Terrain with v 0.6?

[etcaptor]

Is possible with this irrlicht version to make any outdoor games?
Thanks.

[Phreak]

What do you mean 'outdoor'? Irrlicht uses Skyboxes which are just visible 'boundaries' for your world. The skybox could contain cloud textures, which gives the outdoor effect.

Is that what you meant?

Phreak

[Guest]

Yes,
but can I use TerrainSceneNode or only AnimatedMeshSceneNode instead?

[arras]

You can use whatever you want, two terain scene nodes, you can create your own custom scenenode or just use terain made in modeling prog. in one of the suported formats (x or 3ds for example)

Bye the way, I recomend not to use sky box but instead made yur own sky sphere.
In your modeling prog. create simple sphere, cut it or delete bottom half of it and scale down a little bit on Y axis to made it bit eliptic. UV map it and load in to the Irrlicht like any other model. Than aply texture of your choosing.

If you need reposition it in real time with your camera.

[etcaptor]

Thanks arras for the comprehensive answer

[R00mpel]

I wouldn't recommend using TerrainSceneNode - it isn't optimized yet, so it is awfully slow So let's hope that Niko will optimize it soon

[bal]

You can use whatever you want, two terain scene nodes, you can create your own custom scenenode or just use terain made in modeling prog. in one of the suported formats (x or 3ds for example)

Bye the way, I recomend not to use sky box but instead made yur own sky sphere.
In your modeling prog. create simple sphere, cut it or delete bottom half of it and scale down a little bit on Y axis to made it bit eliptic. UV map it and load in to the Irrlicht like any other model. Than aply texture of your choosing.

If you need reposition it in real time with your camera.

Why is using that sky sphere better? Don't you have a strange effect then because of the sphere?

[Peter Müller]

Don't know, I'm just doing it

[thesmileman]

Why is using that sky sphere better? Don't you have a strange effect then because of the sphere?

Sky spheres can often times be a lot better and in many ways worse than skyboxes. You do not have to worry about seams or about the small amount of distortion from textures being on a box not a sphere. There are two main problems with using spheres for your skys. One you have to get them. There seem to be a lot of skyboxes and very few spherical ones for free. The seond is that a skydome can have a large number of polygons to render if you are just using a sphere instead of an optimized algorithm to display the textures. I have worked with a couple of skydomes in two programs and they are much more realistic than standard skyboxes.

Also if you did just a sphere instead of a good display algorithm you would have to resize the sphere and move it unless you made it really big and then you would have to increase the clipping plane a lot and that would realy slow down a large external world. But that is my 10 cents

[Guest]

How viable an option would terrain be for an mmo? Would I have to use huge map files for each "zone" or is there another more viable way?

[thesmileman]

for an MMO you would need a much better implementaion of a terrain node than Irrlicht currently offers. You need one that can load different zones on the fly. Of course you could do this yourself in Irrlicht and I think someone already started working on one which will. Check the forum for more information