Heightmaps and other planetary data

ido66667 wrote:

Dr_Chillgood wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

Sorry for the double post, but what would the maximum resolution for terrain? Around 1m²?

If we end up using space engine we should be able to do that (see third paragraph):
http://spaceengine.ucoz.ru/blog/detail_textures_on_planets/2011-07-30-1

Yes It will help us

BTW
I just Opened A topic About Making Textures LOL

I'm absolutely NOT using their code --only concepts and organization if possible. Just because it has "Engine" in the title doesn't mean it's a game engine everyone can use.

Also, sorry aboot my estimation of planet sizes, I forgot about nations at that moment.

Let's brainstorm for a second about memory:

-Each floating point value (the height value for a given vertex of the highest resolution of a planet) takes up 4 bytes.
-I've written a quadtree algorithm that uses 6 faces of 2D height data to comprise a sphere cube planet thing.

If each face has a resolution of 1024x1024 vertices, that's 6,291,456 total vertices taking up a total of 25,165,824 bytes or 24 Megabytes.

Yeah, it ads up quick. Technically these planets can be as big as we want, but the resolution of them needs to be of a decent level to go exploring the surface. It's a complete tradeoff.

Sure, we could have hi-res planets. The problem is, the amount of memory to record all the friggin' planets the player wants to explore in the friggin' galaxy. I have no objections to spore-sized planets. The 2006 spore demo looked AMAZING, and it had those same tiny planets.


P.S. I was thinking, and we could potentially limit the height map data to half as many degrees of freedom (maybe a 2 byte number (65 536 combinations)) but that would limit the terrain nodes to be able to go only so deep, or so tall. It would cut the data size in half.

roadkillguy wrote:

ido66667 wrote:

Dr_Chillgood wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

Sorry for the double post, but what would the maximum resolution for terrain? Around 1m²?

If we end up using space engine we should be able to do that (see third paragraph):
http://spaceengine.ucoz.ru/blog/detail_textures_on_planets/2011-07-30-1

Yes It will help us

BTW
I just Opened A topic About Making Textures LOL

I'm absolutely NOT using their code --only concepts and organization if possible. Just because it has "Engine" in the title doesn't mean it's a game engine everyone can use.

Also, sorry aboot my estimation of planet sizes, I forgot about nations at that moment.

Let's brainstorm for a second about memory:

-Each floating point value (the height value for a given vertex of the highest resolution of a planet) takes up 4 bytes.
-I've written a quadtree algorithm that uses 6 faces of 2D height data to comprise a sphere cube planet thing.

If each face has a resolution of 1024x1024 vertices, that's 6,291,456 total vertices taking up a total of 25,165,824 bytes or 24 Megabytes.

Yeah, it ads up quick. Technically these planets can be as big as we want, but the resolution of them needs to be of a decent level to go exploring the surface. It's a complete tradeoff.

Sure, we could have hi-res planets. The problem is, the amount of memory to record all the friggin' planets the player wants to explore in the friggin' galaxy. Frigg.


P.S. I was thinking, and we could potentially limit the height map data to half as many degrees of freedom (maybe a 2 byte number (65 536 combinations)) but that would limit the terrain nodes to be able to go only so deep, or so tall. It would cut the data size in half.

I'm talking about the size of the squares on the model- what size are they when you are closest. 2 bytes may make the terrain a bit choppy.

It's a matter of resolution. What size should they be?

*poof* dead thread.