An other procedural world generator ... amazing! (Modem NO!)

[McFly]

I really hope that the PS3 will be able to create huge procedural worlds for the games, so after all the MojoWorld talk, this are images from an other tool, terragen --> http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/

I just downloaded the tool, so I can't tell you how the render times are, but maybe 1TF is enough to render them in realtime. (?)

Fredi

 

[McFly]

More:

Ok, I start the tool now.

Fredi

 

[chaphack]

Arent those a bit too clean and sharp even for next gen?

 

[Grall]

Ok, time for some complaints...

Water is flat, the waves are just patterns on the surface texture. As are the rocks along the beach in the third pic from the top in the original post; completely flat.

Why aren't there any grass, bushes or trees? All we get is some green moss covering the rocks.

Hm, guess I might find some more stuff to whine about if I tried harder, but this will have to do for now, lol. Anyway, it looks pretty good anyway. Don't expect stuff like this in next-gen consoles though (and even if stuff like this does appear, I have to say I'd be tired awful quick of all the river valleys I'd be looking at...! )


*G*

 

[London Geezer]

I've had Terragen for like one year at least. it's a pretty cool tool to render environments but it is also very limited.
it does produce VERY pretty results though, still, they are not usable in games simply for the fact that the environments are huge and seen close up they just look like bit polygons with procedural textures on them, which is what they are really....
maybe usable in a flight simulator though, where u dont need to see the terrain from close up...
still, i have a old version, last years version, so things might have improved ever since...

 

[DeathKnight]

I've had this proggie for ages. I may have to mess with it again.

 

[London Geezer]

I've had this proggie for ages. I may have to mess with it again.

yeah it's fun isnt it.... i was playing with it for hours when i first downloaded it... after u get the hang of it (5 minutes really), u can get very pretty results in very little time. depending on the machine u have, rendering times can be quite acceptable...
of course if u want something decent u need to turn the detail up all the way, including the clouds detail (that what really kills performance if i remember correctly), and on my old 1GHz Pentium3 i used to get a lowish detail frame in less than a minute, and a very detailed one in less than 10 IF I REMEMBER CORRECTLY... last time i played around with it was literally a year ago, so my numbers can be a bit off...

 

[cthellis42]

Wow... What a cool program. ^_^

In some of those shots, the fakeness certainly stands out, but some of them would have people HARD-pressed to differentiate from real shots unless they spent a LONG time looking at them. (And knew what to look for.)

I agree, though, that the way the player interacts with these environments will make the end result look quite different. Current consoles can probably do these reasonably well for stills or "panoramic" shots or the like, but no I don't think we'll be seeing people fragging each other on them even next gen. Just doesn't quite merge ideals the same.

 

[DeathKnight]

The only problem with the program is that you have to be insanely good with it to produce results similar to the pictures shown above. I think the biggest obstacle is having exceptional textures to work with, which you probably can't find in many places (which then leaves you to create your own :? )

 

[Saem]

Check out the terrain and you should start noticing how PROCEDURAL it is. Rather, functional. Realise, that the entire terrain would pass the vertical line test -- highschool math. They seem to be using height maps for any storage that might be necessary -- intermediate or otherwise.

Doesn't seem too cool to me.

 

[randycat99]

Is it possible to come up with creepy "alien" sort of worlds?

Hey, whatamI doing here with my puny, puny modem action?

 

[Nexiss]

Check out the terrain and you should start noticing how PROCEDURAL it is. Rather, functional. Realise, that the entire terrain would pass the vertical line test -- highschool math. They seem to be using height maps for any storage that might be necessary -- intermediate or otherwise.

Doesn't seem too cool to me.

True, but heightmaps generally work very well for terrain (especially from these sort of viewpoints) as natural terrain is typically mostly sloping/flat (or in otherwords, without overhangs).

 

[Saem]

I disagree, cliffs, caves and plenty of natural formations require overhangs. Additionally, it wouldn't be too much to support overhangs using a little big of hackery -- I haven't done it but running a rough algorithm through my head says it'd be computationally cheap.

 

[Nexiss]

That much is true, but if you look at largscale terrain features a lot of it is very easily represented by heightmaps and so in general heightmaps provide a very good representation of a landscape. Especially at views like in these screenshots where smaller details are lost. Any sort of large scale feature overhang can be represented by some sort of geometric model added in or a multi-layer heightmap technique. But I agree, heightmaps, while useful, are fairly limited.