Outerra major Update: 17.1.0.9830 8/21/18

[HiFlyer 9,359]

This release is still using the "old" pipeline, we wanted to release this version before switching to the new pipeline that requires newer hardware.
New compilation of satellite data (earth7).

Full installer:
Anteworld-17.1.0.9830.exe (EU server)
Anteworld-17.1.0.9830.exe (US server)
(Gdrive)

A quick change list:

• Lakes (worldwide) & land below sea level support
• River width variation, riverbed modulation, rocks in rivers.
• Boats working on rivers and lakes
• Updated water rendering (not final), adjustable wave parameters
• Lightnings & thunders.
• Refined elevation data, enhanced US coastal bathymetry
• OSM Roads (world coverage), including airport footprints
• (experimental) global buildings coverage, currently limited to small villages, full coverage will be coming with new pipeline after some more performance optimizations and tuning.
  (disabled by default; activate it in menu/world/datasets, full version only)
• PBR material rendering fixes and updates (new GGX roughness shader)
• Grass runway type
• Working tire friction on moving objects
• Vehicle physics optimizations, objects wake up by craters appearing, vehicle vibrations fix
• Steering animations
• New vehicles: BK 117 Helicopter, F-16 Fighting Falcon, M1 Abrams, ASLAV, HMS sailboat, donated by Titan
• Buggy (OT original design)
• 2500+ Buildings Library (with night emissive textures)

 

[Murmur 3,941]

Beautiful. The two most promising simulator engines (visual-wise) are also the ones with the slowest development. Wonder if we'll ever see them reach maturity as flight simulators. What a pity that is.

[HiFlyer 9,359]

6 minutes ago, Murmur said:

Beautiful. The two most promising simulator engines (visual-wise) are also the ones with the slowest development. Wonder if we'll ever see them reach maturity as flight simulators. What a pity that is.

The shame is that originally they were quite interested in Flight Simulation, and one of the developers actually has a history in that field.

But to be quite honest, the flight simulation community and the way we can behave scared them away from directly trying anything like that themselves. Instead, they are creating the base on which some brave developer could one day take a shot at this and other genres.

[Murmur 3,941]

If AFS2 would integrate the lighting effects of Outerra (atmo scattering, sunlight, water, clouds), it would be the absolute winner. I think those effects are mostly done via shaders.

 

[HiFlyer 9,359]

38 minutes ago, Murmur said:

If AFS2 would integrate the lighting effects of Outerra (atmo scattering, sunlight, water, clouds), it would be the absolute winner. I think those effects are mostly done via shaders.

 

I believe even the waving grass is a sort of shader.

[Guest]

global building coverage! Can't wait to see that.

It time to reinstall Outtera 🙂

[pmb 5,137]

When will they have ATC? 🤣🤣🤣

 

 

But seriously, this is impressive. Do only compare coastal waves to their ugly P3D4 counterparts.

From the trailer, I do get the impression they are aiming for flightsimmers, at least more than from previous trailers.

What will the "new pipeline" bring? A switch to Vulcan?

Thanks for showing this, Michael

[HiFlyer 9,359]

1 hour ago, pmb said:

What will the "new pipeline" bring? A switch to Vulcan?

OpenGL 4.5+ support but with bindless textures extension - so Nvidia from 650+ GPUs and AMD since 5000 series.

I suspect Outerra will not ever really "Need" vulkan. The program already runs terrifyingly close to the "metal" and there's probably little further efficiencies to be gained.

[Acetone 34]

The main aim of the new object pipeline will be for them to display a significant larger number of objects without stalling the engine. The current experimental version of the buildings dataset in the latest release is just a heavily tonned down version of this dataset. You can see a video Brano posted here of LA:
 

It's far away from being final, but keep getting better 🙂

[HiFlyer 9,359]

Dang it!! All sims seem to love rectangle-buildings. 😡

[tonywob 4,769]

6 hours ago, HiFlyer said:

Dang it!! All sims seem to love rectangle-buildings.

These look like actual 3D models of houses as opposed to protruded rectangles masquerading as buildings (aka. P3D and AF2 autogen)

One thing that is badly missing in those shots is the ground textures don't change based on the buildings, i.e. There is no AO, driveways, lawns etc. Since it's procedural, I presume it's something they are working on and we may see before 2030 😉

 

On 8/22/2018 at 12:41 PM, Murmur said:

Beautiful. The two most promising simulator engines (visual-wise) are also the ones with the slowest development. Wonder if we'll ever see them reach maturity as flight simulators. What a pity that is.

Agreed, it's a real shame this wasn't used or developed further as a flight sim, it has such huge potential but their efforts shifted to their military contracts. 

[cameni 9]

You know, for the time we exist we have been approached by several flight sim (scenery, aircraft) developers that were planning to make their own flight simulator. From that bunch there were/are probably 3 with somewhat realistic idea of the development costs involved and also not just a bunch of idealists without anything bigger behind them, that were also seriously considering the development and not just pinging us at the very beginning of their vague planning.

One went bankrupt shortly after trying and failing to secure the funds from a third party, with nothing to contribute on their own but their brand name, but hoping to get us to give our tech into the project for a minor share.

The second one went on and off with it for some time, and they still may return again. We never got anywhere deeper into technical discussions, it was quite weird actually - like the design doc in the form of a wish list, and while they asserted to had enough funds for the development on their own, we later learned they sought to share the development costs with the developer. Was it because of the risks they saw, or their estimates had to inflate after the research? I don't know. Nevertheless they backed off, stating some reasons ...

The third is an acknowledged developer that probably knows well what the requirements and costs are, and there may still come something out of it, but it's all so cautious that it drags on for years and they have no sufficient large SW dev experience and seemingly nobody able to analyze what it would mean to use OT and change some paradigms they are used to. It's all painful to watch.

IMHO the biggest problem are the money. Aviation fans tell us - you have such a big potential, why don't you make a simulator? When we do any research, the result basically is that if it has all the features and everything then they will buy it, but best if it also imported all the mods they already had. So basically lets invest a few millions and then have a few more for an add campaign, in a niche environment where there already are some established competitors, undead or alive. No wonder that the developers already operating in this market are getting nowhere all the time.

On 8/24/2018 at 10:02 AM, tonywob said:

Agreed, it's a real shame this wasn't used or developed further as a flight sim, it has such huge potential but their efforts shifted to their military contracts. 

Sure, there's some support involved, but we are still mostly working on world rendering and simulation, and on global imports and world building tech. I can say we aren't working on anything military specific.

The reason it takes all so long is that a) we are a small company, and b) the ability to render world with such a high detail range comes at a cost. That's basically all there is. 
Without licensees that can use the engine even at this state we would not be able to continue developing it, unless there was an investor willing to finance it for some specific product(s). 

[HiFlyer 9,359]

From Outerra contributor Acetone

 

[HiFlyer 9,359]

17.1.0.9848 (27 Aug 2018)

• fixed "swapped eyes" in Oculus
• fixed Nvidia 5xx series shader compilation error

[HiFlyer 9,359]

Update 17.1.0.9891 (12 Sep 2018)

• restored snow detection, fixed rock color
• fixed grass in water
• fixed water being rendered on non-water tiles, fixed perf issue with narrow FOV
• fixed square craters
• removed non-functioning import buttons, import can now handle FBX/DAE/OBJ