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L3DTVis Crashes

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L3DTVis Crashes

Postby Joshua » Wed Jun 07, 2006 5:52 pm

I thought I'd quit putting off this problem and just inquire.

I'm testing out a workflow at the moment, between L3DT and World Machine but I've having some trouble. I'm running Windows XP on a high-end system (AMD X2 4200+, 2 GB DC DDR Ram, 2 SLI GeForce 7800GTs) and the newest build of the L3DT Professional Edition Demo (build 10).

I generate a 512x512 sized heightfield and then export it as a PNG file.

In World Machine, I import the test terrain png file and then apply some erosion and effects to it and export the final results out as a .ter file (terragen).

I then import the heightmap into L3DT which asks me to resize it from 513x513 to 512x512 which I confirm. I then generate a new design map and then all the following maps (I actually am just trying with 512x512 for everything). When I save out the project I get no errors, however when I try to open the project L3DTVis it simply hangs and does nothing.

I reinstalled twice, rebooted and made sure no other apps were eating all of my memory. Other maps (much larger ones too) load just fine in L3DTVis so I'm a bit at a loss what the problem could be.

I can describe the issue in more detail if need be, but if anyone here has advice, I'd appreciate it.

I thank you in advance.
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Postby Aaron » Thu Jun 08, 2006 1:11 am

Hi Joshua,

The problem is that L3DTVi2 cannot read TER files, and blows-up when the HFF is not found (as seen on the bugs and workarounds page for L3DTVi2). To re-save the heightfield in HFF, go to 'File->Preferences', select 'Heightfield->HFF' and click on 'use format'.

I'll try my hand at fixing L3DTVi2 so that it throws an error when the file isn't found, rather than locking-up mysteriously. [Hmmm...now how to do that in Delphi?]

Regards,
Aaron.
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Postby DeathTwister » Thu Jun 08, 2006 12:57 pm

Hay all,

Ok heres the deal. We are all very bizzy, but I see that the Viewer has become a part of L3DT that needs help.
So we need to know what version of Delphi was used on it? probobly version 5 or less? or what year was it done in. Having said that we will go get the version we need and Shon my Programmer has stated that he will start to convert the code to C++ if we can.
After that we will hope that all of us can work on the viewer together. We will plan to use just open Gel since it is faster and smaller then direct X. Besides I think the render was using Open Gel before anyway.

If someone has Delphi? then zip it up and we will tell ya where to zip it to us?

Anyway I will stay on him to work hard on this, I do think that this is beginning to be the chink in Aarons armor and we can't have that now can we?? HAHAHaha...Need delphi though. But Shon knows Pascal pretty good, just not has had to work in it for years.

Besides then maybe we can get water reflections, trees/plants, buildings? and other goodies in our viewer in the end here. Maybe make it a viewer/editor for plants and other goodies by the end of the project. We will see what ATOMIX can do to help the team here.

DT
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Postby Aaron » Thu Jun 08, 2006 2:16 pm

Hi DeathTwister,

I think it's a really great idea, but...

L3DTVi2 itself contains almost no code - it's mostly just file I/O code to feed the GLScene library, which provides all the terrain-rendering stuff. Hence porting L3DTVi2 to C++ won't get you very far unless you also port GLScene (it's in Delphi too). That's roughly equivalent to writing your own game engine.

...however...

It might be better if we use an existing C/C++ 3D-library and extend it to work with L3DT-compatible formats (or indeed all common terrain formats). If we're going for open-source, which I think is a great idea, then we'd have to use a library like Irrlicht or Ogre3D, as their licences are open-source friendly (zlib/libpng and LGPL, respectively). Based on casual perusal of the respective galleries, Ogre3D looks pretty good for our needs (e.g. 1, 2, 3).

I'm downloading some Ogre3D demos now, and if it all looks good I'll download the SDK and start some exploratory hacking. Does anyone in the community have experience with Ogre3D? Alternatively, can anyone recommend an alternative C++ library that's open-source-compatible?

Cheers, Aaron.

PS: Just for completeness:

DeathTwister wrote:So we need to know what version of Delphi was used on it?


Version 7.

DeathTwister wrote:If someone has Delphi? then zip it up and we will tell ya where to zip it to us?


