
Outerra, 3d planetary engine for seamless planet rendering from space to surface - cedel2k1
http://www.outerra.com/
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david-given
See also Proland, which is open source:

[http://proland.imag.fr/](http://proland.imag.fr/)

It's a tech demo/research project, which means the code is basically
continuously broken, but I did bodge it into workingness on Linux. It's
impressive but doesn't quite live up to the videos --- I think they're using
features that weren't working in my copy. But it is one that you can actually
get your hands on and play with.

Proland is by the same person who did the wonderful Rama animation here, using
some of the same procedural generation technology:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBIQCm54dfY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBIQCm54dfY)

Although Rama wasn't rednered in realtime.

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aluhut
That Rama animation was better then the book.

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junke
The first book was great.

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oniony
I concur...they went progressively downhill.

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rntz
There's some folks called I-Novae trying to do a similar thing, but making a
space-fight simulator game on top as well, called Infinity:
[https://www.inovaestudios.com/Technology](https://www.inovaestudios.com/Technology).
I'd be curious to hear a technical comparison. It looks like Outerra focuses
more on the planet-side and I-Novae more on the space-side.

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herbst
For a start DirectX, so it wont work on most devices.

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coldcode
Last time I talked with Brano it was actually OpenGL 3.3 but that was a couple
years ago.

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herbst
Such direction changes make me sad.

All while Vulcan is the way to go ;)

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demarq
If you go deep into their blog to see screenshots from the first versions
you'll see just how far this project has come. The amount of work that has
gone into it is staggering.

There's also nibbles, of some pretty interesting math and programming problems
in there...

[http://outerra.blogspot.com](http://outerra.blogspot.com)

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herbst
It looks beautiful. The demo is only available on Windows tho it seems :/ Does
the engine itself work on Linux/Mac/Android/whatever?

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desdiv
Sounds like a Linux port is on the drawing board:

[http://forum.outerra.com/index.php?topic=2635.0](http://forum.outerra.com/index.php?topic=2635.0)

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StapleHorse
Wouldn't be nice some kind of game like KSP with this engine in a MMPORG
fashion? I know, keep dreaming :)

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thirdsun
Arma 3 comes to mind. Or Euro/American Truck Simulator.

That would indeed be amazing. Kind of a silly question, but having the world
as a sandbox at your disposal has to be a game developer's dream and while
it's technically very ambitious I have to wonder why nobody seems to be making
any use of the fact that Outerra is trying to provide exactly that.

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Coincoin
Simulating the world doesn't necessarily make a good game. People usually want
simple rules in a simple environment and the ability to explore and stretch
those rule as much as possible.

A random gigantic game that simulates absolutely everything doesn't let you do
that.

Take KSP as an example, sure it would be pretty to use that engine, but that's
it, it would just be prettier. It would'nt bring anything new. The game is
already fun, not because it's realistic, but because it has much simpler orbit
mechanics than reality. A model a regular human being can actually wrap his
head around.

The most boring and disappointing part of KSP are the contracts. Why? Because
they are random. They have no direction and no sensible progression. They
don't encourage you to push the limits. They are just an endless generated
generic grind.

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pilom
I totally agree with your opinion of the default contract system. With mods it
becomes WAY better. Contract Configurator [1] makes it really easy for people
to make new contract packs with a simple config file and there are some pretty
great packs out there that give it a much better progression.

[1]
[http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/91625-1...](http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/91625-105-contract-
configurator-v196-2016-02-17/)

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Udo
Is this project even alive? The last forum posts seem to be about a year old
and there doesn't seem to be any development on the OS X / Linux front despite
them saying it was right around the corner in 2012.

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Zitrax
The last release is from 16 Oct 2015:
[http://forum.outerra.com/index.php?topic=3151.0](http://forum.outerra.com/index.php?topic=3151.0)

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aruggirello
Jaw-dropping! Now if only someone could pick this up to build a Win/OSX/Linux
version of No Man's Sky!!! That would be the ultimate amazement to me...

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zardo
There's spaceengine. I believe it does the entire observable universe.
[http://en.spaceengine.org/](http://en.spaceengine.org/)

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cpfohl
Wow. That's an impressive demo.

