they are absolutely amazing, at no cost in memory, and only a little bit in runtime. Unfortunately I have already taken out my lower end NVIDIA card, so I can’t really tell; the HD4890 is behaving just fine.

Anyways, here are the pics, I haven’t updated the download yet, but I will do so soon. I am now finally happy with the atmosphere/clouds. It could sill look a bit better, but that’s just playing with the noise parameters. I will be in Vancouver for a couple of days next week, but after that I will be able to get back into the editor. I especially want to get back to the Leona and Trident. I am also considering to just spend a few more days on the terrain in order to get it looking more like outerra, or add normals maps to the clouds to get yet another visual improvement in the atmosphere.

[TorakunSama]

Ok! First things first:
Wooooow! These images are stunning! The last one makes the planet look pretty good!
I downloaded the install and will install it tonight (GMT), ad those fantastic clouds!
Talking of the terrain! I think we should start creating new ground and vegetation textures! Maybe we could open another thread to discuss a bit before you start! I know you're the boss, but I/we would like to help you make it even better!
You could start by discussing the methods you intend to use, and the possibilities this implies, and how we could help to add to the realism/coolness of it!
Another think that is passing through my mind is the storyline. If approaching Outerra's standards, you mean using a base texture and add detail with noise function (it was one of my earlier requests actually  ), then we might as well look for a possible Pangea free texture and scrap the randomly generated continents. But having a single continent wouldn't be interesting, and also the whole solar system could be added...
Yes this is why I'll need another thread to discuss the terrain modifs....

[StormGnu]

Ah, smart way of drawing the cirrus clounds! The best programmers are the laziest you know
I guess the next obvious step is terrain, as TS said. It would be cool to fly around in, and be able to walk around inside, the Leona though.

As soon as I get some more time over I'll start looking into some more python server code. I want to make a Stackless Python server core for some other stuff anyways so I should be able to take some time off to actually do it.

[TorakunSama]

Now that StormGNU mentioned flying on the Leona, hwo will we prevent water, clouds, dust and whatever other element from going through the ship? I'm once again thinking of a boolean field to make a difference operation on all objects that collide with it or makes them invisible !... Maybe bad idea, if it has to calculate for every particle tha collides....
another solution for clouds would be the particle flee the ships, the makew a path for the ship to go through.. . In any case, I bet there are methods, to do that, and that even a flight sim might be using it!

[TorakunSama]

After testing many times the release, I must say that a lot of things have improved!
The clouds are a major plus! However, it seems that the billboards update a bit slowly. If you rotate around the shuttle with the mouse, the clouds keep facing the previous camera position, when you stop, they point to the new cam position.
The SSAO finaly works, Bloom however, now works with conflicts with the defered light (it shows big black boxes wherever there's dif. light.
The orbital bridge still disappears.
The clouds are quite dense, you cloud spread them a bit more to cover a vaster area!
This is the best release so far!
Congratulations and keep up the great work! We make us very proud!

[Jochen Stier]

Now that StormGNU mentioned flying on the Leona, hwo will we prevent water, clouds, dust and whatever other element from going through the ship? I'm once again thinking of a boolean field to make a difference operation on all objects that collide with it or makes them invisible

I haven't thought about that yet. We can probably use the stencil buffer... that would be the technical term for "boolean field"

The orbital bridge still disappears.

That has to do with the logarithmic depth buffer I am now using. The scene is no longer rendered several times using a near, medium and far viewing frustum. Instead I am computing my own depth value in the vertex shader using a logarithmic scale. That really improves performance but also introduces artifacts with very large triangles close to the viewer. In the future the walkway has to be replaced with a denser trimesh.

The clouds are a major plus! However, it seems that the billboards update a bit slowly. If you rotate around the shuttle with the mouse, the clouds keep facing the previous camera position, when you stop, they point to the new cam position.

Yeah, I am not using position oriented billboards, but view directed billboards. They need to be updated much more frequently, but they work a lot better when you are inside the cloud. In the cloud field I am using position oriented billboards and that problem does not become that apparent.

This is the best release so far!
Congratulations and keep up the great work! We make us very proud!

This is the best release so far!

Excellent!


I’ll be back in a few days…

P.S. Demo3 in the editor download was used to produce the images above.

[TorakunSama]

That has to do with the logarithmic depth buffer I am now using. The scene is no longer rendered several times using a near, medium and far viewing frustum. Instead I am computing my own depth value in the vertex shader using a logarithmic scale. That really improves performance but also introduces artifacts with very large triangles close to the viewer. In the future the walkway has to be replaced with a denser trimesh.

I see, does it mean, the planet meshes need more detail too? Because I noticed that when walking with the shlamber in first person view, the same problem occurred!

Yeah, I am not using position oriented billboards, but view directed billboards. They need to be updated much more frequently, but they work a lot better when you are inside the cloud. In the cloud field I am using position oriented billboards and that problem does not become that apparent.

Indeed, it's less noticeable, near by. However, what will be the results while flying above or far from a bigger cloud field? I think it will feel a bit weird, as the clouds seem to move awkwardly! In any case I'm happy with the overall demo!

P.S. Demo3 in the editor download was used to produce the images above.

When is the Editor coming again?