There is not an excessive amount of learning I need to do *(a lot - yes, but not too excessive). That is beyond the exploring part of course, specific game engine, and other than to freshen up on my game coding skills and rendering (because been remastering aerial lately instead of rendering). I was building various FSX compiler extensions, and for another industry geometric calculators with thousands of lines of basic cal math, blah blah blah.

 

I will glady show some very complicated math apps I've built that will fit in with the same type of knowledge that is needed for this, such as theoretical modeling data and tons of floating point math. Now that said, I didn't use any engine to build that, I built it from scratch with thousands of floating point algorithms.

 

I'm a middle-aged guy with 30+ years of programming experience under my belt that has worked across all types of the software field. So I don't need any comments on assessment, I will make the assessment myself thank you. The last startup I was involved in sold for a decent sum of money, that's all I'll say for now. Unfortunately I didn't own the startup, so I didn't get anything (nice huh), so this time I want to donate resources, because if I do this, I gotta get some ownership % (but not greedy at all would expect to share with lots of people).

It's always the same when you try something new.

 

Essentially there are those that say "Nope, not gonna happen"

 

And there are those who say "Maybe if........."

 

The balance on who is "right" goes back and forth. But it remains a truism that the only way to fail with absolute certainty, is to never even try.

Well I got bored of non-gaming apps, I admit I haven't been in the gaming industry directly other than my own add-ons to FSX, but I've been in almost every other industry (I'm a coding w*h*o*r*e at this point)...

 

This is what I'd rather do than sit here and build another boring database or modeling app.

So thanks everyone..and bye!.

 

Bye bye, PropheadX.

Bye bye, PropheadX.

 

Well, until you said that, I never really thought about propheads name and now I'm thinking about those beanie hats with propellers on them. (I've always wanted one ever since I was a kid but forgot about them till now. Now that it's on my mind again, I can't resist!!)

 

So anyway, I just went online and brought one! (and I'm gonna wear it, too!)  

 

 

 

Sorry everyone, please continue!!!

I was hoping some other developers would comment on what I've said thus far.

I don't want to rule the conversation.

 

I can provide at least 12 to 20 cores of rendering from a home office, and at least 12 cores from the data center (that's 32+ cores for a start). I actually have about 100 cores at the data center, but some are in use, and some are such older servers I'm not sure it would do much good, though 1-2 additional could be upgraded cheaply. But at some point if I'm providing all this, I'm going to expect others that want to be involved to also pitch in something (at least others that want in early to help with the prototype).

 

This is only until we get funding of course, then we can figure the rest out later.

 

What it boils down to is I have NO PASSION for my current job, and all the passion in the world to build a new sim.

Just so we're on the same page, are you proposing an FTP server in which files are uploaded to, then rendered, or do you have another way of achieving that?

Whatever the rendering software needs, I can set it up that way. Most of the rendering software has ways to break it up into jobs, or I can script it myself. I did build a way for the FSX compiler to work across multiple PC's so that you can split tiles across say 50+ PC's. Some of these rendering apps require more expensive licenses for multi-PC rendering, so that's another thing we gotta watch out about at first, but I might be able to find a legal but still workable way around that by job scripting the mesh + texture mapping settings.

 

Yah, exported mesh which is small after compressed, and then the texture settings can be sent to me in a file with most render apps.

What are you rendering? Why? There's no core sim yet. Cart... horse... horse... cart.

The experimental prototype textures in Terragen of course to see if we can match or beat the quality of 30cm aerial images, I will render some to compare them to 30cm aerials (which I have already remastered). Then all we need to do is decide on a game engine, the prototype is not going to take all that long if we go forward with it.
 

Edit:

I don't even need the game engine to be decided to do the prototype, I can do the prototype textures in Terragen and run them in FSX by converting them to 30cm raster overlayed onto a default GIS mesh. I will have to figure out how to get the mesh into Terragen, but I think at this day and age an add-on should let me just download the mesh into Terragen from the GIS data, or I'll find out what format the mesh needs to be in to do it.

