Terrain Texture - Evolution in recent years

[Device6]

I have done a little bit of research on the subject in the last couple of weeks. There is a significant advance in texture rendering, giving us impressive visual enjoyment across a spectrum of objects including aircraft, armor vehicle, naval vessel and among all, terrain and scenery.

 

After nearly 3 years away from flight simulation games, many popular titles have been dusted in my games library which actually is a plastic movable container cubic box. I have re-install Falcon BMS, Flanker 2, IL-2, Lockon, Flaming Cliffs 2, Microsoft Flight Simulator X: Acceleration (Gold Edition) and DCS World. Then I started to look at each of these games and incidentally, I bumped into names like ORBX, Active Sky Next and then I began to look into FSX scenery and weather engine. After spending a day playing with FSX, and watching a great number of video on youtube, I have a question in mind: why is it such difficult for developers to work on improving the scenery objects and terrain in FSX?

 

I watched this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CtVgQ6fNqU, it's a capture of IL2 Cliffs of Dover, a less popular title, start from 12'45'', see how the games populates ground objects like houses, trees or forests more precisely, roads, beaches and coast line. This is not an arcade game, it also requires equally mastery of piloting skills when flying the aircraft in-game just like those in FSX.

 

This is War Thunder https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmETuHTlHCE, check out from 8'15'' to 8'45'', I can hardly tell apart from the fighter planes themselves are graphics renedered objects, the landscape, terrain and weather that form the whole scenery is computer image or real world scenery!

 

What I am trying to say is that, how difficult is that for FSX to build something like that? The game has many photo-realistic planes, but when they fly inside the 'world' they just don't match very well!!

 

And then I looked at Falcon 4 BMS, it's an outdated graphics engine, but the terrain still look good from high altitude, only when you fly low then you will see meshes or patches of colored tiles roughly drawn. IL-2 is a different story. The terrain is layered. So looking from above is great, and low leveling flying still manages to make you perceive that is a grassland with some trees here and there.

 

I just wish that more and more flight simulation games will achieve something like Wings of Prey, Cliffs of Dover and War Thunder in the scenery and weather departments.

Edited August 5, 2014 by Device6

[Abburo]

Those good terrain graphics have a price... the maps are small.

 

DCS is spending some more computing time for calculations also, for flight dynamics. Look at DCS EDGE... that graphic is astonishing, better than any other present sim engine.

[Device6]

When is it due out?

 

Edited August 5, 2014 by Device6

[Devrim]

Somethig wrong with videos? Can't be watched.

[Device6]

After waiting for more than 10 years, we have hot something like EDGE and Oculus Rift.

 

Hope there are still enough time for me to see them in actions before my stage 2 cancer turning into terminal.

[SolUniverse]

What was that youtube vid from? That looks awesome!

[X93355]

After waiting for more than 10 years, we have hot something like EDGE and Oculus Rift.

 

Hope there are still enough time for me to see them in actions before my stage 2 cancer turning into terminal.

 

Sorry to hear that, hope the treatment is going well.

[Device6]

Sorry to hear that, hope the treatment is going well.

 

Time is running out. But I can still have a few hours everyday to look at flight simulation games I like. If lucky, heart failure precedes chemo treatment, I rather take that for less pain reason.

 

I have modified the youtube link so now every one should be able to watch the videos.

 

Gorgeous EDGE is, hope it doesn't raise the hardware requirement though.

[NoJoe]

dcs engine renders entirely at once(but loads textures once in range), so cannot have very detailed geometry.

 

I ... I don't think that's true. Do you have a source to back up that claim? :helpsmilie:

 

We really need a [citation needed] smiley on these forums. :P

[cichlidfan]

i just checked my source on ed page, they load big chunks at once, with terrain seeding in. but entirety of terrain big blocks of many km are loaded at once, so it's not as good as clip mapping or tesselation

 

Link please.

[cichlidfan]

You have no idea how EDGE is going to work though, which could easily and likely be completely different from what we have now, so until EDGE is released the point is rather meaningless.