I think these have been on the SimHQ forums for a couple of days but I've been too busy to post any updates. Here AD has been adding some gardens to the Friday Mosque and adding it to the city.
To overcome scale/zbuffer issues of having a large scene, AD has buried the the tiled gardens into the terrain, just like the river sections. The gardens sit on a large slab that is quite deep, this also accommodates uneven terrain.
No paved road surface currently. While Leadwerks supports roads that are baked into terrain geometry they are not efficient for our large scale map. One of the reasons we're looking to build our own terrain streaming system after Combat-Helo is released. We might be able to squeeze in another texture layer to splat a paved surface in.
A high altitude view of the city shows the west side is still waiting to be populated. This was the area most damaged during a previous regional conflict.
Genius. Love it.
ReplyDeleteGreat news on paved roads. I take it not much of a hit on FPS? Another level of added reality - nice one!
ReplyDeleteOut of interest how did you manage it? texture layering?
Geometry, 3d objects and a material shader like the one we used for the craters. Adds a little offset to the surface geometry.
ReplyDeleteJust to elaborate a bit. The key component is a vertex shader that takes the Z value (height) from the terrain and applies that to the Z value of the road vertices. The road itself is built in 3dsmax as a primitive mesh, a meter high and 20 meters wide. It's flat and the vertex shader sets the height at the end of each section of road.
ReplyDelete40960M's of road can be bought at the cost of about 2500 polys which is outstanding in comparison to the native road system which costs tens of thousands of polys for short distances, doesn't work most the time, creates massive slow-downs, and flickers like a 1950's TV in a washing machine.
The only real down-side is the amount of work it takes creating the road mesh itself. It took me about an hour to lay down 10KM's, debug the path and smooth-out the ground underneath it. Therefore it probably won't be a suitable method for the dirt roads.
Cheers
In the words of Cat from Red Dwarf, "So what is it?" :)
ReplyDeleteGood workaround, should make collision detection a little easier too. Bobs been sacked its now 'Dave the builder'.
ReplyDeleteThey are running a repeat of the Red Dwarf series here in Dubai. Funny, it doesnt seem quite as funny as I remember it to be (mind you it is series1). I still have a Red Dwarf 'smeg ups' VHS in my cabinet, shame I dont have a video player anymore!