Does Vue3 uses 16 bit bitmaps for terrains? The 8 bit Bryce's maps are very poor to design detailed terrains.

heya; it says you can import DEM and TGA with 16-bit resolution. it doesnt say what the bit depth of the standard generated terrain is. also, if i'm not mistaken, 8-bit is 256 colour? there are only 256 shades of grey on computers, so you technically CAN'T have 16-bit greyscale.

yes, as bloodsong said, Vue3 (and 2) supports 16-bit TGAs for creating heightfeilds (which makes me assume that the internal format is 16-bit...otherwise it would be really stupid). Bloodsong: a 16-bit TGA uses the green and red channel to make up the 16-bits, so if you display it in a graphics program it'll look like a mess of green and red, but as a terrain it is simply interpreted as a continous 16-bits and thus you get increased vertical resolution. Your generic graphics editor cannot create them. -karl

That is very useful. Thanks for the info.

heya; yes, i was reading that, karim. which is too bad, because i (and i think nandus) want to create terrain maps in other programs by painting them. hmmm....

Well, in terms of creating one, you generally can't see that number of shades of grey (a limit of the human eye) so how would you be able to paint one (in the generic way you use paint programs)? Since your eyes cannot see that many levels, you would effectively still be painting in 8bit, and the extra 8bits would end up being high frequency, random noise. Think of it this way, you look at an image that looks to be all one shade of grey, so you expect it to create a flat plane for a heightfield...but in fact, it's 16bit and you couldn't see that it wasn't quite all the same colour, so the heightfield would show random noise (but relatively small amplitude). So, in directly painting, the extra 8bits doesn't buy you anything. Where it does help is in applying some type of function, say a blurring affect...then you would get more "resolution" in the effect. There are programs that can perform all sorts of functions on 16bit greyscales. I fiddled with Heightfield Lab (a command line program)...a bit difficult at times, but it has a lot of effects. I think it imports pictures as well. What you want is a program specifically for creating heightfields. check out www.povray.org->pov links->3D programs->heightfield modeling. -karl

heya; im not sure that 256 greys is a limitation of the human eye; but rather a limitation of computer display. same with 65 million-and-some-odd colours. you cant say that your eye can only see that many, because the eye sees a continuous spectrum of all colours. but anyway.... i'd paint it the same way i paint most stuff, start with a black background and airbrush in some white, with a large feather radius that makes a gradual tone ;) 16-bit tones would be smoother than 8-bit tones, but oh well. actually, i guess i'm not that picky. :)

Well, I guess I'd have to agree with you, if your airbrushing you will get a smoother gradient...but the difficulty remains in that you won't be able to see the detail, so anything other than a gradient (where you know it's just going high to low, or vice versa) you won't know what's going on....but I think I've exhausted the topic:) The 16 million colours of a 24 bit palette is pretty much the limit of the average human spectrum (but not quite). the average person can't see much more than 256 shades of grey....here's how to test...do a continuous gradient with each level taking a few pixels...do you see a discontinuity between the levels...you might see a little bit, which means that you could fit in a few more levels....but a 16bit grey palette is WAY above human perception. A computer monitor could probably display all those levels (maybe not quite), but they would never do it because of course it would be a waste. -karl