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Outerra, 3d planetary engine for seamless planet rendering from space to surface
- demarq 11y agoIf you go deep into their blog to see screenshots from the first versions you'll see just how far this project has come. The amount of work that has gone into it is staggering. There's also nibbles, of some pretty interesting math and programming problems in there... http://outerra.blogspot.com http://outerra.blogspot.com
- herbst 11y agoIt looks beautiful. The demo is only available on Windows tho it seems :/ Does the engine itself work on Linux/Mac/Android/whatever?
- rntz 11y agoThere's some folks called I-Novae trying to do a similar thing, but making a space-fight simulator game on top as well, called Infinity: https://www.inovaestudios.com/Technology https://www.inovaestudios.com/Technology. I'd be curious to hear a technical comparison. It looks like Outerra focuses more on the planet-side and I-Novae more on the space-side.
- herbst 11y agoFor a start DirectX, so it wont work on most devices.
- Ixio 11y agoI came across them years ago and followed every once in a while. The original idea (if I remember correctly) was a MMORPG with a seamless-space-engine (like Outerra) and a huge universe (mostly procedurally built). That's their main project: Infinity the quest for Earth. They've gone for an intermediate goal of making a space-fight simulator based on the engine. I played a prototype a few years back where two teams fight each other in a Solar System in a Counter Strike fashion, mine or destroy the enemy to get money and you get to upgrade your ship. It was pretty fun. Looks like they've gone to crowdfunding to turn their prototype in a working game that they can use as a stepping stone to the MMORPG. It's called Infinity: Battlescape and it apparently got funded en of last year https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/infinity-battlescape https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/infinity-battlescape
- ulrikrasmussen 11y agoThis is quite impressive! The vehicles and flight simulation suggests that this is being developed for some specific game, but I couldn't find any references on the page. Does anyone know if this is the case, or if the engine is just being developed for more general purpose use?
- akavel 11y agoBased on http://www.outerra.com/jobs.html http://www.outerra.com/jobs.html and http://titanim.net/www/ http://titanim.net/www/: "[Outerra is hiring] to work on several game and simulation projects for large defense contractors in partnership with TitanIM", with the latter being "A global sandbox [...] simulation software platform" and "[holding] the exclusive license to the [Outerra] world rendering engine for military applications."
- JosephHatfield 11y agoThose demo planets look they are only few hundred miles in diameter. Is this a hardware limitation or it is simply done here to shorten the demos?
- coldcode 11y agoNo they actually have a full Earth scale (based on sat data) and I think a Mars one as well. It's able to be shown progressively to almost any altitude including orbital.
- StapleHorse 11y agoWouldn't be nice some kind of game like KSP with this engine in a MMPORG fashion? I know, keep dreaming :)
- kruczek 11y agoDid you try Space Engineers? It has spaceship-building elements and also interactive planets (albeit tiny when compared to real planets, but still 120km diameter is enough to get a feeling you are on an actual planet). It also has multiplayer, although not in an MMO scale.
- thirdsun 11y agoArma 3 comes to mind. Or Euro/American Truck Simulator. That would indeed be amazing. Kind of a silly question, but having the world as a sandbox at your disposal has to be a game developer's dream and while it's technically very ambitious I have to wonder why nobody seems to be making any use of the fact that Outerra is trying to provide exactly that.
- chrizz 11y agoStar Citizen does something similar in CryEngine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yLTm8DZ8s4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yLTm8DZ8s4
- Coincoin 11y agoSimulating the world doesn't necessarily make a good game. People usually want simple rules in a simple environment and the ability to explore and stretch those rule as much as possible. A random gigantic game that simulates absolutely everything doesn't let you do that. Take KSP as an example, sure it would be pretty to use that engine, but that's it, it would just be prettier. It would'nt bring anything new. The game is already fun, not because it's realistic, but because it has much simpler orbit mechanics than reality. A model a regular human being can actually wrap his head around. The most boring and disappointing part of KSP are the contracts. Why? Because they are random. They have no direction and no sensible progression. They don't encourage you to push the limits. They are just an endless generated generic grind.
- Kovah 11y agoI wonder what kind of device specs are required to run this kind of simulation properly. Couldn't find any information about this on the site and on the blog.
