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WebGL Terrain Flyover Demo

zephyrosanemos.com

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Re: WebGL Terrain Flyover Demo

#71

Post by Tloewald »

networked wrote: post #28

Cool demo. What caught my attention was this line in the description: >The terrain is procedural, generated offline by a Delphi program (Delphi is a modern version of Pascal). Nowadays I very rarely see new projects use Object Pascal or Delphi. This is somewhat disappointing since I think it really is a fine language that could be a viable alternative to C++ and Java due to its combination of high performance and cle…

I think there's a lot of low profile software out there written in Delphi which doesn't get mentioned because it's not a reason to buy, and may be a reason not to buy. There's a nice windows installer tool I occasionally use written in Delphi.

Re: WebGL Terrain Flyover Demo

#72

Post by Tloewald »

nestoras wrote: post #38
sramsay wrote: post #35

"When I tried to think of a project suitable for learning JavaScript, a terrain flyover demo came to mind." Me too! But then I re-establish contact with the reality of my actual abilities and create a button which, when pressed, prints "Hello, world!" to an alert window.

Haha thanks :) I've done these things in the past many times, only on different platforms. The real kudos go to the browser guys (especially at Mozilla and Google) for all the superb work they've done on WebGL and JavaScript in general. Learning JavaScript and some of the intricacies of developing for the web has never been more fun! :)

Not discussion that I can see of your rendering techniques. Are your shadows baked?

Re: WebGL Terrain Flyover Demo

#73

Post by daenz »

anonymous wrote: post #44
daenz wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe he meant videography. A game engine is more like a virtual video camera anyways (depending on who you ask...some people think it should be more like a person's eye, with no lens/camera artifacts).

> depending on who you ask Yeah. Personally, lens flare drives me nuts. It's like instagram - you can show me a perfect picture, but instead you're applying a can't-see-shit filter.

It's actually an interesting debate: is it more believable, from the perspective of immersion, that A) the player is a character actually in the world that they're navigating. or B) that they're controlling a character with a video camera.

If you frame it that way, I think B is more believable, because it accounts for the television/monitor, the controller, and the general fact that the player doesn't experience any of the physical repercussions of his/her actions. If B was what was really happening, then of course there would be camera effects, and of course I would need a monitor to view the actions from the camera, and of course I would need a controller. If A was really happening, then why would I need any of those things? So A is a bigger jump to immersion.

Re: WebGL Terrain Flyover Demo

#74

Post by angersock »

daenz wrote: post #73
anonymous wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> depending on who you ask Yeah. Personally, lens flare drives me nuts. It's like instagram - you can show me a perfect picture, but instead you're applying a can't-see-shit filter.

It's actually an interesting debate: is it more believable, from the perspective of immersion, that A) the player is a character actually in the world that they're navigating. or B) that they're controlling a character with a video camera. If you frame it that way, I think B is more believable, because it accounts for the television/monitor, the controller, and the general fact that the player doesn't experience any…

The alternative is a proper HDR lighting system that correctly handles differently-lit scenes and exposure changes.

The Source engine does a great job with this, but it can really get in the way of gameplay.Bad "bloom" can really hurt your ability to aim at something when emerging from a dark corridor into bright daylight; depending on the game, this may be a feature--but is generally unfun.

Re: WebGL Terrain Flyover Demo

#76

Post by aubergene »

networked wrote: post #28

Cool demo. What caught my attention was this line in the description: >The terrain is procedural, generated offline by a Delphi program (Delphi is a modern version of Pascal). Nowadays I very rarely see new projects use Object Pascal or Delphi. This is somewhat disappointing since I think it really is a fine language that could be a viable alternative to C++ and Java due to its combination of high performance and cle…

I found some pleasant similarities between Pascal and Go (Golang)

Re: WebGL Terrain Flyover Demo

#77

Post by modeless »

nestoras wrote: post #57
drivebyacct2 wrote: post #50

Chrome Beta for Android gets 3fps. Firefox Beta for Android crashes. Just FYI. edit: 60.1 FPS at 2560x1440 on my desktop (KDE/KWin/Chrome Dev)

Thank you! Quite frankly, I'm surprised the demo even runs (I don't have a smartphone currently). On what device did you test it?

10 FPS on my Nexus 4 with Chrome Beta. 20 FPS without the GUI. Very nice!

Re: WebGL Terrain Flyover Demo

#78

Post by lalc »

This looks great and that is a huge amount of effort. I have to ask about what I think is the elephant in the room: Surely you must have noticed that all your mountains are chopped off at the exact same altitude? Wouldn't the scene look way better if you just increased the maximum, with basically no effort?

It's as though you spent a month painstakingly mixing 64 channels of crystal clear audio, but, right at the end, threw your hands up and clipped the final mix into oblivion.

Re: WebGL Terrain Flyover Demo

#79

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

aubergene wrote: post #76
networked wrote: post #28

Cool demo. What caught my attention was this line in the description: >The terrain is procedural, generated offline by a Delphi program (Delphi is a modern version of Pascal). Nowadays I very rarely see new projects use Object Pascal or Delphi. This is somewhat disappointing since I think it really is a fine language that could be a viable alternative to C++ and Java due to its combination of high performance and cle…

I found some pleasant similarities between Pascal and Go (Golang)

What are they, aside from just := and the lack of brackets?
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