That would be illegal, and we can't condone that sort of behaviour 'round here. Tsk tsk.
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Postby SeerBlue » Thu Jun 08, 2006 11:27 pm

this probably is not what your are looking for, but there was some talk on the Global Mapper yahoo list awhile back about using the Visualization Tool Kit (open source) to build a real time 3d viewer for Global Mapper. There are gis related libraries for it, and even some gis related apps that already use it. Here is a link to the home page: http://public.kitware.com/VTK/.
Global Mapper did not go this route as they have something else already inwork. SeerBlue
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Postby Kiraya » Fri Jun 09, 2006 10:31 am

if someone is a free and nice c++ programmer, i recommend the use of Wild Magic engine, a little but powerful and well written engine, that have opengl and dx render engine.

http://www.geometrictools.com/SourceCode.html
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Postby Joshua » Fri Jun 09, 2006 12:53 pm

Well if we were to recommend a rendering engine, I'd say:

OGRE ENGINE with perhaps the Terrain Scene Manager or the Paging Landscape Scene Manager.

It's the most powerful, mature, and robust open-source rendering engine with terrain support already built in.
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Postby DeathTwister » Fri Jun 09, 2006 12:55 pm

Hay guys,

Wow Irrlicht would be better of the 2 I think and they just did a major update on the engine. Ok let us know what we can do to help you all.

DeathTwister wrote:

If someone has Delphi? then zip it up and we will tell ya where to zip it to us?


That would be illegal, and we can't condone that sort of behaviour 'round here. Tsk tsk.


Hahaha no that was not what I meant /chuckles. What I meant was we can give software away if we are done with it. If no one needed a old copy, legally we can give it away.
Wasn't looking for a hacked copy my good man, just a copy we could work with. We don't do that kinda thing ourselves.
But hay, sounds like that is not needed now anyway so WOO HOO lets get on it as a killer viewer for L3DT is a great idea and we can do so much more with it.
We have a old copy of viz basic that we are putting up on ebay to sell, thought maybe someone had a old copy of Delphi :lol:
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Postby Joshua » Fri Jun 09, 2006 1:05 pm

DeathTwister wrote:Hay guys,
Wow Irrlicht would be better of the 2 I think and they just did a major update on the engine. Ok let us know what we can do to help you all.

OGRE is superior to Irrlicht in every way, even down to activity and community. :wink:

We are actually implementing our terrain rendering system as a custom scene manager for Ogre, Aaron. You might also want to take a look a PLSM2 but to be honest it's an unsupported add-on and a bit sloppy.

Here's a bit of background on where we're going to take our Scene Manager (which our company plans to donate back, in part, to the Ogre community once complete) within our game engine:

1. GeoClipmapping Based Terrain Rendering
2. Displacement Mapping (Vertex Compression)
3. "MegaTexturing" (Large Diffuse/Lightmap/Normalmap texturing over nested regular grids)
4. Detail Mapping
5. Splatting
6. Aeriel Perspective
7. Coherent Occlusion/ Horizon Culling
8. GeoMorphing
9. Interpolated (Animated) Lightmapping
10. Export Collision Trimesh
11. Accurate Sunlight / Skylight with scattering (A Practical Analytic Model for Daylight)
12. Procedural Clouds over skydome
13. Volumetric Cloud system
14. Imports all L3DT files
15. Works with L3DT Mosaic Tiles

Currently we are in the R&D stages of the SM's development. We have two programmers dedicated to the task, while the remaining team works on other parts of our engine. We don't touch foliage as a part of the project as that is handled by our middleware solution, but we'd be interested in exploring solutions in that realm as well (Planta is free for non commercial use and we already have a copy of the SDK). While we never thought of integrating it with L3DT directly, this could prove to be interesting.

