Orulex

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Project home: http://orbides.1gb.ru Author: Artlav Current version: Unknown Compatibility: Unknown

Earth in Orulex 1.0

Brighton Beach Crafter on the Moon in Orulex 1.0

Orulex is a dynamic landscape generator add-on for Orbiter which allows you to add a global Supported functions are perlin noise, ridged perlin, sine and cosine terrain, i/o curve, crater, auxiliarys.

Basic features (0.7.1)

Run-time generation of planet-wide meshes based on given mathematical expression.
Supported functions are perlin noise, ridged perlin, sine and cosine terrain, i/o curve, crater, auxiliarys.
Global and local heightmaps
Automatic carving of surface bases into craters.
Partially compatible with Visosad collision detection system.

Known bugs/issues (0.7.1)

Static textures all over the planet.
Blinking of the texture at night and with clouds.
No mesh visible in windowed mode on some GPUs.

Basic features (1.0)

Generates planet terrain in Orbiter on the fly, using real data or fractal functions.
Easily downloadable textures and heightmaps data for Earth, and other planets.
Lv11 global Orbiter and Lv6-Lv22 local downloaded textures (LandSat, USGS) support.

Improvements from 0.9.4 to 1.0

Lots of bugs fixed
Significant performance improvements.
Memory management was significantly improved, the textures are no longer resides fully in RAM, so even Lv11 textures only needs 100Mb on average instead of ~1Gb. Consequently,
Lv 9-11 textures supported.
Visual improvements by recalibrating the LOD algorithm - the textures are generated from the camera point, and the high resolution should be more closer to the camera, the generation takes camera motion into account
World Studio - a versatile planet editor and Orulex config tool. Featuring everything from changing settings to downloading hi-res tiles and saving them as Orbiter-readable SURFTILEs.

Known bugs/issues (1.0)

Windows Vista random CTD.
Dislocated patches when flying with multithreaded mode on.
Textures getting colorfully random on some machines (probably Orbiter/DirectX bug on older systems).

System Requirements:

Out of the box:

256Mb RAM + what Orbiter and OS takes.
1.5+Ghz CPU, good video card (if it runs Orbiter Lv10+NASSP with good FPS it will run Orulex as if nothing is here).

Hi-quality:

1Gb RAM + what Orbiter and OS takes + what local maps you will download.
2-3Ghz CPU, ~1Gb of disk space, Fast Cheap internet (Lv9 heightmap is 466Mb download).

Performance Guidelines:

If you got a multi-core CPU, it is almost always better to keep multithread mode on.
If you got single-core CPU and Orulex feels slow on response or pre-computation takes longer than 10-15 seconds, try turning multithread mode off.
Reducing polygon count may help if you got an old video card.
Reducing LevLimit may give a more stable-looking landscape, but dropping quality exponentially.
If you got FPS jerks on older/single-core PC's, look on texture timings.

TexGen-H defines time slice allocated when there is a lot to generate, TexGen-L defines time slice allocated when there are only small changes, like when you are flying around. Reducing them make Orbiter more responsive and terrain less responsive. Timings are not defined in multithread mode.

Data Servers List:

Earth

SRTM global Earth terrain
NASA derived global 30 meters per pixel satellite image mosaic
NASA derived global 15 meters per pixel satellite image mosaic, donated and processed by I-Cubed using equipment from Isilon Systems.
USGS Digital Ortho
USGS Urban Area Ortho
Pseudo color 15m Landsat mosaic provided by MDA Federal, scenes comprised from early 2000s

Moon

Clementine global Moon terrain
Clementine 40xx
Clementine 30xx

Mars

MOLA global Mars terrain
Mars THEMIS Color

Venus

Magellan Imaging Radar (Color)
Magellan Imaging Radar (Grey)

Configuration

Syntax for all config files:

parameter = value
Any amount of tabs or spaces around = sign.
// means star of line-comment (all of the line after it is ignored)
{ opens the large comment, } closes the large comment, everything between them is ignored.
1 denotes TRUE/ON, 0 denotes FALSE/OFF.
All other numbers are in metres (unless specified otherwise), in real number format (±1.23±45).

Main configuration can be found in visosad\orulex.cfg

All pathes are relative to the Orbiter directory.

Global features:

Enabled - Enable/disable the system
Debug - Enable/disable the debug string
Collisions - Collision support on/off
Multithread - Multithreaded mode on/off
Reflection - Reflection model

Default values for all planets (used if not specified in planet cfg):

MaxPolyCount - Maximum polygon count in the terrain should be in 20000-100000 range.
Altlimit - Upper limit for terrain drawing.
Blendlimit - Lower limit of terrain vanishing (starts at Altlimit-Blendlimit)
Levlimit - Terrain level limit
GlobalHMapLimit - Global heightmap level limit
PriT - Preprocess timeslice
SecT - Split/Merge timeslice
TriT - TexGen-L timeslice
QuaT - TexGen-H timeslice
Configs - Configuration path
Textures - Textures path
Heightmaps - Heightmap path

Planet textures are loaded from Orbiter textures directories, with Orbiter's default prioritites.

