DX11, New Terrain engine, Tesselation- Scenery Dev

[ErichB 3,638]

I was wondering that with the introduction of DX11, new terrain engines, and words like 'tesselation', how excited scenery developers are about this. Beyond all the bogus/breached video babble, I don't recall reading anything in these threads saying what is now possible beyond what we have become accustomed to with a premier Orbx creation?

 

My point being, if I'm flying into Darrington Muni, WA in 6 months time with a P3DV2 toolkit extreme makeover, what can I expect to find different in the detail when I land?

 

What could I expect different at 6000' in scenery features which is not possible with FSX (autogen , lighting, shadowing aside). I understand most of the big changes are 'under the hood' but I am specifically referring to possibilities in scenery creation /refinement.

 

....or am I asking the wrong questions?

[Arismac 10]

Not the wrong questions, the wrong forum. Try over at Orbx which have answered several questions like this already.

[ErichB 3,638]

Not the wrong questions, the wrong forum. Try over at Orbx which have answered several questions like this already.

Orbx itself is co-incidental to my point, but I'll take a look there.

[gandy 18]

There is plenty of stuff on the internet about tessellation and worth reading, I think when we see dx11 only addons that's when the new features will shine above what we see currently in 1.4 and fsx

 

On my N7

[1st fltsimguy 466]

Man am I living in the dark ages...I don't seem to ever recall hearing this word "tessellation".  A fancy word for tiling along one plane in a pattern...since time immemorial.

[n4gix 4,947]

Um, it's a bit more complex than that, actually:

 

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff476340%28v=VS.85%29.aspx

The Direct3D 11 runtime supports three new stages that implement tessellation, which converts low-detail subdivision surfaces into higher-detail primitives on the GPU. Tessellation tiles (or breaks up) high-order surfaces into suitable structures for rendering.

 

By implementing tessellation in hardware, a graphics pipeline can evaluate lower detail (lower polygon count) models and render in higher detail. While software tessellation can be done, tessellation implemented by hardware can generate an incredible amount of visual detail (including support for displacement mapping) without adding the visual detail to the model sizes and paralyzing refresh rates.

 

See also:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tessellation_(computer_graphics)

[ChandlerL 3]

Man am I living in the dark ages...I don't seem to ever recall hearing this word "tessellation".  A fancy word for tiling along one plane in a pattern...since time immemorial.

 

Yes, that's the standard definition of tessellation but it's not what folks mean when they're talking about tessellation in computer graphics. For computers, it is a method where polygons can be subdivided orders of magnitude above their original mesh- the result is a greater sense of detail-- it can make a objects appear more organic.

 

Computer graphics tessellation's been around for a while in one incarnation or another-- Heck, ATI included it in their Radeon 8500 back in 2001 but noone used it-- they called it Truform. However, these days, it's arriving front and center because it's about to go mainstream-- the PS4 and X1 both feature it.

 

At this point, rather than get technical, it'll be more fun to just show you.

 

I modeled a basic sphere-- a standard non-tessellated ball using 80 triangles. The immediate problem with it is I am using flat polygons to describe a curved object. I mean it works- it gets the job done but it looks artificial, yah?

 

 

Now I'll take that same sphere and modestly tessellate it...

 

 

You'll notice that the tessellated sphere mesh looks much rounder than the first.

 

Ok, let's apply a final tessellation to the sphere.

 

 

And there we have it: a round ball. We're having our GPUs do the heavy lifting by subdividing the polys to make our edges appear curved because we are using a greater number of smaller polygons to describe the object. This along with special shading allows for much greater detail whether it be a model of a human head with a rounded nose, forehead and cheekbones...

 

 

or making mountainous terrain appear more realistic with pits, depressions, crevaces, etc.

 

 

Two more examples:

 

Animated GIF follows showing rocky ground acquiring greater detail by the inclusion of tessellation.

 

 

Take a peak at this youtube demo showing Water & Terrain Tessellation.

 

 

Now I don't mean to make it sound as simple as "flippin' a switch." It isn't-- there are problems that can crop up when you utilize tessellation to add detail rather than designing your mesh with higher polygon counts from the get-go but developers are dealing with those issues. What's even better is that it's just one of the features DirectX 11 has over DirectX 9. DX11 arguably provides even more substantial improvements. B)

 

Cheers,

 

Chan

[MikeT707 1,181]

I would love to see a solid use of tessellation by LM or a third party.  I would especially love to see it used for displacement mapping on the terrain mesh.  That could make the visuals looks significantly more realistic.

 

Great information by the way, ChandlerL 

[SpaceNova 1]

Chan, thanks for describing tessellation, really cleared things up! :lol:  

[n4gix 4,947]

That nVidia water demo is quite impressive. Based on what the screenshots of P3D's new water, I fully expect to see pretty much the same type of highly detailed water in v2.x of P3D.

[DarkstarF16 72]

As Bill mentioned above, the water should look amazing. How well will the water sit against the current mesh and texture resolutions, and once tessellation is applied what's the result? Not my area of expertise, so just wondering what the theory's are?

[gandy 18]

one thing that will be great with water if its done correctly in the sim is the displacement of floats when taking off on the water, that will look epic.. no more horrid wake effect.

[CordoganAir 55]

The float planes will also be helped a lot by the fact that P3D has full bathemetrics(sp?) as part of the software so if boats and subs work in it there's no reason why float planes shouldn't be considerably more accurate

[pmanhart 176]

The float planes will also be helped a lot by the fact that P3D has full bathemetrics(sp?) as part of the software so if boats and subs work in it there's no reason why float planes shouldn't be considerably more accurate

 

It certainly is exciting.

 

I wonder if an aircraft carrier could be made to actually bob and weave with the sea? If so, I'd have to dust my wire-trapping skills off and hope someone releases a V2.0 carrier that takes advantage of it.

[Guest]

 

 

there are problems that can crop up when you utilize tessellation to add detail rather than designing your mesh with higher polygon counts from the get-go but developers are dealing with those issues.

 

Agree, tessellation (micropolygon) can produce some odd texture mapping issues ...  really needs two texture sets to get the best look with tessellation ON vs. OFF.  If you look at the tessellation ON in that animated GIF you can see the stretching of the texture.  HSLS (Microsoft's) actually changes positions of vertices so the texture gets distorted (stretched) over the new geometry.

 

Obviously "new texture sets" are not required with DX11 Tessellation, but it might not look so good if used with all the existing FSX SP2 textures, or any 3rd party products that involve texture usage.  It'll be interesting to see how P3D V2.0 uses tessellation and just how much compatibility they retain.

 

But tessellation is very hard on GPUs (even when accelerated by hardware) ... it'll bring a Titan to it's knees even on relatively low resolutions 1920 x 1080 especially when combined with 4096 textures (which will work better with tessellation).  But that leads into my comment about multi-GPU support which is not going to be in V2.0 and might be in V2.1 -- tessellation and 4096 textures is going to require more than one GPU (yes even a Titan) to sustain moderate performance even at low resolutions.

 

I think P3D V2.0 will just give us a taste of potential, V2.1 will give us the ability to sustain high frame rates (at high levels of quality), and V3.0 will eventually get us 64bit ... just have to wait and see, but I'm hoping for a positive future for flight simulation.