My only comment would be that in the demos with trees give away the fact that
it's computer rendered. not really sure what it is about them? (They don't
sway? They're too similar? The algorithm is 'showning'?) Any one know what it
is I'm noticing?

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ulrikrasmussen
This is quite impressive! The vehicles and flight simulation suggests that
this is being developed for some specific game, but I couldn't find any
references on the page. Does anyone know if this is the case, or if the engine
is just being developed for more general purpose use?

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akavel
Based on [http://www.outerra.com/jobs.html](http://www.outerra.com/jobs.html)
and [http://titanim.net/www/](http://titanim.net/www/):

"[Outerra is hiring] to work on several game and simulation projects for large
defense contractors in partnership with TitanIM", with the latter being "A
global sandbox [...] simulation software platform" and "[holding] the
exclusive license to the [Outerra] world rendering engine for military
applications."

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dantillberg
I would love to see more flight sims produced. When I was a kid, some of the
best games out there were flight sims.

But ever since graphics technology caught up enough to represent complex
close-up 3D world, land-based games with avatars and close-up action-packed
combat have taken over.

Flight sims tended to focus a whole lot more on planning -- you'd often have a
mission planner, where you'd plot out your route (and sometimes the
mission/route of other aircraft as well), then you get in the plane, taxi, fly
for a while, watch out for SAMs, maybe get intercepted by enemy aircraft, find
& attack your target(s), then fly home and land. I guess it sounds sort of
boring, but part of me wonders what kids these days (OK, I'm old, I know) are
missing out on.

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ComSubVie
I would recommend the Digital Combat Simulations Series, there are some
different simulators available: Su-27, BlackShark, A-10C, F-15C, ...

[https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/de/products/](https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/de/products/)

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pierotofy
It's also worth mentioning the less known Tinman 3D Terrain:
[https://www.tinman3d.com/](https://www.tinman3d.com/). Still in early stage,
but really promising.

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JosephHatfield
Those demo planets look they are only few hundred miles in diameter. Is this a
hardware limitation or it is simply done here to shorten the demos?

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coldcode
No they actually have a full Earth scale (based on sat data) and I think a
Mars one as well. It's able to be shown progressively to almost any altitude
including orbital.

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gravypod
If you like things like this check out SoA:
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Uo_x9FnnXTc](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Uo_x9FnnXTc)

The devs are really smart and pulling together some amazing optimization stuff
that you wouldn't really expect.

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gravypod
This is a better link:
[https://www.seedofandromeda.com/videos#](https://www.seedofandromeda.com/videos#)

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fizixer
Do they have 24-hour analytical sun+sky model? I'm obsessed with something
like that ever since I came across Hosek-Wilkie model (unfortunately it is
dawk+day+dusk only, no night time).

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jlwarren1
I would highly recommend this for anyone who owns an Oculus Rift.

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YoukaiCountry
I agree, it's incredible. But be warned, this made me sicker than just about
anything I've done with the Oculus Rift.

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Kovah
I wonder what kind of device specs are required to run this kind of simulation
properly. Couldn't find any information about this on the site and on the
blog.

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VikingCoder
Specs are listed here:
[http://www.outerra.com/demo.html](http://www.outerra.com/demo.html)

Minimum requirements:

* Windows Vista and higher, limited Windows XP support

* Nvidia 8xxx series or better, AMD/ATI 5xxx or better with recent AMD/ATI drivers (older ATI series are no longer supported by AMD and their legacy drivers do not work well with Outerra)

* Recent graphics drivers!

* 1GB graphics memory

* 2GB RAM

* 500MB disk space for the initial install, up to 15GB for fully downloaded Earth dataset

Recommended:

* Nvidia 470GTX or better, ATI 6870 or better

* 2GB graphics memory

* a 2-core CPU

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mpnordland
That's surprisingly reasonable.

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LordKano
I like this. I look at this project and see all kinds of potential.

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Razengan
A new wave of sandbox games à la Minecraft?

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LordKano
I'm thinking about world-scale adventure and combat games.

