Outerra development news

[jcomm 5,930]

Devon,

 

Outerra is really walking in the right directions. I dream of using my "glider" model with it some day, probably over a scenery of my gliding club and surroundings, who knows created by myself :-)

 

Thx for the updates!

[HiFlyer 9,359]

the wind video is very impressive.

 

Well the demo is free, and now includes a Cessna to play with. Give it a spin and play around with wind stability and turbulence......

 

Potential.......

 

Outerra is really walking in the right directions. I dream of using my "glider" model with it some day, probably over a scenery of my gliding club and surroundings, who knows created by myself :-)

 

We just have to be patient.

[JGregory 76]

 

 

So that'd be more than Laminar Research then.

Not even close.

[Murmur 3,941]

Not even close.

 

Relax, it was just a joke. Fortunately we're not in 2010 anymore. :smile:

 

Potential.......

 

We just have to be patient.

 

These two phrases give me a feeling of deja vu... :smile:

[HiFlyer 9,359]

These two phrases give me a feeling of deja vu...

 

 

Yup! And if we has to all be patient for the one (and liking it we is) then certainly tis' fair to be patient for t'other, right?  :smile:

[Murmur 3,941]

Yup! And if we has to all patient for the one (and liking it we is) then certainly tis' fair to be patient for t'other, right?  :smile:

 

I hope to have more and more flight simulators, competition can only be a good thing. Of course, just as it has been for X-Plane, it all depends on developers, the burden to make something viable is entirely on them. Only when Outerra potential will begin to exceed a certain threshold, you can expect an increasing involvement on part of the "flight sim community" to improve scenery, vehicles, etc.

[Acetone 34]

 

 

I dream of using my "glider" model with it some day, probably over a scenery of my gliding club and surroundings, who knows created by myself :-)

 

But... You can do that right now
It won't be easy, you will need to learn a bit about the importer, Outerra scripts handlers and JBSIM. Some customs buildings and I can recreate you any given area now, the only thing I can't do (yet) is modify terrain textures and add dynamic objects (runway lights,...) activated on camera distance.

[HiFlyer 9,359]

UPDATE!  :smile: 

 

patch 5941

• fix for strict mode bug
• normalized direction in fire() method

[Murmur 3,941]

Are there any short or medium term plans for some automatic importing of worldwide OSM data?

 

Until Outerra world is just only endless woods or some random buildings spawned here and there, it will never attract the interest of the flight sim community, even the freeware version, and whatever good visuals it may have.

 

On the other hand, having a more faithful scenery derived from OSM, would spark IMHO the interest of a lot more people, even with only basic aircrafts like those it already has.

[HiFlyer 9,359]

Until Outerra world is just only endless woods or some random buildings spawned here and there, it will never attract the interest of the flight sim community,

 

You might be right, but they have to start somewhere. The basic earth, then clouds, then wind and rivers, object import and placement tools, basic and then enhanced vehicle functionality, lighting, physics.... the list is long, the technology evolving and the goal ambitious.......

 

At the same time they have to support their military and commercial partners, which is where the money for all the rest of it's coming from. Honestly, when you consider the potential flightsim initiatives over the years that generated lots of buzz and never got anywhere near working software, Outerra deserves an amazing amount of credit.

 

You mentioned simple planes, for instance, but the planes could not be anything but simple until extended controls were released..... which happened today!  :smile:

 

Following this milestone will be the Ah64 project, which will use those newly implemented features in the first Outerra aircraft with a detailed startup procedure........

 

Missiles, spacecraft and rockets close behind.

 

As for OSM...... Here is a word on that from the developers.

 

Initially we focused on the base procedural world, driven by real world datasets, but its main purpose is to generate the world as it may have been looking like without civilization. On top of it goes the civilization layer that contains the effects of civilization. For example, here's the road network in London as imported from the OSM (I believe this is the first time we are showing some preliminary results from it.)

