zimluura Wrote:Trees: an artist could model 2-3 evergreens, and then 2-3 deciduous varieties. perhaps with lods. then those could be used to populate every track.
* 1 ram footprint per tree type in track
* work done to improve visuals on 1 tree would carry across all tracks.
* applying scale and rotation for each instance should make them look less identical
Back in ye olde 2005-2006, when we were using XML-defined tracks from Vamos, and had to generate all our own landscapes and scenery, we did just this. I took a ton of photos of trees myself and edited them into 3D models and textures for VDrift. (Note: it is incredibly difficult to take a picture of a tree without also taking a picture of something behind it, and incredibly time consuming to edit out shit behind trees.) When we started using fully modeled tracks we ditched it. Look through the media gallery and you'll see some old screen shots of it. I think it looked pretty good; that said, it is nice to be able to have modeled trees in the tracks, because that means less work for us, and the trees can be tweaked a lot easier (I remember we ran into some problems with trees not quite going where we wanted, sometimes we'd get trees that were supposed to be close to the track instead winding up on the track, etc.).
zimluura Wrote:Destructable environments: tire walls that get busted up maybe,
This is a lot of work, I think, and something not terribly high on our priority list.
Lots of people have suggested it over the years and I agree it would be very nice and quite realistic...but we have bigger problems we need to fix that matter more, I think. Of course anyone is welcome to write a patch...
We might start to work on movable objects on the track when we get so much done with VDrift that we get bored and feel the need to add something new. So that would be a year or more from now. Unless someone else showed up who wanted to work on it.
zimluura Wrote:Meshes in the Sky.
the skybox is the big thing that stands out graphics wise. even if it wasn't pixelated it would still probably stand out. i'd rather see a dynamic sky, even if it's always a cloudless day (though i think weather effects and celestial bodies would be easier to do in a dynamic sky). i once got a neat horizon effect by rendering a grey cyllinder, with opaque vertexes at the base horizon line and transparent vertexes at the top (iirc it would blend in with the clear-to-color function)
VDrift actually already has a complete weather system, including night and day. Again look through the gallery and you'll find the screenshots. I think that it's based on a domed sky. I think it's off right now, since most of the modeled tracks have their own sky boxes, and they just cover up the sky and weather effects. We used to even have a moon at night...
zimluura Wrote:also a heightmap for surrounding hills. something that translates with car movement, but is never checked for collision. without collision it could easily be an irregular heightmap to save poly-count.
It would be difficult to match up a heightmap ground with the modeled landscape around it. In the past VDrift used heightmap for all the ground, including the track. I spent a few hours at one point trying to properly model the track and surrounding landscape surface of Road Atlanta, using terrain maps I found for the area of the track mated up with satellite images. It was a huge pain in the ass. It didn't look all that bad, but it was quite difficult to predict what the landscape would look like after tweaking the heightmap image; it required a lot of trial and error type activity. Modeling in Blender or something is much easier. Texturing heightmaps is even more of a pain.
Your idea to use heightmaps to generate far-away landscape isn't bad though, especially if we had some way to auto-generate the landscape around the edges of the track. All that said, a well-modeled track wouldn't even need any more landscape rendered than what's in the track, so this is a really low priority type feature. Once again, something that someone should work on a patch for.