Terrain Implementations

Terrain database files are imported using DtTerrainImplementations (terrainImplementation.h).

A DtTerrainImplementation knows how to import terrain geometry data (terrain skin) from an external format and provide intersection capabilities. VR-Forces has the following terrain implementations:

• Ellipsoid implementation
• VR-Vantage implementation
• Terrain passthrough layers

These terrain implementors handle the following terrain types:

• VR-TheWorld Streaming Terrain (earth)
• MultiGen Paradigm OpenFlight (FLT) and MetaFlight
• Autodesk FBX (FBX)
• CDB 3.x (via earth file)
• Compact Terrain Database (CTDB) versions 4b, 7b, and 7l
• Digital Terrain Elevation Data (DTED)

• Shapefile (SHP)

For example, to load an FBX database, do the following:

   // Create and initialize a terrain interface
   DtTerrainInterface terrainInterface;
   terrainInterface.init();
   // Load the terrain database
   // FBX files (The FBX file is a terrain patch added to the MTF file).
   // Load the Ground_DB II terrain example
   if (!terrainInterface.loadTerrain("Ground_DB II.mtf"))
   {
      DtWarn("Couldn't load terrain database file\n");
      return 1;
   }

By default, VR-Forces looks in ./bin64/terrainImplementations/ to find the terrain implementation to use. If you create your own terrain implementation, you can change where VR-Forces looks for terrain implementations by setting the MAK_TERRAIN_IMPLEMENTATION_LIB_DIR environment variable.

Note

If you set MAK_TERRAIN_IMPLEMENTATION_LIB_DIR to a location other than ./bin64/terrainImplementations/, you will not be able to load the terrains provided with VR-Forces (or created using the default terrain implementation) unless you also copy all terrain-related configuration files from ./appData and ./data to locations that have the same relative paths as these files do to ./bin64/terrainImplementations/.