Planets configuration can be found in config/terrain/planet_name.cfg

In planet_name.cfg The MaxPolyCount, Altlimit, Blendlimit have the same meaning as in name config, but for this planet only.

Terrain settings:

seed - The Number, that defines the planet.
radius - Radius of mesh. Better be near radius of planet.
function - Planet terrain function. Described below.
sbcrater - Surface base craters ridge height
microtexture - Microtexturing
belowsphere - Below sphere terrain
glhmaplevel - Max global heightmap level

Heightmaps: Defined by adding following string to the planet_name.cfg

All fields have fixed widths - 40|10|10|10|10|8|1|1|1

First is filename relative to Heightmaps directory, then longitude of start, longitude of end, latitude of start, latitude of end, vertical scale, function, flag, use flag

heightmap - Heightmap file is a grayscale BMP with black as 0 and white as vertical scale altitude.
height8map - Heightmap file is a grayscale BMP with altitude asn sint8.
heightmaphei - Heightmap file is a Orulex HEI.

Heightmap functions are:

0 - addition (height-map)
1 - multiplication (mask-map).
2 - replacation (plain height-map)
3 - replacation-truncation (plain height-map with ocean truncated)

Colormaps: Defined by adding following string to the planet_name.cfg colormap=Name|Lon of start|Lon of end|Lat of start|Lat of end|Scale|Function All fields have fixed widths - 40|10|10|10|10|8|1|1|1 First is filename relative to Textures or Textures2 directory, then longitude of start, longitude of end, latitude of start, latitude of end, vertical scale, function Colormap file is either BMP or DDS.

Flat spaces: Defined by adding following string to the planet_name.cfg flat=Lon of start Lon of end Lat of start Lat of end

SURFTILES: Just paste the BEGIN_SURFTILELIST END_SURFTILELIST part of the Orbiter base cfg into Orulex planet cfg, removing empty lines. See earth.cfg for example.

Predefined terrain functions for randomator:

1 1 1 3 6000 perlin = dense selenic world
1 1 1 3 10000 perlin = selenic world
1 1 1 4 15000 perlin = sparse selenic world
1 1 1 3 20000 1000 1 1 1 4 10000 ridge sin * + ridge = tightly-ridged world
1 1 1 3 100000 10000 1 1 1 3 100000 ridge sin * + ridge = ridge-cratered world
1 1 1 1 10000 ridge cos 0.6- 5* = channel-cracked world
1.1 1.1 1.1 3 10000 ridge 1 0 1 1 1 0.4 0 0.2 0 0 1 0.2 1 1 1 3 100000 ridge trim 0.2-2* 9 curv trim* = ridged-valleys world

Functions

Planet functions (Function string in config\terrain\planet_name.cfg)

Basic ideas:

Planet functions is written in postfix notation.
In postfix, the sign of operation goes after the operands, so a+b will be ab+.
It have a significant comprehensive advantage, since there is no ()'s.
a+((b+f)*c+d/e) will be written as a b f+c*d e/++.
Functions specified the same way - f(x,y,z+w) is x y z w + f.

Terrain function: The terrain is represented by a 3 to 1 function with arguments being the position on the planet and output being the altitude at this position. The concept is similar to the plotting of 1D functions, like sine and cosine - the X axis represents the position, and Y axis represents the altitude:

Imagine the same thing in 4D, and that's how it is done in Orulex.

Terrain Functions:

perlin(xd,yd,zd,band,scale)

Classic perlin noise ground function.

xd,yd,zd is distortion values for x,y,and z coordinates respectively.

band is the amount of noise bands to be used - the more of them the more detailed terrain is, but slower.

scale is the horizontal scale of the thing. It is roughly equivalent to the size of the pattern shown in viewer on the actuall planet, i.e. if scale is 10000 then the pattern will be spread across 10 kilometers.

Output is in -1..1 range.

ridge(xd,yd,zd,band,scale)

Ridged perlin noise ground function. Same parameters as above.

Output is in -1..1 range.

sealevel(f,min)

Same as min2(min,f). Returns f if f>=min and min if f<min.

Useful to truncate below the sphere part of the terrain function into flat valleys.

Almost always should be removed if planet have ocean.

<-(example with perlin)

If your planet have an ocean, make sure thet the underwater part of the function is not truncated!

sintf(xd,yd,zd,scale)

Sinusoidal terrain.

xd,yd,zd is distortion values for x,y,and z coordinates respectively.

scale is the horizontal scale of the thing.

costf(xd,yd,zd,scale)

Cosinusoidal terrain.

xd,yd,zd is distortion values for x,y,and z coordinates respectively.

scale is the horizontal scale of the thing.

curv(n,f,x1,y1,x2,y2,...,x(n-1)/2,y(n-1)/2) - Input/Output curve for f by points of xi,yi, lagrange interpolated. It is a very powerfull tool, allowing to map the inputs to according to specific curve to the output, changing gradients and similar things. The I/O curve is too big a topic for this manual. Example: Callisto

Other operators/functions: