Esenthel Engine - Flying Character

[drean]

Hi,

I'm still working on my engine,

Recently I've implemented the ability to fly for Game::Characters.

Here's a screenie:

(Model by Shames Dean)
http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/5406/34000462uh7.png


Here's a video on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODubyrnhAb8&fmt=18)

I'd appreciate any feedback about the engine.
If you haven't yet tried it out, then here's a link to check it out (http://www.esenthel.com/en/engine_download.html).

Thanks,
Grzegorz Ślaziński

[Reedbeta]

Might just be my monitor settings, but the video looks very dark; I can hardly see the ground at all.

Still, it's cool how the character transitions between running and flying.

[starstutter]

heh, the graphics are great and the video was impressive but... damn, that hits some new levels of creepiness =/

[Reedbeta]

Why's it creepy?

BTW, never mind what I posted about the video being dark - my monitor gamma was all messed up. Fixed now.

[starstutter]

Why's it creepy?

don't get me wrong... it's good but... it's just the way that the guy looks pretty lifelike (as in physically accurate) and the way he moving (or not moving). Idk, it's hard to describe lol. It's not the engine obviously, just the video.

[kariem2k]

Great work
Really Excellent shadows and lighting.
As starstutter said if you would enable something like semi-controlled rag dolls that would be great as demonstration as physics capabilities of the engine.
Keep the good work.

[vrnunes]

I liked it very much. Very nice demo, beautiful graphics and all. Excellent!

I am curious about what type of terrain partitioning system you're using on this engine, is it chunked lod or geometry clipmaps? It looks fast rendering. I am about to implement a terrain system on my new (always sucking) engine, and am still not completely sold to geometry clipmaps. Is it really the better at all?

This time I am going to implement spherical terrains, so I was thinking about trying something like F. Brebion is using on Infinity -- that is, a cube of chunked lod patches.

Opinions, please?

[drean]

Hi thanks for your comments,

For now I'm not using any physics/ragdoll for flying, just simple animations, and manual (in code) bone rotations, it's a lot faster then simulating it in physics, however I'll play with it a little more - try to polish the non-physics version, and then I'll try the physics version.

As for the terrains:
I've did a quick check on geometry clipmaps but they don't seem interesting to me. First of all from the demo I see that the meshes need to be updated when the camera position changes, the best thing to do is to avoid that. Second of all I expect problems when using multitexturing with clipmaps - multiple materials blended on the terrain. I haven't checked the clipmaps too good, but from the first impressions I'd just skip it.

I've implemented something simpler:
the terrain is built out ot const sized chunks (square 25 meter x 25 meter), each chunk has multiple level of details, and they're all stored in a custom container, something like a quadtree but different.
This way I can have infinite sized terrains, multiple materials blending is simple as a peanut - I'm not limited to number of materials used, just check my World Editor tool inside the SDK package, you'll get the idea what's going on inside there.

Flavien is doing a great job with his Infinity project, I'm observing his progress from time to time.

Maybe before doing a spherical terrains you should start with the flat version?

[vrnunes]

I did some terrains before, using quadtree and software-rendering. Obviously, they look extremely ugly compared to what can be done today. Anyway, I'll accept your suggestion, and make a flat, chunked-lod based terrain first.

Again, congratulations, your demo looks awesome.

[drean]

Thanks,

Oh yeah, I remember the times of software rendering, tried some of that too in the past :)

When doing lods remember about edge "skirting" to avoid empty spaces between sectors.

Oh, and about my engine, if somebody is interested in it, I've created a special Christmas Promotion for licensing http://www.esenthel.com/en/engine_license.html :)

[drean]

Important message for Radeon x1000 card users:
If you have experienced problems when running Esenthel Engine (reboots), please check the newest version as it's now working on those cards.

The problem was that Radeon x1000 cards for unknown reason crash when attempting to load engine's SM3.0 shaders using DirectX function D3DXCreateEffect.
I've forced SM2.0 usage on those cards and now it works ok.

Oh and another important message:
Esenthel Engine has got its first client :)

[drean]

I've created another effect - Sun Rays

As before, here's YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSDYir_3AxQ&fmt=18

and here's a Screen -
http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/7241/project2008122113571210gj8.jpg

[Kenneth Gorking]

Looks real nice! Well done.

[drean]

http://img120.imageshack.us/img120/5586/56644297yl8.jpg