Mega texturing

[Handicap]

It is planned to being implemented in Ogre?

[jacmoe]

If you can tell us what it is, then ..

[Handicap]

It's quite new technology... read here:
http://www.gamerwithin.com/?view=articl ... 1319&cat=2

[betajaen]

I think Jacmoe was trying to ask you could you explain how exactly it works. Most or nearly of the stuff I have read about Mega Texturing is just plain marketing speak. There was a thread earlier back which I can remember Sinbad describing how he think what exactly it is.

However, I doubt we'd see it in Ogre library itself. Perhaps an add on in the future - maybe.

[sinbad]

Instead of the "idiot gamer"-friendly marketing crap, read this:

http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~gfx/Courses ... lipmap.pdf

What Carmack calls 'Megatexture' is a generalisation of a technique described in that 1998 academic paper, so the idea is really not new. What is new is that he's apparantly got it working on general geometry rather than just terrains, which is an impressive feat, but one which he's keeping very much to himself at this time, for obvious reasons (ie id's engine licensing got caned in the last few years and they need something UE3 doesn't have).

Personally I'm not sure it's the panacea it's claimed to be, and it only solves one issue - texture usage. Doesn't address visibility, meshes, lighting or anything else so it's hardly the silver bullet for all things that it's being spun to be. But, that's marketing for you. Technically impressive yes, but you have to tell me how he got it to work in a general sense rather than just for terrain if you want it implemented

[jacmoe]

I think Jacmoe was trying to ask you could you explain how exactly it works. Most or nearly of the stuff I have read about Mega Texturing is just plain marketing speak.

Exactly!
I'm familiar with Id Tech 5 - but I am not completely convinced that mega texturing is a must-have - especially since we only have a foggy idea of how Carmack pulled it off.

[PolyVox]

Just incase people missed it, they are having a chat about how it work over at GameDev:

http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums ... _id=460053

[Alexander]

Also, Falagard has wrapped Advantage Terrain Library which supports:

huge (64k x 64k or above) overlay textures into LOD system.

That seems "mega" enough for anything we might need.

[jacmoe]

Interestingly, Valve seems to go the opposite way with their Team Fortress 2:
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/23520.html

Really cool, if you ask me. Shows that less is more.

[Alexander]

Interesting no doubt, though it doesn't particularly suit my tastes.

[oddrose]

Personally I prefer style and design over attempted realism any day.

[Lee04]

I am always intrested in new technology.

I am amazed that no one than Carmack has done this.....yet.

It just shows how few people that are in a position to presue something like it.

[oddrose]

that's true of course...but if I had a couple of millions I wouldn't spend them on making that kind of thing...but that's me...
if someone else spends that money however, I am happy as a child

[Praetor]

Carmack is certainly in one of the most unique positions in the gaming industry, if not the larger software community. The impression is that he has an enormous amount of freedom to explore.

[gamekill]

Just some feedback, I really think megatexturing IS worth it. It DOES look way better than tiled textures IMHO. I play Quake Wars on highest settings, and it is amazing that you can go into spectator mode and float all over the terrain, and everything just looks natural. I mean, the textures do not tile at all, it's really nice. I also played Crysis on highest settings for a while and after being used to the megatexturing in Quake Wars, crysis bleeds tiling so bad it hurt my eyes

You take a peek down below the beach from some higher terrain and it's ridiculous... everything is way too evidently tiled.

I really think megatexturing IS awesome. Just my opinion.

[voxel]

SparseVirtualTextures is probably similar to MegaTextures (works on any object).

I can see SVT combined with polynomial texture maps (or a technique that encodes light transfer) being very useful.

Essentially real time rendering is heading the same way as film/TV in that shading complexity (texture + shader) is WAY more important than visibility (geometric complexity).

[reptor]

Bohemia Interactive Studio says that they use megatexturing (or similar system) in their game Armed Assault. Armed Assault has beautiful landscape and long, beautiful viewdistances are possible (needs powerful computer though).

I wrote about it here:

http://www.ogre3d.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=39641

They mention it in their 'ARMA Technology Inside' Developer Blog article:

http://www.bistudio.com/developers-blog ... de_en.html

Also their Wiki has some info about how terrain textures are done for their game. If you go read their Wiki, be sure to check its Disclaimer first so that you know what to do to not break their copyrights.

Terrain surfaces for the whole world are represented by a pair of textures covering the whole world: Satellite Map and Layer Map. PNG format is used for both textures, both textures are split into segments when imported to Visitor and Layer Map is converted to Layer Mask during the process. Each segment overlaps it's neighbours to allow terrain streaming. The Satellite Map provides basic colour information for displaying distant terrain. As terrain can be visible beyond the range that objects are, representations of objects such as trees, roads, ocean and buildings are all included on the satellite map. The Layer Map and surface types defined in the config determine which terrain textures to display at close distances and other properties.

http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Bohe ... disclaimer
http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Laye ... esentation
http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Maki ... e_and_Mask

It is worth a look by the Ogre3D developers.