10.Feb.2024
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Terrain models: World Construction Set 2.031 (Emerald-Berta), AmigaOS 3 and AROS
As can be read in the history of the development of their software products, Gary Huber of Questar Productions recognized the potential of the graphics capabilities of the personal computers of the time in the late 1980s and began researching and developing software for his Amiga computer to combine 3D terrain data and landscape/vegetation information into a computer-generated synthetic 3D view with colored trees (coniferous and deciduous), ground cover patterns, sky and haze.
Other software companies had developed similar software for the Amiga, including VistaPro from Virtual Reality Labs and the "Scenery Generator" (later "Scenery Animator") from Naturalgfx and Panorama. All included a basic method of automatically placing one or more types of vegetation based on local terrain criteria, usually using elevation and slope. However, none of the available commercial tools could handle large, detailed regions, making them unusable for commercial and industrial terrain mapping.
In 1992, Huber began developing algorithms and programs to meet the requirements he had predicted. Originally written in an advanced BASIC language and later rewritten in C for speed reasons. Chris Hanson joined Questar and Huber and helped develop the user interface, language conversion, optimization and graphics. The result, announced in August 1994, was World Construction Set 1 (WCS) for the Amiga with a host of advanced features (and a name inspired by the popular Electronic Arts audio tool of the time, "Deluxe Music Construction Set"). WCS V1 extended the land cover and vegetation placement techniques of earlier software to include the placement of so-called "ecosystems".
WCS V2 (video) for the Amiga was released in late 1995, followed by a Windows version in January 1996. Version 2 introduced oceans with waves and reflections, DEM buildings, realistic looking clouds, sun and moon, better vegetation and OpenGL support.
Both versions 1.25 and 2.04 are available as packed ADF files on the 3DNature.com website. The corresponding source files were published on GitHub some nine years ago. Alexander Fritsch began working on the source files containing the penultimate version 2.03 ("Emerald") in 2017. As he tells us, the project first had to be made gcc-compatible. The aim of his new compilation using Bebbo's gcc was and is to achieve the highest possible speed. This required very extensive tests with various compiler options and lengthy test calculations on a real Amiga, always under the same boundary conditions. As Bebbo also continued to work on gcc, it had to be tested again and again to see whether a new compiler version with new optimizations would bring a speed advantage. Since WCS as a complex program is also a test case for the compiler itself, Alexander reports, WCS also revealed errors in the compiler over time, especially with various optimizations and floating point calculations.
As a result, the new version of WCS now available on Aminet on a 25MHz 68040 Amiga only needs 4 hours instead of 5 hours for a "Canyon Sunset" example image. A nice result that would not have been possible without Bebbo's work, as Alexander says, and his gcc. An AROS version is also included in the archive. (dr)
[News message: 10. Feb. 2024, 15:03] [Comments: 0]
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