- VikingCoder 11y agoSpecs are listed here: http://www.outerra.com/demo.html http://www.outerra.com/demo.html Minimum requirements: * Windows Vista and higher, limited Windows XP support * Nvidia 8xxx series or better, AMD/ATI 5xxx or better with recent AMD/ATI drivers (older ATI series are no longer supported by AMD and their legacy drivers do not work well with Outerra) * Recent graphics drivers! * 1GB graphics memory * 2GB RAM * 500MB disk space for the initial install, up to 15GB for fully downloaded Earth dataset Recommended: * Nvidia 470GTX or better, ATI 6870 or better * 2GB graphics memory * a 2-core CPU
- mpnordland 11y agoThat's surprisingly reasonable.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- david-given 11y agoSee also Proland, which is open source: http://proland.imag.fr/ http://proland.imag.fr/ It's a tech demo/research project, which means the code is basically continuously broken, but I did bodge it into workingness on Linux. It's impressive but doesn't quite live up to the videos --- I think they're using features that weren't working in my copy. But it is one that you can actually get your hands on and play with. Proland is by the same person who did the wonderful Rama animation here, using some of the same procedural generation technology: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBIQCm54dfY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBIQCm54dfY Although Rama wasn't rednered in realtime.
- aluhut 11y agoThat Rama animation was better then the book.
- david-given 11y agoClarke's book is amazing, but the animation is certainly better than Gentry Lee's execrable (shudder) sequels.
- junke 11y agoThe first book was great.
- oniony 11y agoI concur...they went progressively downhill.
- aruggirello 11y agoJaw-dropping! Now if only someone could pick this up to build a Win/OSX/Linux version of No Man's Sky!!! That would be the ultimate amazement to me...
- zardo 11y agoThere's spaceengine. I believe it does the entire observable universe. http://en.spaceengine.org/ http://en.spaceengine.org/
- pierotofy 11y agoIt's also worth mentioning the less known Tinman 3D Terrain: https://www.tinman3d.com/ https://www.tinman3d.com/. Still in early stage, but really promising.
- cpfohl 11y agoWow. That's an impressive demo. My only comment would be that in the demos with trees give away the fact that it's computer rendered. not really sure what it is about them? (They don't sway? They're too similar? The algorithm is 'showning'?) Any one know what it is I'm noticing?
- gravypod 11y agoIf you like things like this check out SoA: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Uo_x9FnnXTc https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Uo_x9FnnXTc The devs are really smart and pulling together some amazing optimization stuff that you wouldn't really expect.
- gravypod 11y agoThis is a better link: https://www.seedofandromeda.com/videos# https://www.seedofandromeda.com/videos#
- dantillberg 11y agoI would love to see more flight sims produced. When I was a kid, some of the best games out there were flight sims. But ever since graphics technology caught up enough to represent complex close-up 3D world, land-based games with avatars and close-up action-packed combat have taken over. Flight sims tended to focus a whole lot more on planning -- you'd often have a mission planner, where you'd plot out your route (and sometimes the mission/route of other aircraft as well), then you get in the plane, taxi, fly for a while, watch out for SAMs, maybe get intercepted by enemy aircraft, find & attack your target(s), then fly home and land. I guess it sounds sort of boring, but part of me wonders what kids these days (OK, I'm old, I know) are missing out on.
- zimpenfish 11y agoCan recommend "Just Cause 2" for hours of fun flying around a reasonably large map looking at lovely scenery in a variety of planes / helicopters. Plenty of things to blow up from the skies too.
- ComSubVie 11y agoI would recommend the Digital Combat Simulations Series, there are some different simulators available: Su-27, BlackShark, A-10C, F-15C, ... https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/de/products/ https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/de/products/
- jlwarren1 11y agoI would highly recommend this for anyone who owns an Oculus Rift.
- YoukaiCountry 11y agoI agree, it's incredible. But be warned, this made me sicker than just about anything I've done with the Oculus Rift.
- LordKano 11y agoI like this. I look at this project and see all kinds of potential.
- Udo 11y agoIs this project even alive? The last forum posts seem to be about a year old and there doesn't seem to be any development on the OS X / Linux front despite them saying it was right around the corner in 2012.
- Zitrax 11y agoThe last release is from 16 Oct 2015: http://forum.outerra.com/index.php?topic=3151.0 http://forum.outerra.com/index.php?topic=3151.0
- fizixer 11y agoDo they have 24-hour analytical sun+sky model? I'm obsessed with something like that ever since I came across Hosek-Wilkie model (unfortunately it is dawk+day+dusk only, no night time).