Just an idea to developers about texture generation(application) to terrain.



It's known that some areas are in shadow all year (behind mountains, buildings etc.) and surfaces there are less affected by sun.

So in this areas snow stays longer, grass stays greener, wet stays longer - so the ground is darker, moss and mold appears.



Would be nice if the Outerra engine could check with shadow application (existence) on surface for the last period of time (that is significant enough to affect surface) and use appropriate texture.





Just an example:



User imported a building and located on grass.

On startup, load, position change, import, significant time change or any other trigger - Outerra updates surface.

Before applying texture it runs a script -



Check the season - for example summer.

So Summer theme is chosen.

Then checks visible area (grid points) for shadow existence percentage for last 2-3 month.

Based on percentage, HUE of grass color can change accordingly.

(and other effects applied).



the whole process can be broken in 2 stages -



1) long term sunlight test (1 year) and can be triggered once - on your server, just to generate a map for sunlight contact percentage.

2) short term (day, week or month) - depending on what effect want to be applied. If just to check if something is wet - a day is enough. For snow - one last week or month.



The second stage is only needed so user input (model import, or surface change) can make a change as well. Otherway it all can be calculated once.











