Is it possible to use a huge terrain?

[sp00n]

So, very good to know - is it possible to use very large terrains? Liky dynamic loaded parts of terrain or something else?
For example someone want to make a flight simulator - so, how?

Thanks in advance

[ambershee]

You can create large terrains in the same manner as you'd create a normal terrain; the engine will generally dynamically LoD the terrain as required. Either way reducing the number of patches and maintaining a large scale on a terrain will still go a long way towards performance.

[sp00n]

yeah, i know about it. Maximum terrain size with UU==2cm is 10 sqr.km for UDK. It's too small for flight simulator or for MMORPG(Lineage2 based on UE2 and uses dynmic loading/removing terrain parts), or for other projects.
I'm looking for other ways - loading and removing terrain parts "on the fly" or something else.

[stodge]

I was curious to know if UDK would work for an air traffic simulator, which would need large real-world terrains. Well, not THAT large considering the camera would mostly be static and centred around the tower. So I'm curious about this too.

[ambershee]

yeah, i know about it. Maximum terrain size with UU==2cm is 10 sqr.km for UDK. It's too small for flight simulator or for MMORPG(Lineage2 based on UE2 and uses dynmic loading/removing terrain parts), or for other projects.
I'm looking for other ways - loading and removing terrain parts "on the fly" or something else.

Use multiple terrains, and potentially level streaming, although I anticipate level streaming will be too slow for a flight simulator. Either way, you can change the drawing scale on the terrain. Scaling it up ten times will give you a 100km squared terrain, as an example. You also don't have to follow their scale conventions.

You also can't make an MMO with UDK.

[CrystalCore]

Level Streaming in the UT3 editor would work, i assume that would be the same here. You'd have to stream a lot of levels though xD

[schizoslayer]

You can get some pretty big terrain going but you will need to split it over several different maps and stream those in and out using LevelStreamingVolumes so you don't run out of memory. You can have more than one terrain in a level too.

The other roadblock you will come into though is one of scale. There is a maximum world size in the engine and you cannot go beyond this without sacrificing floating point accuracy. You can scale everything down in your game so 1UU = 1m for example but again you sacrifice floating point accuracy this way.

It is a solvable problem but you will need to think outside the box a bit.

[sp00n]

Thanks a lot, guys. I was looking for this sytuff - LevelStreamingVolumes. Now i'll look more detail at it, but i think - it's that thing i need.
About scaling - yes, i know about it - it's good for the flight simulator when you set UU 1m and more.
ambershee
i don't plan MMO of course, it was just for example. But very insteresting - why not? Is it there some network limits? Can i write my own server, then only client in UDK? And if no - why?

Thanks again to all :)

[ambershee]

There's a limit of 64 players, and no, you can't write your own server. As it happens, UE3 doesn't use a strict 'client-server' model, and you have no access to the network code.

[sp00n]

Aha, thanks. Useful to know :)

[Deranged]

Yea once I fired up the cicada flying vehicle I realized I need alot more room. Streaming it is