In the days of MS2020, It suddenly occurred to me to take another look at a technology, that offered the possibility of many of the same things, but most definitely did not have a 120 member team and zillions of dollars of backing!

A promising road not travelled. Yet.

An interesting sidebar is that an entire Outerra earth would likely be less than 100GB!

It can also be streamed to computers exactly like MS2020. Maybe they need to hire 120 more guys! 😋

 

I came upon Outerra about 5 years ago by chance, and I was somewhat intrigued and followed it's progress from time to time:  But I still have not figured out, for lack of a better phrase. it's mission statement.  What exactly does it want to be, and what demographic is it aiming to attract?  But the recent mapping and imagery of the landscapes is is amazing to me...

Devon,

I think this is actually quite impressive BUT ... In my mind it is not as sharp clear and concise as the MSFS2020 footage that I have seen.

I wonder if that is attributable to the "100GB" compared to the 2 petabytes? I am not sure, so please do not quote me, but I think the ORBX True Earth for England exceeds 100gb by itself. Having said that I am not fully cognisant with the streaming concept, so that statement may be way out of line. It maybe that size really does matter when it comes to resolution. 

Overspeed,

I have often wondered too about is purpose in life.  Where are they generating income from? Outerra first came to my noticed with the failed Flight Sim NGX when they looked at it, and then moved on to something else before throwing their legs in the air. I also wonder if XPlane looked at it before deciding on Vulcan, if that is indeed the same concept/type of engine and further, what is P3D looking at??? All very mysterious.

Regards

Tony

2 hours ago, overspeed3 said:

I came upon Outerra about 5 years ago by chance, and I was somewhat intrigued and followed it's progress from time to time:  But I still have not figured out, for lack of a better phrase. it's mission statement.  What exactly does it want to be, and what demographic is it aiming to attract?  But the recent mapping and imagery of the landscapes is is amazing to me...

At this point I think of it like a long term scientific research project.

With military backing, via a number of companies like Calytrix and TitanIM.

You now see it featured at places like I/Itsec and others as a cheaper alternative to ARMA based military training. Interestingly enough, the guy originally behind ARMA is now behind Outerra, under the TitanIM moniker, licensing tech from Outerra.

(Outerra can then often plow the new tech back into its civilian game engine)

Meanwhile the original Outerra still acts much like a science project in that, they pretty much will answer any question, in excruciating detail asked by other developers attempting to learn from or replicate their technology.

And of course the whole concept of an entire fractally refined world did begin as a research project, which the Outerra developers took up and continued when the original project subsided into scholarly research papers.

Out of sight and out of mind, they are doing some cool stuff. Even as we ask about snow for MS2020 they are recently showcasing real time variable snow cover.......

If you want to see Outerras answer to photogrammetry, take a look at the video below at about the 7minute 30second mark.

Eh.

Something to keep an eye on.

 

2 hours ago, himmelhorse said:

I think this is actually quite impressive BUT ... In my mind it is not as sharp clear and concise as the MSFS2020 footage that I have seen.

Its all data driven. The more data fed into it, the clearer it gets, and of course, the larger it gets..... still never as large as a world done by more conventional means...