Well considering Dr Martin took years to get Orbiter out and more years to make it what it is today....

Well Ill just make a request that you open the core development. Take it as you will.

I just got done playing around with version 4, and I like what I see! :D
Your water color is very pleasing to the eyes, and I love that you went with a 688, instead of a 688(I). I'm also very much looking forward to the Typhoon! Even tho there's not much to do in it, it is pretty fun to play around with.

Keep up the great work, I'm really looking forward to the day this becomes, "playable". :up:

Any sub is good, but I would really appreciate one sub to be made as good as possible.
Which now means movable rear planes and masts (periscope especially) for LA. And some better texture for LA. I can test those untextured models you've sent me, I can improve my 3ds load (I mean I must :stare:) but there is no point releasing them.

Those DW Akulas (textured ones) animates well. I could use them as the second sub for sonar & weapons development. Which reminds me I did not check the Typhoon animation yet, will do. Typhoon too will make a nice target :|\\

Btw. What about some torpedo mesh ?

Torpedo mesh I can knock up quickly.

I'll make a periscope or too. Do they need to be with the model or a seperate model?

I need to adjust pivot points a little but will take a look at it tonight.

Torpedo stand alone, mast as part of the object, in deployed state I think. Doesn't really matter.

Hey, all right! I was wishing I had a periscope. Looks like that wish is coming true. :D

Just a litlle progress report.

- I merged etopo 2 minute bathymetry with gtopo30 half minute height data.
- I tested cubical projection of the geographic data, which allows quite uniform distribution of both heightmap tiles and mesh triangles over whole globe, including polar regions, which is important for coldwar/modern subsim. On the other hand it will complicate adding custom heighmaps - they will have to be transformed before using. At the moment I don't see how to avoid it and the the cubic map otherwise has much pros.
- I'm testing several methods of subdividing the mesh, still didn't find the right-one but I'm getting close.

Btw. it seems DW uses 1nm resolution on ground, about 5nm resolution in the water. Which is about half resolution of what I have now. On the other hand DW has world data in one 180M file. Mine has 2 gigs. I guess DW keeps both heightmaps separate, which could allow such size.

So this mean we have a round earth then?

Far from that yet. I'm getting close to rendering round earth. And then there will be simulation, and sensors. Some will be simpler, like radar. Some will be more complicated, like sonar.
But I guess it's worth the additional troubles.
Maybe I will try to modify the physics simulation for round earth. I need to change the topic for day or two, I'm already dreaming about height maps :88)

Dont merge the maps. Keep the data seperate. and layer them

Sea Map
Height Map
Ice Map (To allow the rendering of the polar regions and the operations there. May need 4 for the seasons)
Texture map (No reason not to use 4 Blue Marble maps for the seasons)
Night map (So you view city lights from above and can also set it so it renders glow from afar)

Blue Marble textures ? I don't see any textures there .. anyway textures of good resolution would be way too big.

Here you go.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/New...monthlies.html

2 km at 20mb

8 km for 1.71mb

Oh and here is the night map

http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?id=1438

----

And here are some others. http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_se...ategoryID=2363

Oh :|\\

Now that I think about it. The distortion you will get when you layer it on top of the Height map means that its pointless to use the higher resolution stuff.

So instead how about you grab all those monthly images at the 8km level (Blue marble shows averages so it works in a subsim) for a good simulation of the progression of the months?

Yes .. I think this could be used as the 'terrain type' based on which will be the selection of hires tiles. Snow coverage is fine, but we still need ice coverage (thickness) for water. Will there be a chalenge for you ?

:up: