Procedurally generated City's

[InDigital]

If planet locations, planet orbits and planet surfaces can be proceduraly generated then why not to proceduraly generate also City's on planet surfaces?

Horizons are starting from Airless Rocky Planets - why? Because they don't have any population and so neither city's.

How do you think ppl will they realise proceduraly generated city's?
Is it hard?

[Mu77ley]

Originally posted by InDigital:

How do you think ppl will they realise proceduraly generated city's?
Is it hard?

Generating the roads/buildings, etc. is easy, but it's incredibly hard to do the rest, ie. actually have a living, breathing city with people, interactive buildings, etc.

Frontier do have some experience in this area however, as a lot of what they were doing with The Outsider (which as sadly cancelled by the publisher) was procedural.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Glr71X-cr84

[Mu77ley]

Here's an example of the simple(-ish) side of things, as done by Introversion Software:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FR9xI0GgrBY

[ferus]

Originally posted by Mu77ley:

Here's an example of the simple(-ish) side of things, as done by Introversion Software:

This actually looks very promising and very usable. Given there is a wide enough variety of textures this could eventually create nice and believable cities (or at least the "skeletons").

Since Frontier already have experience in this area I am setting my future hopes quite high.

[tomimt]

When FD introduces planets with atmospheres and populations all of it will be procedurally generated. We will see the first instance of this in Horizons in the form of bases set on planets.

the space stations already have some degree of procedural generation in them.

[brbrbr]

well, why not?
E:Horizon - shows you how fast, beautiful cane procedurally-generated, fractal landscape.
stations built on same principles(rather than manually-crafted)cen be quite detail-rich and huge in sizes. imagine thats type9 or anacoda and phytoon is HUGE ships and station can lad SEVERAL of them at once. and store and serivice, maintain, re-supply. and other resources/places/entities(NPC?) can be there aswell as related missions/actions/game moes.


same about surface missions.
and after planets without foliage and life - logically will be introduce more ALive planets :=)

both textures(both static 2D, 3d and advancing/moving), geometry and almost any kind of lightling can be(and should be in theory)procedurally-generated.
but physics and sounds as far as i can see - isn't finished for this, yet. hope im wrong.

[InDigital]

Originally posted by Mu77ley:

Here's an example of the simple(-ish) side of things, as done by Introversion Software:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FR9xI0GgrBY

WoW This is the really cool thing!
They seems canceled development but i hope techniques will be shared.

[-OrLoK- Слава Україн]

Hello there

In real life I do architectural visualisation work and some of that involves generating procedural cityscapes.

it can get very complex and one can get very realistic results if one uses the right "rulesets" for the software to follow. (Although its procedural you have rules that the program follows so you dont get completely random oddities like a skyscraper in a residential zonefor example)

In theory it's doable, but one has to think about the fps hit it will give players.

I can imagine procedural bases but entire cities?

Also, you could have cities on airless planets, youd either have them underground or in pressure domes.

I dont think the devs are avoiding populating planets rather they need time to do it and to do it well.
Here's an old old quick and dirty test i knocked up to test render times
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxlvGPgAmc4

Rgds

LoK

[brbrbr]

no big difference - stations or cities or planets.
in fact its even better scaling, than engines, based on pumping pre-made static resources, so its likely to be doable.
as for architertural visualisation as example - such packages rarely use "procedural" visualisation, its generally old-fashioned thing. or "fast preview" of such.
procedural approach isn't usual. some MMO's used it only for custom-made decals and other optional/auxilary stuff.
even in demo-scene isn't not usua.
check aged/famous .debris demo by .theprodukkt
they pre-generate stuff, so its not real-time(pre-generated before launch of demonstration/visual itself, after running it), contrary to how E:D works
https://youtu.be/wqu_IpkOYBg
http://www.farbrausch.de/prod.py?which=2
but shows basic concept.
its uses low-res textures and geometry detail, but generally display concept
some may prefer things like Calcifer, fr-78 or fr-63(with space theme/motives;)or really-realtime-sytnthed 3d, but not important in that case.


https://youtu.be/LMhQjo4odFg
in https://youtu.be/EWDbmi14W78 you may notice some terrain too ;)
and some creatures
https://youtu.be/GvvunAFzfeQ ;)
fancy shaders/pp https://youtu.be/YEwZdhBlqDQ
and some dense effects https://youtu.be/yzU8STxb828