Orbiter Ultimate Experience 1.2

[Artlav]

ORbiter ULtimate EXpirience (Orulex) terrain generator 1.2:
[ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=2686"]Orulex_Land_Gen-v1.2[/ame]
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Orulex is a dynamic landscape generator add-on for Orbiter which allows you to add a global landable mesh to the planets.

Simply said, it turns flat planets into mountainous planets.

Basic features:
* Generates planet terrain in Orbiter on the fly, using real data or fractal functions
* Easily downloadable textures and heightmaps data for Earth, and other planets
* Lv11 global Orbiter and Lv6-Lv22 local downloaded textures (LandSat, USGS) support


Refer to instruction.txt for performance guidelines, server list and other info.
Orulex.pdf describes the system, function config and requirements, World Studio.pdf describes the World Studio handling.


The 1.2 version is considered "stable" in terms that i'm quite finished with the current concept. Basically, it's 1.0 that works 50% faster and have most of the bugs removed.
The next release of Orulex is most likely to be expected as part of OGLAClient, since the Orbiter-compatible design is already fully exhausted it's potential. It cannot be better than it is now as long as it is not in a separate application.

Datasets:
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Pre-composed heightmaps:
Will only work if installed before World Studio save button is used on the relevant planet, since saving the planet will overwrite the configuration.
http://orbides.1gb.ru/orbf/earth-hmap-lv8.zip (84Mb)
http://orbides.1gb.ru/orbf/mars-hmap-lv8.zip (82Mb)
http://orbides.1gb.ru/orbf/moon-hmap-lv8.zip (81Mb)
http://orbides.1gb.ru/orbf/everest_lv11.zip (5.3Mb)
http://orbides.1gb.ru/orbf/grand_canyon_lv13.zip (9Mb)

Collision Detection support:
MeshLand 2, WIP version:
http://orbides.1gb.ru/orbf/MLVS-WIP-080327.zip
Installation by standard Unpack&Play, activate MeshLand_2 module.
Unstable.

Interface SDK:
http://orbides.1gb.ru/orbf/OrulexSDK-allvers.zip
DeltaGlider sample included.
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Improvements since 1.0:
* About 50% performance increase
* New algorithm balancing, designed for large-scale scenes, like Moon from orbit
* Fixed edge showing bugs
* Fixed holes bug
* New microtexture coloring
* Some minor bugs fixed
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Views:

Terrain patches fix (before-after):

New microtexturing (before-after):

Earth, all about scale and distance:

Moon, from far away:

Mars:

Nereid:

World Studio:

 

[SpaceNut]

One word... WOW!!!!!!!!

 

[Woo482]

does world studio work with windows vista 64 bit ?

 

[Artlav]

does world studio with windows vista 64 bit ?

If you missed "what" at start, then it does nothing to WinV 64 bit, quite safe to try.
If you missed "work" before "with", then i don't know - all i got is one Win95, two WinXP 32bit and one WinVista 32 bit machines in immediate reach. You're welcome to try and tell me the result.

 

[Dig Gil]

I would like that oceans had depth instead of being flat or higher than ground. How do I change that?

 

[Artlav]

I would like that oceans had depth instead of being flat or higher than ground. How do I change that?

Hm.
World Studio -> Earth -> Planeted -> Below sphere -> Save changes (Main) -> Reload (Planeted).

But there will be no water, just water-colored sea bottom.

 

[n72.75]

THIS IS....AMAZING!!!!!!!!!

ARTLAV IS THE GREATIST:speakcool:

 

[Dig Gil]

Hm.
World Studio -> Earth -> Planeted -> Below sphere -> Save changes (Main) -> Reload (Planeted).

But there will be no water, just water-colored sea bottom.

That's what I want, but when I do that nothing changes.

 

[rstr]

Dear Artlav.
First, I'd like to express my gratitude for your wonderful Orulex / Worldstudio add-on !

So, please do not get me wrong if I still have one point of critizism about the Worldstudio documentation, which is that it is just too scarce to enable a good understanding of Worldstudio's capabilities and about its working, despite careful reading and hours of experimenting.

What I feel is direly missing is a brief tutorial on how to achieve certain goals for people wanting to make some scenery contributions to the Orbiter community.
So my suggestion is to add some examples of how to work with your Worldstudio tool
and how to exploit its full capabilitites, e.g.: how to create a high resolution mesh for some impressive landscapes like e.g. moon's Mare Imbrium / Montes Teneriffe / Mons Pico area (Lon 13.0W, Lat 47.4N) from heightmap data, and how to deploy that mesh to Orbiter. Or: how to solve conflicts between a generated hires mesh, a user-defined base, and Orulex's generated landscapes, all overlapping at one location.

If I can somehow assist to provide such a tutorial to the Orbiter community, let me know.

Again, thanks for your great Orulex, which I consider the finest contribution to Orbiter besides Dan Polli's OrbiterSound, Rodion Herrera's Apollo landing site landscapes, and Duncan Sharp's TransX.
Best regards and keep up the good work.
Rob

 

[Dig Gil]

Now I was at World Studio near an island and noticed that actually there was a change on the sea, but is very slight!
Anyway the "big wave" problem is still up:

 

[Artlav]

That's what I want, but when I do that nothing changes.

Nothing changes as in nothing at all? Doesn't sound right.
Can you provide before/after screenshots and description of expectations?

Now I was at World Studio near an island and noticed that actually there was a change on the sea, but is very slight!
Anyway the "big wave" problem is still up:
{IMG}

So, what the problem was the local disturbing at some place (near KSC?), or the oceans at all?
SRTM data is only about 30m/pixel at highest resolution, Lv8 is much less than that, so the ground/sea borders may not match the textures.

