Some interesting talk about upcoming updates to the road system.  http://forum.outerra.com/index.php?topic=2661.0;topicseen

More Eye-Candy from Awac9

 

HRTF Binaural Audio test (use headphones)

 

Coming Soon?

 

HRTF Binaural Audio test (use headphones)

Fantastic! I remember watching a similar AMD TrueAudio demo, and this one is equally impressive.

My only complaint is that the world looks like it's in a constant state of haze that dulls the colors to much or like the sun is always in your eyes. 

 

It's kind of like taking a picture with a camera where snow is on the ground.

 

Nearly every game has this, unless the developer has created an artificial "solution" for it.

 

It is because of how your brain compensates for the color of air.

Your brain is constantly compensating to reduce the effect air has on seeing the object/landmass behind the air, since you don`t want to see what is between your eyes and the object you want to see.

Usually the distance between you and the object of choice is between 5 meters and a couple hundred meters, in an airplane sim it would oftenly be multiple kilometers.

Your brain adjusts compensation to the amount of air between you and your chosen object, so something a hundred meters away gets more compensation than something only 1 meter away.

 

And here lies the problem, if all material (textures/renderengine/GPUcolorsettings/screen and so on) is made linear/coloraccurate your brain is not fooled in thinking you are actually in the mountains but still 100% convinced you are sitting behind a desk.

So instead of compensating for 1kilometer (which would make the colors look right, btw there is a maximum distance your brain compensates for) your brain only compensates for 50-100centimeters.

Your brain usually compensates by boosting red a lot and green a little and reducing blue and a little sharpening because that is the effect the atmosphere has on sunlight, the atmosphere absorbes red and resonates blue and does a little diffusion as well.

This is why pictures made in space of for example the space station always look color-correct, a machine/photocamera doesnt make this distance compensation and therefore puts what`s in between you and the object as well, when your brain actually tries to see things as if there was no air at all.

 

btw very interesting project.

UPDATE:

 

Version 0.8.2.4577

• HRTF binaural audio support (off by default)
• fixed animation blending on mercenary character
• ufo min height 1.8, crouching in ufo mode (F key)
• detail terrain textures colorized by biome, rocks textured with color between dirt and gray colors + relative material coloring
• true geographic and mercator projection for full-screen map overlays (ctrl+shift+G,M), road/object editors work on top of that mode
• adjustable gmap opacity in full mode
• enhanced stars rendering (some issues with MSAA remain)
• fix for audio gaps on youtube when using built-in video capture, LZ4 compressed video frames (lower disk throughput needed)
• fixed TPS camera orientation restore
• fixed vehicle camera toggle
• fixed grass animation
• adjusted forest brightness and color in distance
• adjusted biome colors, suppressed erroneous blue component in source data
• fixed misplaced trees/biome bug
• fixed download "freezing" after location jumps
• fixed crash with trackir plugin

My first impressions of this update are good. The land texturing is improved significantly and looks quite a bit more realistic as far as tones and color blending. Trees also seem to be distributed more naturally and there is no longer a visible dividing line (you had to look for it) between the switch-over from trees to medium distance textures.

 

Be aware that this update is part of an alpha release, and shows some instabilities, such as CTD. Use under advisement!

 

A quick and dirty look at the new biome colors and etc

 

Version 0.8.2.4579

 

Crashes fixed.

• fixed OpenAL audio library crash on high Doppler values
• suppressed baked-in snow, changed to gray rock color

This pictures and videos are amazing. Just for curiosity sake, will be too much hard to Outerra programers to add features like AI traffic, real weather and add on programs to develop sceneries and aircrafts? 

This pictures and videos are amazing. Just for curiosity sake, will be too much hard to Outerra programers to add features like AI traffic, real weather and add on programs to develop sceneries and aircrafts? 

 

Well, considering none of this already exists for Outerra, it would be quite large project. Though, I don't believe Outerra is open enough yet to develop things like AI and real-time weather.

 

 

A quick and dirty look at the new biome colors and etc

 

The atmospheric lighting is fantastic, gives a real sense of depth to the scenery

Well, considering none of this already exists for Outerra, it would be quite large project. Though, I don't believe Outerra is open enough yet to develop things like AI and real-time weather.

 

Though theoretically since Outerra tries to run primarily on the GPU, more CPU resources should be available for other types of calculations......

I've been following this closely and I'm looking forward to getting my hands dirty and getting buildings, forests and roads in from OpenStreetMap. At some point, when they open up and stabilise the API, it should become very interesting.

I still see a lot of misconceptions about just what Outerra is. It is not, let me emphasise, not a flight simulator. It is a world environment simulator and a foundation upon which any number of applications can be made. From large scale wargames, real time strategy, massively multiplayer roleplaying games, to yes, flight simulators. I think anyone judging it solely on the presence or lack of flight simulator-specific features is completely missing the point.

 

That said, the future possibilities for this are amazing. I'm a backer of Star Citizen, a new game being developed by Chris Roberts as a spiritual successor to the Wing Commander games, and I've read that he is considering Outerra tech for the planetfall portions of the game, which blows my mind. To go from outer space to atmospheric entry on a life sized planet upon which bases, resource gathering facilities, cities, etc. can be built, and then multiply that by even a fraction of the size of a galaxy is absolutely mindboggling.

 

And sure, if someone is able to build a flight simulator on this foundation, that'd be pretty great too. :good:

I still see a lot of misconceptions about just what Outerra is. It is not, let me emphasise, not a flight simulator. It is a world environment simulator and a foundation upon which any number of applications can be made.

 

To emphasize the point, here is a unique submission from a a new (and obviously very  talented) user very interested in flight. Just maybe not the type you would normally think of here!  :lol:

 

 http://forum.outerra.com/index.php?topic=2682.0;topicseen