Open World Map Possibble in Full Game ?

what do you think mates ? big huge open world map possibble ?

 

I don't think open worlds are possible in Torque 3D =(.

 

I wish maps werent limited to less than a couple miles of space...

 

we can dream, but i think its unlikely

Tbh id prefer cities with traffic like City Car Driving

 

Desert Highway is pretty big. I'd imagine that if you fleshed that map out with roads, towns, forests and lakes it would feel really big. As it stands now it take a few minutes to cross the map at full speed. So torque is capable of a decent sized map, and I'd imagine the devs are looking into ways to make bigger maps.

 

It's not. The biggest possible map size is 2024x2024 meters (ECA) AFAIK , anything bigger isn't supported. I think it would work to create an huge 3D model of a map with like Blender and simply put it on a tiny terrain (so that the actual terrain is the model), but I also think that'd be pretty laggy. You'd also only have the default road particles.

Try to let 50 AI cars drive over a map when most people complain about the FPS with one vehicle...

 

Cities sir, fill the map with a big city and it will feel massive

 

When the game engine is more refined then?

But the odd car here and there wouldnt hurt, right? Theyd spawn if you were within X distance and despawn if they leave that radius

 

Yes, it will feel bigger than it is, but you would still have two KM at most of straight road, most likely lots of 90 degree corners making it a really slow and boring place to drive especially if there were other cars like you want, and most importantly all maps would be limited to cities if they want to seem big.

 

the dont have to be 90 deg corners like NYC, they can be more european and have turns and require more concentration, like London maybe?

 

My point was mostly just that you wouldn't be getting up to very high speeds, and if you do you would still probably be going around turns pretty slowly(I think, although I don't know too much about European cities).

 

You don't really drive high speeds in cities anyways. That's what highways are for.


There was quite big city map that was already at a beta stage but it's been taken down now IIRC. I remember that he had problem that when the map had too many models/props, the game crashed.

 

No and no. I'll address them in reverse order. The largest map currently possible in BeamNG.drive is 2048x2048 units. Not meters but units (which the game may refer to as squares). Typically units represent 1 meter, but for things like Desert Highway they represent multiple meters. What that means is that the map becomes lower-resolution the larger we make it. Low-resolution maps are difficult to work with (see all the work required to get some turns on Corkscrew Mountain to be decent). Low resolution coupled with any changes in height, such as a normal ditch, bank, berm, etc will give you abrupt, jagged changes where things should be smooth. EDIT: low resolution also increases the minimum size of a terrain feature. You can no longer have a 1-meter wide ditch when your resolution is 4 meters per unit!

1 meter can be a challenge at times (2048x2048 meters)
2 meters will always have extra challenges (4096x4096 meters)
4 meters and up is only suitable for flatland type work where there are no roads which interact closely with terrain features (8192x8192 meters and larger)

EDIT: see Aboroath's post below RE: all the strikethrough I just added.

 

That desert airplane map (Cant think of the name) Is bigger than the GTA 5 map. It just doesn't feel big because its a almost flat desert. I used the Toyota Hilux Prerunner and it took me 30 minutes to get from one corner to the other. In gta its take 8 - 12 minutes to go from the Los Santos customs in Paleto Bay to the Del Perro Pier. So imagine that map, as populated as GTA 5s map. The size is possible, but due to the high resource usage of simple objects vs GTA, its not currently possible. Even running some more extreme high end builds, they would struggle for 5 fps. Maybe as the game becomes more optimized, it might be possible. But keep in mind, GTA has been around since 1997, technically they have been doing optimized since then.

 

If I recall the largest heightmap that Torque can import is 4096X4096. That is a representation of "meters per pixel". So a 4096X4096
heightmap will produce a terrain 4096 meters square. When importing that height map into Torque you are given the option of how many
"meters per pixel" you want your terrain to be. So, if I bring in a 4096X4096 heightmap and set the meters per pixel to 2 I effectively
get a 8192X8192 meter map with HALF the vertical height and detail resolution. 2 meters per pixel will stretch the map by a factor
of 2 times on the X and Y axis's but not the Z axis. I believe that is what the endless desert map is all about.

I have attempted a straight 8192 import and Torque won't do it. I have also done a 4096/ 2 MPP with a double vertical height value
to get an 8192 map with the right terrain height and it seemed to work out alright.

A 4096 map regardless of meter per pixel value is still an awfully big map to populate and a hell of a lot of work.
I'm no doubt missing something on this rant, my two cents anyway.

 

Yeah, I'd really like to see a map such as the one in NFS Hot Pursuit in BeamNG. That would be awesome.

Perhaps they could "hack" Torque so that it could accept larger maps?

 

Aboroath, I doubted you* so I dropped into the T3D editor and imported a 4096x4096 heightmap. No problem, it imported fine!

... I wish I'd realized that before. I thought I saw 2048 written down somewhere, plus T3D's generator maxes at 2048 and and L3DT also maxes at generating 2048 untiled. My tiny map would have been slightly larger (300% larger) had I known about this. We live and we learn!

*(say it isn't so!)

 

I had no idea T3D's generator was limited to 2048, live and learn indeed.

Oh yeah, feel free anytime to correct my occasionally feeble and dis-jointed attempts
at sounding knowledgeable.

 

Will do:

Meters per pixel has no effect on vertical height or resolution. That's determined by the terrains "max height" property: black is zero height, white will be equal to the value of that property. T3D uses 16-bit heightmaps, so your vertical precision will be max height / 65536 meters.

That said, while it is theoretically possible to make absolutely massive (albeit rough) maps using high meter-per-pixel settings, floating point precision errors and T3Ds static object management will quickly smash your hopes and dreams. The former by causing placing errors, z-fighting (flickering of terrain/roads) and eventually even physics issues, the latter by simply not allowing you to populate the map properly.

 

Thanks.

What I meant by "half height" at 2 MPP is the height of the terrain is completely unaffected by
the meter per pixel scheme and in the scenario I suggested would render the height value of
the map at "half the height" of a 4096X4096 1 MPP terrain. "Half the height" being the Z axis
values of the map remain the same regardless if the meters per pixel are 1 or 2 or 3 etc.
A 4096X4096X2048 heightmap at 2 MPP becomes a 8192X8192X2048 map and hence
will have "half the height" when viewed as a whole.
We are essentially stating the same thing here but I have issues explaining things
clearly.

I am aware that the 16 bit greyscale height value is set in stone when imported and hence
cannot be altered by manipulation of the MPP values. Using the terrain editor tools would be
required to further alter the terrain height.