World Rendering Engine by Ladislav Hrabcak (Outerra)
The next talk of the day was actually a little bit disappointing as the description read that we would learn of this amazing new technology that would allow this company to create entire planets, but after the talk I just found myself questioning everything that I had just heard from it. Ladislav Hrabcak is the creator of Outerra a 'world engine' that comes with a pre-built world and is a game simulation as ships, cars and planes can be added into it to make the world come alive. There goal with this is to make essentially planet Earth and then others following that.
The overall talk was very scientific and the speaker quite difficult to under, making it very difficult to talk notes. The atmosphere that makes up the game has real day and night cycles and is simulated as light absorbing and scatter particles. Along with real star constellations in the sky and the moon and nearby planets in orbit as well.
To liven up the environment procedural rocks are in motion and vary in size and are randomly generated throughout the environment. They have nice non-stretching textures and can also be generated underwater. Different land materials can then be added like dirt and grass textures and then snow textures as well as procedurally places forests. These are based on vegetation density value and are randomised by fractal noise and the trees are based on real climates, so if the area is too cold the tree will not grow.
They are then looking to add in the civilisation layers like roads, runways and eventually houses. The roads are vector and spline based and integrated seamlessly with terrain.
When looking at what they have achieved for this 'world engine' it is really impressive but I can't help thinking that what they want to achieve, which is building the whole world, seems like a very lengthy task. Although the overall idea is gutsy and interesting to see it seems like a strange idea that I was unsure what it was going to become. First I thought it was a world builder were we got out own planet and could build civilisation on it ourself through a type of strategy game, but he made it clear that they were then going to build the world and then other planets around it, which got me wondering what is the point of it? It may sound harsh and blunt but to get a computer to render in real-time an entire world seemed unrealistic especially in the next 19 years and judging by the lack of anything that they had, not to mention a whole lot of geometry popping in the rocks, it seems like its going to take them a while to be able to create any kind of life.
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