High Fidelity/Eroded Terrain

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Nystul
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Re: High Fidelity/Eroded Terrain

Post by Nystul »

I think High Rock was meant to have several mountains as well just with much less altitude than the wrothgarian and dragontail mountains...

One further shortcoming of the original height map is the bluff in menevia (highest values in the heightmap besides the tigonus pixel). If we assume that the highest mountain peak is about 2-4 km height the bluff would be even higher which is just plain stupid and unrealistic...

@freak2121: the new heightmap must match perfectly with the shorelines/water pixels of the original heightmap - do you think that this can be done? Otherwise we will end up with locations in water

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username
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Re: High Fidelity/Eroded Terrain

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Nystul wrote: @freak2121: the new heightmap must match perfectly with the shorelines/water pixels of the original heightmap - do you think that this can be done? Otherwise we will end up with locations in water
Even if this was a problem you could probably just extend the shores a bit.
Check out my patch to remove nudity, it's a WIP but it's coming along quite nicely.

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Freak2121
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Re: High Fidelity/Eroded Terrain

Post by Freak2121 »

Regarding shorelines, I really wouldn't know until you check ingame. I'm thinking it's going to be a non-problem except for maybe a handful of instances.

Anyway, here's a complete heightmap. It's 36m/px for some reason despite the input heightmap being 50m/px but that shouldn't really matter much. I'm not too big of a fan of how it turned out and it likely has a ton of issues but I need to know what the issues are first before I address them. It's definitely going to be a process to get a really solid heightmap. I had to go over the entire coast line by hand before putting it through, to prevent it from having a blocky look. I also made height of lakes more in line with their surroundings, so that there aren't giant holes in the ground everywhere.

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Nystul
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Re: High Fidelity/Eroded Terrain

Post by Nystul »

thanks, downloaded it, will take a look when i got the time ;)

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VMblast
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Re: High Fidelity/Eroded Terrain

Post by VMblast »

Yep, this is what I was proposing as well viewtopic.php?f=12&t=668. Unity can handle streaming terrain and tilable heightmaps so this wouldn't be such a problem...other than making that certain map.

@Freak2121
One note tho, I saw that you've posted a picture of part of the High Rock and said that it is about 200Km slice...but what Ive read about enire area of the original DF map is that its 160,000Km2 or 400x400Km square map. On that account, that slice you've made is too big and possible unnecessary, as well way off the original. Now, the pixel fidelity does nothing to do with its actual area, so you'll be able to squeeze even better m/pixel ratio, or at least reduce the overall weight of the map in megabytes.

Also, the visibility (on avarage) in a clear day (so relatively clear conditions) is about 20-30Km...tho this could drastically vary (fog, rain, pollution, humidity...). Therefore, you dont need to show terrain that is further than 20Km.

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Freak2121
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Re: High Fidelity/Eroded Terrain

Post by Freak2121 »

VMblast wrote: @Freak2121
One note tho, I saw that you've posted a picture of part of the High Rock and said that it is about 200Km slice...but what Ive read about enire area of the original DF map is that its 160,000Km2 or 400x400Km square map. On that account, that slice you've made is too big and possible unnecessary, as well way off the original. Now, the pixel fidelity does nothing to do with its actual area, so you'll be able to squeeze even better m/pixel ratio, or at least reduce the overall weight of the map in megabytes.

Daggerfall's map is 1:2 in aspect ratio and is approximately 800km x 400km, with a 1000x500 heightmap

Also, the visibility (on avarage) in a clear day (so relatively clear conditions) is about 20-30Km...tho this could drastically vary (fog, rain, pollution, humidity...). Therefore, you dont need to show terrain that is further than 20Km.
The images are not in game, they're renders to show the results of the the erosion process. Limiting the pictures to 20km slices would allow me to show the map one mountain at a time, it's not ideal. In game though, the view distance should definitely be realistic.

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Nystul
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Re: High Fidelity/Eroded Terrain

Post by Nystul »

VMblast wrote:Yep, this is what I was proposing as well viewtopic.php?f=12&t=668. Unity can handle streaming terrain and tilable heightmaps so this wouldn't be such a problem...other than making that certain map.
as the one who fiddled around most with unity terrain I can tell you that unity is shit in terms of terrain...
there is a forum thread where 1000000 ppl complain that the terrain system is outdated like a decade. unity terrain is weakest part of unity
VMblast wrote: Also, the visibility (on avarage) in a clear day (so relatively clear conditions) is about 20-30Km...tho this could drastically vary (fog, rain, pollution, humidity...). Therefore, you dont need to show terrain that is further than 20Km.
not 100% correct: on earth standing on top of a mountain one can see over 100km under perfect conditions. 20km is correct for standing on ground though

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VMblast
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Re: High Fidelity/Eroded Terrain

Post by VMblast »

Freak2121 wrote: Daggerfall's map is 1:2 in aspect ratio and is approximately 800km x 400km, with a 1000x500 heightmap
If its 2:1 ratio than the measurement should be 576x288Km to get 165,000Km2. With your measurements the area is double (330,000Km2), which would be DF inaccurate and still unnecessarily big.

...Tho with the any terrain redo, I guess it can be stretched a little bit, to be more realistic as the entire area of Illiac Bay is really huge and in reality should be lots of hundreds of Km across.
Last edited by VMblast on Tue Sep 12, 2017 7:10 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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VMblast
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Re: High Fidelity/Eroded Terrain

Post by VMblast »

Nystul wrote:not 100% correct: on earth standing on top of a mountain one can see over 100km under perfect conditions. 20km is correct for standing on ground though
And from airplane the visibility is like 320Km. I was talking about ground level visibility (or from hills)....youll never have more than 20-30Km visibility, since it varies from lots of things -fog, rain, snow, humidity, pollution, dust... :P

Nystul wrote:as the one who fiddled around most with unity terrain I can tell you that unity is shit in terms of terrain...
there is a forum thread where 1000000 ppl complain that the terrain system is outdated like a decade. unity terrain is weakest part of unity
Hm, this is interesting. Any notion that they will correct this any time soon (eg 6 months)? What about plugin substitutes for terrain, like voxel engines etc?

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Freak2121
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Re: High Fidelity/Eroded Terrain

Post by Freak2121 »

VMblast wrote:
Freak2121 wrote: Daggerfall's map is 1:2 in aspect ratio and is approximately 800km x 400km, with a 1000x500 heightmap
If its 2:1 ratio than the measurement should be 576x288Km to get 165,000Km2. With your measurements the area is double (330,000Km2), which would be DF inaccurate and still unnecessarily big.

...Tho with the any terrain redo, I guess it can be stretched a little bit, to be more realistic as the entire area of Illiac Bay is really huge and in reality should be lots of hundreds of Km across.
Your measurement is wrong though. Daggerfall is 320k km^2.

The math is simple really. Each pixel on the map is 800m wide, give or take 5m, and the dimensions of the map are 1000x500.

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