What is the actual location? There are tools to sculpt the landscape that could be used to fix one place, but there is no way to fix all places, unless higher resolution heightmap than default Lv8.

---====== Post B ======---

So, please do not get me wrong if I still have one point of critizism...

That's a weird philosophy people got in Europe and wester, that criticism is something necessarily offensive...
Without it, how can you know what to improve?

...about the Worldstudio documentation, which is that it is just too scarce to enable a good understanding...
...missing is a brief tutorial on how to achieve certain goals...
...If I can somehow assist to provide such a tutorial to the Orbiter community, let me know....

So, basically making documentation in form of "how to do things":

Goal_A: 
1. action here
2. action there
...
Results.

Goal_B: 
1. action there
2. action somewhere
...
Results.

Instead of or along with a description of each element and tool functions?

I'll think about it, there is a bugfix coming along maybe this month, mostly for WorldStudio to tie up some nasty-looking loose ends.
What else is expected out of it? Maybe some fundamental descriptions, or something else?

About assistance - thank you for the offer, but it's hardly necessary, as i said above.

 

[Dig Gil]

First I've noticed the "wall of water", then, since the thread about water on Dan's forum, I was thinking about if ORULEX could give sea bottom to to Earth's oceans like in reality even if without water it would feel more realistic (an probably real development of water even if I doubt). Then I asked the first post here thinking that the sea bottom idea would give the realistic sense and at the same time solve the "big wave" problem.

 

[Woo482]

If you missed "what" at start, then it does nothing to WinV 64 bit, quite safe to try.
If you missed "work" before "with", then i don't know - all i got is one Win95, two WinXP 32bit and one WinVista 32 bit machines in immediate reach. You're welcome to try and tell me the result.

yes I missed the work out sorry I will edit it now

 

[rstr]

Regarding World Studio Tutorial
> assistance ...
Anyway, please accept some ideas on the WorldStudio's tutorial's structure and content as suggested below; prime objective of the tuturial should be to enable and motivate others to create landscape contributions to the Orbiter community:
- Chapter 1 - Introduction to Concepts
- Terminology
- Microterrain, ...
- Fundamental concepts
- heightmaps derived from greyscale texture maps
- heightmaps derived from 3D data
- meshes
- surface tiles
- global heightmap
- Orulex generated terrain
- textures
- Realization in Worldstudio
- what does Download Tool download (3D data or meshes or surface pictures
used for greyscale heightmapping?)
- principles of overlaying / aligning different terrains at the area
boundaries, without unfitting sudden height changes or color / hue
differences, e.g. from global heightmap to meshes or surftiles
- principles of applying textures
- how does does the size of a texture image (256x256, .. 1024x1024, ...) affect
landscape impression resp. performance; how large can a texture umage be
- Chapter 2 - How to model a detail landscape
- how to select an area
- how to judge whether 3D data resolution is fine enough to create a
satifyingly detailed terrain
- how to judge impact of resolution and area size to performance
- how to select lightsources (sun position)
- how to download heightmaps (or 3D data), where are these stored in what
filetypes (already mesh format or binary or ?)
- how to preview terrain (mesh)
- how to apply textures
- how to avoid abrupt changes in height or color / hue at the boundaries
- how to make textures seamless
- how to preview terrain and texture
- how to embedd a surface base
- how to align base size (as in <base>.cfg) to mesh size to keep correct size
/ height ratio
- how to smooth height / color / hue transition from base to detail terrain
- how to deploy detail terrain and textures to Orbiter / Orulex

> philosophy
Well, in a global world what one calls weird another would call polite behaviour. If everybody would have the same mentality it would be a horribly boring world. But basically, yes - constructive critizism is essential to improvement - embedding this in some nice words does not hurt though, especially if one talks to someone who's artwork and contributions are so much valued as your's are.

Regards - Rob

 

[jedidia]

Great going!

Say, you once made an attempt of putting trees and rocks in there, from what you wrote above I take it that will have to wait for the OGLA-client?

 

[jtiberius]

Works very good.

Will read carefully your Docs and do some terrain addons.

 

[Ilstefan]

one thing I've noticed is that, with meshland enabled, if you crash a destructible vessel like DGIV and the XR series, you don't take any damage. dunno if you can even do anything about that, but just letting you know.

 

[Artlav]

First I've noticed the "wall of water", then, since the thread about water on Dan's forum, I was thinking about if ORULEX could give sea bottom to to Earth's oceans like in reality even if without water it would feel more realistic (an probably real development of water even if I doubt). Then I asked the first post here thinking that the sea bottom idea would give the realistic sense and at the same time solve the "big wave" problem.

So, the big wave is just an approximation error, hard to solve in 1.2. The sea bottom without water is possible, the sea bottom with water is not.

Say, you once made an attempt of putting trees and rocks in there, from what you wrote above I take it that will have to wait for the OGLA-client?

Not sure yet. The first attempts to put them hit some problems besides low quality, so it may not appear for some while. Till OGLAClient it is.

one thing I've noticed is that, with meshland enabled, if you crash a destructible vessel like DGIV and the XR series, you don't take any damage. dunno if you can even do anything about that, but just letting you know.

Nothing i can do - vessels are not aware that they hit the "ground", so no damage. Can't fix that.

 

[Talon1]

O..M..G.. THATS AWESOME!!!!!!!!!! Can't wait to use it!!!!!!!!!