Craters

Terrain generator in Outerra contains a vector stage that can be used to overlay procedural geometry over the generated terrain. It's used, for example, to create the spline-based roads that seamlessly blend with the underlying terrain, and allows generating fine road geometry where even the road paint can have thickness (a few millimeters).

Dynamic craters are the latest addition into the vector overlay processor.

Craters are dynamically created, specifying their diameter and depth. The algorithm recognizes the type of surface and generates a different shape for asphalt/concrete and dirt. Asphalt is just bent outwards a bit, whereas the dirt is strewn around a lot more.

They get created generally under half a second, which is quick enough with a reserve, given that the creation will be hidden by the explosion's particle effects. The crater shape is also immediately reflected in the collision data.



The shape of the crater also depends on the specified explosion depth, deeper epicenters tend to create steeper edges.



The number of craters is practically unlimited; a single crater definition takes only 64 bits. For now the created craters are kept in a buffer indefinitely, but they are not persisted (yet) between the sessions. Just as the roads, craters only affect the dynamic performance, i.e. when the observer is moving and new terrain tiles have to be generated.

The largest crater that can be currently created is around 1km in diameter. Here are also some older screens showing the evolution of the crater rendering algorithm.



Edit: a video showcasing the craters:

@cameni