Streets on Terrain

Quote:

Original post by Aragon hmmmm any ideas?

Might not be exactly what you want, but VertexNormal has been going on about his implementation of terrain and roads for a while [smile]

It looks like quite a good technique to me.

Have a look at his journal here.

hth
Jack

that is not that what i mean,

that road/street got an wheel profile texture on it that
follow the curves of the road..not just simple tiling like
in that tutorial


---......-
----....--
...------
....----

the wheels follow the road at the terrain
___
___\...../
...\\___//
....\___/

hi,

I may say something stupid here, as I'm not really sure to understand your question. But couldn't it simply be a mesh lying on the heightmap (like the buildings, etc.) ??

I'm working on a simulator, and we have a heightmap. And we can't do the streets via the heightmap since we need some texturing that cannot be done in heightmap (the marks on the middle of 2 roads, at a stop, etc.) So we simply build them as regular meshes that we put on top of the heightmap. You just have to be carefull with LODs and how the border of the road's mesh blend with the heightmap (quite easily solved with alpha blending)

I don't know if they use that method in BF2 (played it during lunchtime, but I was more concerned about the tank driving toward me than by the streets it was driving on ^^) but they surely use similar methods in other games (I think FlatOut use that kind of method)

You could use decals, sort of like the stuff they use for blood in most games, except larger, and more... roadlike.

Of course I could use decals, stuff like that. But I'd still have a problem of resolution. Even if my heightmap is at 1 meter per vertex, it's not enough to have smooth roads. I'm speaking of roads with pavements, and the pavements can't be done with heightmap geometry (too low resolution)

You could try applying a normal map to the decal.

Yes I could ... and I said i'm working on a SIMULATOR. If I use a normal map, when the user will drive on the pavement, their will be absolutely no feedback (the geometry is just plain, although the image show a pavement, and the car's movement will not be the one excpeted by the user)

Anyway, heightmaps are good, but you don't have enough resolution in the mesh to put everything in it. Roads can be included in the heightmaps using different techniques, but it's not sufficient for simulation (we're in a "real life" city here, not in a track like in NFS or other games)

do you want something lişke this:

or it should not tile neither in horizontal nor vertical? i mean the detail textures have to follow the road? do you mean that? batlefield's roads are just simple textures, i mean turning road, straight road.. all these are discrete images. i think they put them like tiling and mix with the back color.
and the image above uses simple pixel shader. just has a b&w image for roads and calculates detail coordinates itself.
or i misunderstood something?.. :)