Remove lossy compression from terrain heightmap
tracked
Dan Linden
Terrain height maps use lossy compression, which causes land spikes around sharp slopes of terrain. The amount of data for the land height must be minuscule compared to all the other data in the scene these days. Make terrain lossless, and allow true WYSIWYG editing of the terrain height.
Notes:
This would require a server component for physics as well.
This would require a step where the current lossy height map is baked down to a lossless height map.
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Maestro Linden
Merged in a post:
Terraforming tools still fail after all these years
Eren Padar
Terraforming tools have never worked properly. Ever tried to flatten a piece of land that refuses to flatten? Smooth land that refuses to smooth? Raised land and instead of raising straight up it raises at an angle?
I've used "toy" programs such as Microsoft Zoo that had better terraforming tools than SL. One piece of land I regularly use has a permanent severe "dip" in the middle that no amount of flattening or smoothing will fix. Other parts have "sharp points" that stick up out of the ground. Ever tried to raise a steep "mountain"... only to have the top terrible spikey... and no way to smooth or flatten the top? Bleh.
After so many, many years I doubt this will ever be fixed, but it certainly is annoying and speaks badly for SL to have this kind of problem for some 2 decades now.
Maestro Linden
tracked
Rosie Gray
Sounds interesting, but I think I need more info!
Anastasia Horngold
It sounds like this could improve the control over terraforming. If finer control of the surface became possible, it would reduce the need for mesh surfaces to cover unwieldy & lumpy terrain.