I will do it by rendering the mountains East of SLC in Terragen, since I already have a bunch of remastered aerial images from that area that we can compare to. I haven't used Terragen in a very long time, and I have regular work to attend to, but I will do my best.

 

These would be pre-RC prototype textures just for team members to view at first most likely.

Hi dtmicro,

 

I've been curious for a while about whether there are good tools to model and render real world terrain images. Can I build up a scene in Terragen with accurate real world placement of grass and other vegetation, buildings, roads etc and then render an orthographic image that could be a replacement for aerial imagery and at any resolution I would like (and also easily make seasonal variations)?

 

It would be a great thing if possible, since orthoimagery is often either not available or only so at great expense and usually only one season, and there are many other issues (color matching, clouds, pollution, obstructions etc).

 

Personally I'm pretty satisfied with with using ortho just for the airport environments and then blend that with hand-placed landclass for several km of the surrounding area. Would be great to have rendered terrain bitmaps, similar to how rendered bitmaps are commonly used for 3D models).

 

Thanks.

Hi dtmicro,

 

I've been curious for a while about whether there are good tools to model and render real world terrain images. Can I build up a scene in Terragen with accurate real world placement of grass and other vegetation, buildings, roads etc and then render an orthographic image that could be a replacement for aerial imagery and at any resolution I would like (and also easily make seasonal variations)?

 

It would be a great thing if possible, since orthoimagery is often either not available or only so at great expense and usually only one season, and there are many other issues (color matching, clouds, pollution, obstructions etc).

 

That's what I'm about to find out, but it should be possible... I used to talk to the couple of guys that originally wrote Terragen somewhere in some render forum (maybe their forums) years and years ago. I once had a great success for a snow texture I made in Terragen where I fooled my own friends that it was an actual PHOTO picture of Antarctica and not a rendered image (and that was 12+ years ago I think, lost track of time). One of my own family members would not believe me it was rendered and kept saying I got that picture from somewhere else, no way I could have made that!

 

Yah should be possible, but might need some custom software to blend the edges into the aerial image.

See, this is why I eventually started looking into procedural technologies, since you can do so many equivalent things without nearly the huge expense of textures, plus there is the ability to do things never done before like variable snow cover and even depth, seasonal changes in real time.....

 

A malleable world, instead of the static worlds that we have had for years.

 

Of course, there is the issue of variety, but that's addressable as well.

I like it as well, but I have some fears when dealing with outerra like real-time procedural vs. Terragen pre-rendered. The reason being is also due to performance issues on the CPU and GPU with RT procedural, and blending artifacts between different resolution zones (don't really want to call it a LOD zone since I'm not super familiar with the mathematics outerra is using).

Since it's fractal, I would of course assume fractal RT math that generates the close-up textures separately on the fly. I think outerra might need more work on their pre-render caching it looks like, but I don't know because RT procedural rendering could just be real heavy on the GPU/CPU.

I like it as well, but I have some fears when dealing with outerra like real-time procedural vs. Terragen pre-rendered. The reason being is also due to performance issues on the CPU and GPU with RT procedural.

 

I'm just so tired of static worlds. That feeling when you are in fsx and know the scenery is incorrect, but can't easily do anything because even if you place a building, it won't match the ground texture, and even if you matched the ground texture the mesh is incorrect, and even if you had the skills to correct the mesh, keeping FSX roads from turning sideways up inclines is nearly impossible........

 

Once you have been in a procedural world where trees know to not grow on roads, and know where to place themselves on hills.... where roads are always level even on the side of a mountain, where buildings never leave their edges dangling in midair unless you do it deliberately, where you can change the snow cover not to a preset level, but to any appearance that pleases you..... on and on......

 

Going back to a dead world is like going to a place where all the color has drained away!