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Questions tagged [terrain]

Terrain, or land relief, is the vertical and horizontal dimension of land surface. Terrain is used as a general term in physical geography, referring to the lie of the land. This is usually expressed in terms of the elevation, slope, and orientation of terrain features. In games, terrain is the "land" or "world" on which the game environment, roads, buildings, vehicles, characters are placed and interact with each other.

Terrain, or land relief, is the vertical and horizontal dimension of land surface. Terrain is used as a general term in physical geography, referring to the lie of the land. This is usually expressed in terms of the elevation, slope, and orientation of terrain features. In games, terrain is the "land" or "world" on which the game environment, roads, buildings, vehicles, characters are placed and interact with each other.

This tag is for question related to terrain, its properties, problems related to setting different properties, lighting, textures, simulating gravity, friction etc for use in games or simulations.

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Multiple texture images blended together onto 3D ground

How do computer games render their ground? I will be using a heightmap for geometry (though I will later optimize it) but I am wondering what the best technique is, for example, to 'paint' my ground; grass most everywhere, dirt paths here and there,…
Ricket
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Does anyone have good resources on 3D procedural generation of terrain or fractal terrain generation?

See title. Any help is appreciated!
Xavier
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3D maps rendering in games

I have some questions about maps in 3D games (i.e. World of Warcraft) and how programmers render them: Is it possible to "smooth" the edges of mountains via some technique, or the only possible solution would be to use more vertices in a…
McLovin
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On-the-fly Terrain Generation Based on An Existing Terrain

This question is very similar to that posed here. My problem is that I have a map, something like this: This map is made using 2D Perlin noise, and then running through the created heightmap assigning types and color values to each element in the…
Maltor
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Quickly find and render terrain above a given elevation

Given an elevation map consisting of lat/lon/elevation pairs, what is the fastest way to find all points above a given elevation level (or better yet, just the the 2D concave hull)? I'm working on a GIS app where I need to render an overlay on top…
Charles
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Where to get Terrain Data - both free and paid?

Where can you get terrain data? What resolution data can you get for free? What resolution data can you get when you buy the data? How much is that data? I found this site that has free terrain data. The resolution is 30m x 30m. Is that the…
zooropa
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Marching Cubes, voxels, need a bit of suggestions

I'm trying to construct a proper destructible terrain, just for research purposes. Well, everything went fine, but resolution is not satisfying me enough. I have seen a lot of examples how people implement MC algorithm, but most of them, as far as I…
Jeffers
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Pseudo random number generator from two inputs

I need a pseudo random number generator that gives me a number from the range [-1, 1] (range is optional) from two inputs of the type float. I'll also try to explain why I need it: I'm using the Diamond-Square algorithm to create a height map for my…
Jón Trausti Arason
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OpenGL Texture sampling different depending on camera position

I am rendering a point based terrain from loaded heightmap data - but the points change their texturing depending on where the camera position is. To demonstrate the bug (and the fact that this isnt occuring from a z-buffering problem) I have taken…
jProg2015
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MapLibre GL JS with terrain layer: How to pin a horizontal plane to a specific altitude?

I based some code on the "Add a 3D model" example at maplibre.org in order to draw only a horizontal plane on a map which uses setTerrain to add a terrain layer. My intention is to draw a couple of semitransparent layers at a given heights above sea…
Daniel F
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creating elevation/height field gdal numpy python

I would like to create some elevation/heightfield rasters using python, gdal and numpy. I'm stuck on numpy (and probably python and gdal.) In numpy, I've been attempting the following: >>> a= numpy.linspace(4,1,4, endpoint=True) >>> b=…
Chris
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Vuforia – Can't see terrain when using Cardboard

I'm developing an AR experience with a terrain (not smart terrain, just terrain in Unity) in Augmented Reality app, everything works perfect! But when I'm trying to use the see-through mode of Google VR, I see the clipping planes, that are making…
proggamer12
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Three.js texturing terrain on a spherical hexagon grid map

This is more of an approach question, rather than just technical question. I have a generated sphere, broken down into hexagons as one mesh. Every hexagonal tile is a different kind of terrain, for instance, mountains, hills, ocean, planes, etc. I…
user1617735
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Best CLOD Method for Planet Rendering

I'm currently working on my thesis, it is an engine to render terrains of planetary size. I'm still finishing my researh and I have encountered a lot of stuff about this subject, the problem is that I can't decide on wich LOD method I should use. I…
nosmirck
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Perlin terrain pages mismatched: elusive bug

I've been developing a game in the Unity Game Engine that I hope will be able to use paged terrain for an infinite world (common theme nowadays). My terrain generator uses perlin noise exclusively. But at this time, development has been seriously…
Miles
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