Learning to work with TGEA
by NathanJHIS · 02/06/2009 (10:04 am) · 6 comments
My team and I have been working with TGE for a few years now and recently our coder upgraded and is working on moving the project over to TGEA. Working with TGEA has opened a lot of new features that we are now able to bring to our simulator game. One of the main things that I had been looking forwards to working with is using the atlas terrain to import real world terrain dem data for mapping of the world and after learning the basics of working with L3DT I was able to start importing and texturing over my terrain maps with sat photo texture overlays.
One thing I must say that when you enter your atlas terrain into the mission file to load inside TGEA, make sure you set the correct light map size for your current new terrain.. If you just use the standard atlas terrain mission file settings and swap your terrain in you will run into problems with larger terrains if the light map size is not correct I found this out the hard way and on my really large terrain maps I was having crashes until I set the correct lightmap size to the one as given in L3DT.
Here are is an image of the current world terrain I have gotten into the project I am working on.
Also mesh rendering in TGEA looks much nicer in TGEA then they did in TGE, over the last few days I have been busy working on modeling an E-3 Sentry plane and getting it into TGEA last night I finished the mesh and imported it into TGEA and here are the results
One thing I must say that when you enter your atlas terrain into the mission file to load inside TGEA, make sure you set the correct light map size for your current new terrain.. If you just use the standard atlas terrain mission file settings and swap your terrain in you will run into problems with larger terrains if the light map size is not correct I found this out the hard way and on my really large terrain maps I was having crashes until I set the correct lightmap size to the one as given in L3DT.
Here are is an image of the current world terrain I have gotten into the project I am working on.
Also mesh rendering in TGEA looks much nicer in TGEA then they did in TGE, over the last few days I have been busy working on modeling an E-3 Sentry plane and getting it into TGEA last night I finished the mesh and imported it into TGEA and here are the results
#2
02/06/2009 (5:01 pm)
Wow, that is one big terrain! Did you get the texture from Google Earth (or equivalent) or is it custom made?
#3
02/06/2009 (5:50 pm)
The terrain texture is from nasa and anyone can get it and is a low res virsion. I have a much higher res terrain texture I will be implementing soon but for now the current world map is ok for our testing for now. 
#4
Thanks for the lightmap tip! I think that just might solve a certain problem I was having :)
02/06/2009 (11:27 pm)
That looks huge! What kind of size/scale is that in total? I was doing something similar as a side-project but that just blows me away.Thanks for the lightmap tip! I think that just might solve a certain problem I was having :)
#5
here are two more images of my world terrain I'm working on.
02/07/2009 (9:50 am)
Michael the map uses two Atlas terrain tiles each one is 8192 by 8192 making a total world size of 16384 X 16384here are two more images of my world terrain I'm working on.
#6
02/07/2009 (9:55 am)
The world looks much better when the water is added in but when the player is that high above the terrain the water clips through the terrain really badly so we are looking into finding a way to make the water use a spec map to fix that.
Employee Michael Perry
GarageGames
Nice catch with the lightmap issue. I'm sure others are going to read this and find that note useful.
Love the simulation aspect, btw!