Terrain topography as point clouds?

[Matis]

Hi,

i am wondering for quite some time regarding performance in terrain maps, if it could be improved by having them created in a way of variable density "point clouds" where depending on your altitude the density changes and thus adjusts the needing resources for display (similarly as the mesh changed in nvidias presentations some time ago).

At my job I am wokring with 3d cad software where point clouds are really so much less resource demanding than having fully modeled assembly. I unfortunately have no idea how any of it really works, let alone if this could even be utilezed for games, anyway this is just an idea i have if DCS terrain could actually benefit from something like this if ever implemented (if even possible).

Or would it be more feasible / realistic to implement similarly as with Google Earth, where terrain has either good enougth topology with HQ textures over it, or there are much higher quality areas where topography is in super high quality and sort of 3d AI-algorithmic overlay?

Though i imagine required disk size for such quality textures would be mind-boggling for big terrain maps as well as loading times, only if streamed through cloud? 

Maybe stretched and over-excited on my part, as I am not really expecting from ED to implement it ..... but maybe ... just maybe in far far future, terrain topography + satalite images + point clouds combinations might not be just a day-dreaming

For eye-candy attached few images from Google Earth.

Edited June 24 by Matis

[98abaile]

Which resource is it less demanding on? It may be less computationally demanding, but how much data will it require?

[Matis]

I would say that CPU and RAM impact is the biggest, but this is just me guessing. 
From what i can tell is that the response time and smothness of display and manipulation of 3D model as point cloud is so much better.

Maybe my undestanding of it is completely wrong, though i think that the number of polygons it has to display is significatnly more "heavy" then single points.

In cad software (in my case Solid Edge) it sums really quickly if you are to work with layout of industrial machines, customer site, foundation... even if those models are simplified, in best case just shells of originals.

[Czar66]

Pretty!!! This can be classified as photogrammetry, I think. It would need more than a few images to generate the mesh and that requires licensing from major companies such as google which have a lot of aerial photographs or devs getting the images themselves which might be (very) expensive.

On some of these images above, the magic mostly comes from the sat image resolution rather than mesh. DCS is close on that front but I'd wish there would be a better way to optimize on storage level as newer maps has been turning out to be massive in size.

1 hour ago, Matis said:

Maybe stretched and over-excited on my part, as I am not really expecting from ED to implement it ..... but maybe ... just maybe in far far future, terrain topography + satalite images + point clouds combinations might not be just a day-dreaming

I strongly believe so too.   MSFS already gave the first taste on consumer level in flight sims and google maps/earth already have it in full display.

About the actual technique called 'point clouds', I don't have knowledge about it, so that's why I called it photogrammetry.

The last two images are gorgeous as well as the grey cliff (3rd from top to bottom) with many rocks and bits making through the 3d mesh.
Lovely!

[MAXsenna]

How does it look down low?

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[Matis]

6 hours ago, Czar66 said:

Pretty!!! This can be classified as photogrammetry, I think. It would need more than a few images to generate the mesh and that requires licensing from major companies such as google which have a lot of aerial photographs or devs getting the images themselves which might be (very) expensive.

On some of these images above, the magic mostly comes from the sat image resolution rather than mesh. DCS is close on that front but I'd wish there would be a better way to optimize on storage level as newer maps has been turning out to be massive in size.

I strongly believe so too.   MSFS already gave the first taste on consumer level in flight sims and google maps/earth already have it in full display.

About the actual technique called 'point clouds', I don't have knowledge about it, so that's why I called it photogrammetry.

The last two images are gorgeous as well as the grey cliff (3rd from top to bottom) with many rocks and bits making through the 3d mesh.
Lovely!

I think those point clouds come from 3D scan, though I am not sure if it is like the direct method or it requires further tweaking or something. To be honest I have not done my research on that before posting the topic 

You might be right as it being photogrametry. 

But it is still thought provoking since we can already see implemented satelite images in some DCS terrains. 

These images are:
- terrain close to Hoover Dam in Nevada

-Bláfjoll in Iceland

- terrain close to Selfoss in Iceland

- mountain range, Shah Foladi in Afghanistan

- last two images are near Matterhorn mountain in Alps

1 hour ago, MAXsenna said:

How does it look down low?

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Google Earth has achieved incredible details in some areas, even at some meters from ground it looks astonishing.

[Czar66]

9 hours ago, Matis said:

I think those point clouds come from 3D scan, though I am not sure if it is like the direct method or it requires further tweaking or something. To be honest I have not done my research on that before posting the topic 

You might be right as it being photogrametry. 

But it is still thought provoking since we can already see implemented satelite images in some DCS terrains. 

These images are:
- terrain close to Hoover Dam in Nevada

-Bláfjoll in Iceland

- terrain close to Selfoss in Iceland

- mountain range, Shah Foladi in Afghanistan

- last two images are near Matterhorn mountain in Alps

I think they (tech and results) are amazing as well.

Have you seen Death Stranding 2 terrain geometry? Check this one out at 2:28 onwards. Massive amount of detail with fair optimization.

 

Edited June 25 by Czar66

[MAXsenna]

I think they (tech and results) are amazing as well.
Have you seen Death Stranding 2 terrain geometry? Check this one out at 2:28 onwards. Massive amount of detail with fair optimization.
 

Thanks! OMG! That made me drool. Imagine if we could have that for helis and CA!

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[Czar66]

16 minutes ago, MAXsenna said:

Thanks! OMG! That made me drool. Imagine if we could have that for helis and CA!

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I do imagine it every time when I play flight sims, for better or for worse . 

It is undeniable this is the way to go. The consistent and actual real noise/clutter it makes on the ground paired with being in a DCS cockpit would output crazy amounts of immersion. Helis would be totally more intense.

[Matis]

Yes lets stage a dinner between Kojima and ED and hope for the best outcome  ... ooh man but i wish

Death Stranding is one of the best when it comes to scenery, if it would only be so easy to "borrow" whole terrain package and throw it in sim.

[MAXsenna]

I do imagine it every time when I play flight sims, for better or for worse . 
It is undeniable this is the way to go. The consistent and actual real noise/clutter it makes on the ground paired with being in a DCS cockpit would output crazy amounts of immersion. Helis would be totally more intense.

Yeah, I mean I would totally even start using CA more and drive around in a Willy's.



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Yes lets stage a dinner between Kojima and ED and hope for the best outcome  ... ooh man but i wish
Death Stranding is one of the best when it comes to scenery, if it would only be so easy to "borrow" whole terrain package and throw it in sim.

One can dream! Haha

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[sirrah]

I work with pretty high res color point clouds on a daily basis (Plant Design/Industry).

I did some testing in VR few years back (using software called Scene) and the results were pretty astonishing. It was a pretty raw scan, no manual adjusting and/or additional 3D modeling. Performance was amazingly smooth on my old GTX1080TI and visuals were, well, photorealistic.

Major downside though, is size. Even small/simple pointclouds can be enormous in size. 500mb per 3D scan file is pretty normal in our line of work (for games I can imagine they're even higher res) and to capture for instance an entire cockpit, you'll need a few of those scans. So scanning a whole village (let alone a DCS sized map) isn't realistic at the moment.

Edited June 25 by sirrah