If anyone here is interested in a joint-effort let me know, and I can see what we could do. :D
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Postby Joshua » Fri Jun 09, 2006 11:12 pm

Have a look at what one team has been able to do with terrains (environments) w/ Ogre.

http://www.windwardmark.net/downloads.php?page=videos

In our opinion, the engine is at least as powerful and robust as any commercial offering, (we looked at Gamebryo and Renderware before deciding on Ogre).
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Postby JavaJones » Sat Jun 10, 2006 5:53 am

That's some extremely impressive stuff that WindardMark has done. Is this without the use of clip mapping and some of the other more advanced stuff you've been talking about implementing? It doesn't seem like they have volumetric clouds either. Can we assume your system should surpass theirs? :D

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Postby Joshua » Sat Jun 10, 2006 9:02 am

They've simply added some cool shader effects to the basic terrain scene manager. Procedural clouds, animated lightmaps, particle/sprite based weather effects, and aerial perspective with sky/sunlight model. I know where they got each and every effect that they've implemented, as most are from whitepapers.
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Postby DeathTwister » Sat Jun 10, 2006 1:56 pm

Hay all,

OOh wow Josh thanks for the heads up on Ogre. We will go check it out and download a copy to play with as yes, I myself am not as happy with some of the engines and the way they handle my stuff as I would like them to be. Dang I wish it was simple ROTFL. /chuckles. So getting a heads up on Ogre is great. We looked at it before, but that was over a year ago. We will go there again check em out and get a copy. I liked Irrlicht as well, but they have no gui for me to work in so we haven't worked much in it. And I am finding TSE build 3 still has some issues (i will get into that on GG) as they say. So Ogre sounds like a winner if I can play easy:lol: :roll: :oops: :wink: 8)

DT :twisted:
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Postby Joshua » Sat Jun 10, 2006 9:00 pm

Well I can't recommend it highly enough. As for TSE, I think that you're severely limiting your project if you take that road. :wink:
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Postby DeathTwister » Mon Jun 12, 2006 1:57 pm

Hay Josh,

Joshua wrote:
Well I can't recommend it highly enough. As for TSE, I think that you're severely limiting your project if you take that road. Wink


/Chuckles, yup I am beginning to figure that out. So I have started double and triple vid game engine Dev to hedge my bets so to speak, so I have Shon (programmer) right now looking into putting me together a build in Ogre so I can check it all out.

Since I have been working on importing terrains into TSE I have found that not all the troubler I have been having was me. The Atlas engine while very cool has bugs and is not done. didn't realize that when I started stuff, oops. Bugs like run across a flat surface and fall through a seem line where the Atlas cuts up the terrain in TSE for paging. So while I do love the auto paging I see bugs all over the place there.

Going to post on that today or tomorrow at GG, but don't have allot of hope of them getting to me on that, we see. I have more issues with TSE but hay save it for them not here /rumbles with laughter. They get so touchy sometimes and are no help at all at GG though at times, so I will probably post here almost my brothers and see if I can get needs met here before I go into the mouth of the dragon though ROTFL.

My texture map still seems to be about 1-3 pixels off somehow and will post on that as well. Other then that I have terrain in TSE and working on getting same terrain into TGE to see if I can build as many of the same world in multiple engines and release the one that works the best.

TGE has a cool feature we are working on with a dev team Shon joined using Mozilla as a browser that we can have our worlds inside Mozilla, Internet exploder and Netscape. It's buggy but we are helping and working with the guy that came up with that little gem, so going to other engines kinda sucks if we cant use that new feature being worked on by some of the developers that have TGE and TSE is all. Other then that, can an artist get around in a gui interface is all I care about with as little programming as possible for my non programmer pea brain.

We downloaded all the stuff for Ogre and will tear into it this week. Is it easier or harder to get Aarons wonderful terrains into Ogre? maybe shoot me a link to a toot or something? that would help. Most of the building and such are all done when I can get a base world that looks close to some of the screen shots I have posted I will be a happy camper.

Thanks Josh for the heads up on Ogre, it is growing very fast it looks like now.

But to get back on track, I would love to see the viewer in L3DT be able to at least drop trees, buildings, and other landscape features in a viewer to see how it will all look inside your project before exporting out. I know that is way to much to ask out the gate so we start with getting the viewer up to date and transposed to C code. Let us know how we can help.

We are going balls out right now trying to get the:
http://www.atomixworldmarket.com done before the July 15th Grand opening so after that we can spend much more time on Texutre Repositois, new engines and back to finishing up the Galleria for release right soon after we hope within a couple of months. The we can get back to DeathLords our fun game that will be free the first part of it anyway. Depending on a few things that is, hahahahahahaha......The software and ducking slow our asses up every time it seems ROTFL.

WE will also get balls out on the texture repository project after the release of our store as well. Right now we is swamped big time. But getting there.

DT :twisted:
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