An Interesting Future for Outerra

[LHookins 3,103]

I thought Outerra looked a little sterile.  Forests look like well tended orchards, not like forests.  FSX got this one right.  However, this shouldn't be that difficult to fix.

 

Houses looked better in Sims 3.    That should be fairly simple to fix, too, with some better textures.

 

Hook

[HiFlyer 9,359]

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.

You can turn that down or even off in the settings. It's all adjustable.

 

What I found is that I also thought I didn't like it, and didn't quite believe the explanation that it was mathamatically accurate......

 

Until I turned it way down and after a while realized that things felt unnatural with it gone.

[HiFlyer 9,359]

I thought Outerra looked a little sterile.  Forests look like well tended orchards, not like forests.  FSX got this one right.  However, this shouldn't be that difficult to fix.

 

Houses looked better in Sims 3.    That should be fairly simple to fix, too, with some better textures.

 

Hook

 

Agreed. But its probably better to compare to its direct competition in the sim world rather than go out-genre....  ^_^

 

There is already a semi-official initiative among Outera users to flood the Outerra library with a zillion useful objects for world-building, from vehicles to houses, signage and on down even to things as mundane as crates and barrels. I suspect that if Outerra ever hits Steam they will be up to their ears in models in no time. The importer and placement tools are built directly into the Outerra engine.

 

 

 

  

 

 

And before somebody even utters the phrase "cartoon-like" Lets look at some real-life houses.   B)

 

 

So there!! 

[HiFlyer 9,359]

@LHookins

 

About the trees. The Outerra guys say that the current ones are kind of placeholders for the fully 3D procedural trees to come. For a look at an early experiment on those, check this out. Its still early days in many ways. 

 

[HiFlyer 9,359]

Well, to my eye it appears like Earth would look like had neither man or beast ever come to be...

 

Nah. Both beast and man are still around.............  :ph34r:

 

[MikeT707 1,181]

@LHookins

 

About the trees. The Outerra guys say that the current ones are kind of placeholders for the fully 3D procedural trees to come. For a look at an early experiment on those, check this out. Its still early days in many ways. 

 

The outerra developers, all two of them, move very slowly.  That early experiment was done in mid-2011.  Nothing has come of it.  Don't get me wrong, I would love to see this project move forward, but if you put Outerra in a race with X-Plane 10, X-Plane 10 would win by a mile and that is not saying much as we have been waiting for the 10.30 version for quite a long time.

[CyberMike 18]

Downloading the demo and surely buy the final, for latest once Linux is supported. There's even a first airplane addon in their forum.

[HiFlyer 9,359]

The six of so guys at Laminar move slowly. The fewer guys at Outerra move slower than that in some ways, but like Laminar, they have been very painstakingly laying a foundation on which the real work could proceed.

I think their announcement of an expansion of the core team is also a very good sign, and places them in a viable position for development of an engine that has broad potential and several possible paths for growth. The number of places they're being mentioned or showcased is rising rapidly, and it's not hard to see the increasing awareness and enthusiasm for the project in lots more places than the traditional aviation simulation universe.

I suspect that the placement of powerful import and positioning tools directly within the engine will give its potential audience an ease of creative freedom that shouldn't be underestimated. I'm anticipating a flood of user generated content, and that's already beginning to happen.

 

For instance, one user has recreated a bunch of real-life roads using Google maps (hop in your car or truck and take a drive, or just fly over) while at the same time another user has created a program that merges user created road networks. I expect to see more things like that.

 

All in all, it's an interesting period, and I'm looking forward to see where this all leads, and where all these projects, P3D, X-Plane and Outerra are by this time next year.

By the way, the 3D trees were placed on the back burner behind other priorities, and it's good to see the announcement that they are being given attention again, using all the developers have learned in the meantime.

[HiFlyer 9,359]

Downloading the demo and surely buy the final, for latest once Linux is supported. There's even a first airplane addon in their forum.

 

 Check Reddit for more Outerra activity. http://www.reddit.com/domain/outerra.com/

[simmerhead 885]

This has the potential to be the world sim so many of us wants. Imagine getting the wikipedia, google earth, flight sim, train sim, simcity/the sims folks gathered to recreate planet earth in all it's glory. I'm on board and I'll give a generous donation if they get a kickstarter campaign going. Every little step away from the dated FSX/ESP/P3D platform is goo news. And lets not forget that the aeroflyFS guys are working on expanding their sim.

[mgh 89]

I looked at Outerra image of south-eastern England which covers London and five major airports.

 

There's nothing other than waving grass as the eye as the can see.

[Humpty 751]

The demo updated and now it is on the initializing.  Looks like it downloading something more. probably .wad files.

 

Complained about my drivers not having shadows and suggests an upgrade to 13.12 CCC . 

[wolke85 150]

I looked at Outerra image of south-eastern England which covers London and five major airports.

 

There's nothing other than waving grass as the eye as the can see.

... Not sure what was expected, but just in case mentioning:

Outerra is not ment to be a flightsim - yet.

It is an engine, which - maybe(!) one day - will be used for building flightsims on top of it for instance.

But as by now Outerra is and was not intended to offer a full replica of the current shape of planet earth - or a flightsimming environment.

But as any convincing sim/game whatever needs a proper engine to run - Outerra might one day be the engine of choice for future flightsims!

Hence all the excited talking going on here.

:wink:

[ChaoticBeauty 6,692]

All in all, it's an interesting period, and I'm looking forward to see where this all leads, and where all these projects, P3D, X-Plane and Outerra are by this time next year.

 

Don't forget aeroflyFS. The next version is coming out later this year, and it sounds quite promising.

[HiFlyer 9,359]

I looked at Outerra image of south-eastern England which covers London and five major airports.There's nothing other than waving grass as the eye as the can see.

?

 

Not sure what you are looking at, but there really isn't supposed to be much there: that's the whole point. Right now it's a pristine earth, but even in a very old, old early video before biome recoloring, England had more than just grass......

 

Super early Outerra Circa 2012 Cardiff UK

 

Don't forget aeroflyFS. The next version is coming out later this year, and it sounds quite promising.

 

Yup. To me its all about potential. Its almost a given that I will buy any new iteration of Aerofly, But even Aerofly is bound by traditional ways of doing things. As Simmerhead said, after decades of that, it really is time for someone to take a chance and strike out in a different direction.

 

Only thing I am really not that fond of is that Outerra seems to use at least a subset of Blade Element Theory for its planes, and I was never a huge fan of the weird plane-on-a-pivot point feeling that can sometimes give in X-plane, or the "big" torque effects. Right now, flying in Outerra is trim, trim and more trim.