 

Note this is WIP. The terrain was not leveled, and roads do not connect seamlessly yet. Road coloring is is there just to show OSM road types etc, but these tests show us the feasibility of the vector overlay system: we imported the whole world, creating 29,583,113 km of roads and the whole system works really well. Buildings can be placed manually or imported from vector sources or procedurally generated to achieve geo-typical look. All of it is in development.

 

Some of the internal features being developed to handle the needs in this area:

• extended road system capabilities - separate properties for the left/right side, configurable road profiles, markings
• seamless road joins, splits (the existing data format puts some limitations on it)
• "river bed" road profiles and river water surface shaders
• polygonal vector mode for larger overlays - large rivers with well defined bank shapes, lakes, but also for fields, pastures, artificial trees or tree removal, terrain leveling etc

There's still tons of work needed for a full combined simulator that we want to make, but we won't attempt to launch a crowd-funding campaign without having all the necessary components in some beta form there.

 

Slow and steady.........

 

 

[Acetone 34]

Are there any short or medium term plans for some automatic importing of worldwide OSM data?

 

Medium term plan (probably not before a few months for an initial release). They want to do something really in depth with OSM, but it will take some time before everything they want to do with it will be released.

I was surprised by their goals, at first I though OSM will be used to some major axis roads to add some man made details into the world, but in fact they really want to use everything of it.

 

 

 

Until Outerra world is just only endless woods or some random buildings spawned here and there, it will never attract the interest of the flight sim community, even the freeware version, and whatever good visuals it may have.

 

Currently available users made sceneries may be limited in scale, but these are really detailed, with accurately placed buildings and roads ( yeah, I'm offended ). But I have something cooking for october that will please a lot of people

I really get your point though, as much as I love the pristine world, global man made structures will improve a lot the sense of scale and the interest for the flight sim community. But I think the devs know it, that's why they are working on it (and also the reason why the Cessna was added in the demo as well).

[Murmur 3,941]

Medium term plans for OSM importing are great news! That could be the turning point for Outerra. Hope to see big advancements by the end of 2016.

[HiFlyer 9,359]

Uriah (Who I consider to be at least an honorary developer) uses a good metaphor to describe the slow and very careful process of Outerra.

 

If you are going to build a house, you start by hiring an architect to draft the plans for the house. These plans include all of the requirements, including the type of materials to be used in construction, the dimensions of the walls, doors, windows and ceiling, etc. Now the first thing you need to build is the foundation.

 

Think of the foundation as the architectural platform which the rest of the house (content) will sit on. You don't start by building the first story of the house simply to please the customer, who wants to move into their new house right away and start decorating. Instead the concrete crew comes in and lays the foundation.

 

The specifications for the foundation are derived from the requirements, and these come from the physical aspects, such as how many stories the house will have, how much load the foundation needs to support, where the load bearing pilings and footers need to be located for the walls, etc. The foundation must be built correctly and completely before you start working on the rest of the house.

 

If the foundation doesn't meet the requirements of the house, the house may collapse if the foundation can't bear the load of the walls and upper structure.

In this way a game platform is no different. If you start building the house and decorating it before the foundation is finished, your house will not be up to code and will need to be demolished, and then all of your valuable work and time has been wasted for nothing.

Now, Outerra is laying the groundwork, so to speak. They have started by grading the building site which the foundation will sit on (terrain/world), and are proceeding to construct the foundation. We can't rush the rest of the house at this point.

[Murmur 3,941]

The market (in this case, the flightsim community) doesn't care of the how's and why's, just as it hasn't for years with regard to X-Plane and its potential, and rightly so.

 

I hope Outerra will succeed to attract the flightsim community. That can be only done if it succeeds to deliver good content in terms of scenery, vehicles, etc.

[HiFlyer 9,359]

The market (in this case, the flightsim community) doesn't care of the how's and why's, just as it hasn't for years with regard to X-Plane and its potential, and rightly so.

 

I guess I'm different. I love developers diaries on projects I'm interested in, and like seeing the nuts and bolts and the creative thought process.

 

Even better if there's a way to actually contribute directly!