UNIGINE 2.4.1: Stabilization, Interactive BIM Demo

Oil Refinery Demo

Oil Refinery demo got a lot of interactive features to showcase BIM (Building Information Model) capabilities of the engine.

• An interactive personnel training usecase: a sequence of operations required to start a diesel generator.
• Displaying various types of metadata (statistics, telemetry data, etc.) bound to certain buildings and facilities enables to control various parameters in real time.
• Visualization of construction stages can be useful for overall construction process planning.
• A day-night cycle provides an opportunity to check all lighting systems of the enterprise.
• Video sequences can be used to make high-quality presentations of the project.

General features of the demo:

• 360 000 square meters territory.
• Over 45M polygons.
• Over 19000 geometry surfaces.
• Over 1300 light sources.
• Over 100 unique models.
• A set of modes making it possible to explore every corner of the oil refinery in various aspects.
• Dynamic sky with volumetric clouds and tweakable day-night cycle.
• Adjustable weather and wind speed.
• Scalable quality settings.
• VR support (Oculus Rift and HTC Vive).

ObjectTerrainGlobal

• Optimized tiles loading.
• Fixed smoothing when loading tiles.
• Fixed shadows rendering.
• Fixed artefacts occurring when filtration was enabled.
• Fixed bug with ObjectTerrainGlobal intersection check if no patches were created.
• Fixed crash in ObjectTerrainGlobal on video_restart.
• Fixed rendering when “No imagery data” was enabled.

Landscape Tool

• Improved performance due to generation of normals along with elevation.
• Added validation of the GPU compression.
• Added saving the GDAL info into assets, which provides faster assets opening and prevents opening of the file descriptors for every source.
• Increased RAM limit option to 20-70%.
• Added the GPU compression to assets.
• Added the UNG compression.
• Fixed memory leaks during generation.
• Fixed clean up of the data when generating a new landscape.
• Fixed values of estimated generation time.

Geodetics

• Added a DatasetRasterPosResolver class that performs conversion between raster (X, Y) and geodetic (latitude, longitude) coordinates.
• Added GeodeticPivot::mapMeshFlatToEllipsoid and GeodeticPivot::mapMeshEllipsoidToFlat methods that:
  • Map a flat mesh by using the local coordinates (X, Y) as position on the flat plane and Z as an altitude to the ellipsoid and vice versa.
  • Work with Mesh class which can be lately passed to any related node or used directly.
  • Return position on the ellipsoid or flat plane where the node is to be placed.
• Old updateTopology / clearTopology methods from DecalMesh and ObjectMeshStatic nodes have been removed.
• Added GeodeticPivot::mapFlatToGeodetic and GeodeticPivot::mapGeodeticToFlat methods that:
  • Map geodetic latitude, longitude and altitude coordinates to the flat plane coordinates according to pivot's origin latitude, longitude and altitude and vice versa.
  • Use new ellipsoid math.
• Added correct curving of ObjectGrass and ObjectMeshClutter.
• Added orientation flag for ObjectGrass, ObjectMeshClutter and WorldClutter.
• Updated GeodeticPivot migration script.
• Removed the ellipsoid mode from legacy UnigineEditor and experimental UnigineEditor2.
• Old ObjectTerrain and ObjectSky now use the new math.
• Fixed mapped mesh bounds causing wrong intersection and visibility checks.
• Fixed engine crash due to the invalid GeodeticPivot pointer.
• Fixed reflections on the curved surfaces.
• Fixed lighting of deferred objects if ObjectCloudLayer and GeodeticPivot were added to the scene.

Other Engine Improvements

• Added support for ZLC1/ZLC2 textures.
• Refactored mesh instancing for ObjectMeshStatic, ObjectMeshDynamic, ObjectMeshCluster and ObjectMeshClutter:
  • Increased DirectX 11 instance count (256 instances per draw call).
  • OpenGL instance count remained the same (41 instances per draw call).
  • Removed NUM_INSTANCES shader define from UUSL, now engine will automatically set RENDER_MESH_NUM_INSTANCES shader definition.
• Fixed ObjectMeshClutter intersections.
• The slash at the end of the path specification in the Dir class is no longer required.
• Reduced memory consumption of FieldShoreline and FieldHeight texture buffers.
• Fixed ObjectWaterGlobal visibility distance (the correct value is 400+ km).
• Fixed planar reflections on ObjectWaterGlobal and ObjectWaterMesh.
• Fixed artefacts on lighting through the semi-transparent nodes on AMD.
• Fixed work of normal maps.
• Fixed playback of animations generated from the FBX file without geometry.
• Fixed double precision support for macOS causing shader compilation errors (requires GL_ARB_gpu_shader_fp64 extension support).
• Fixed passing of shader definitions and reduced the number of shader allocations.
• Fixed projection of the mesh decals.
• ObjectCloudLayer bugfixes:
  • Fixed sorting when curving several layers.
  • Fixed incorrect lighting at specific angles.
  • Fixed overexposure.
• Fixed writing to the velocity buffer.

API

• Added the Visualizer::clear method that clears the internal buffer filled after calling any of Visualizer::render* methods.
• Added the “unique” flag to DecalMesh::setMesh and ObjectMeshStatic::setMesh. It allows overriding a shared mesh resource or creating a new unique resource.
• Added grab(), release() and isOwner() methods to the PackageUng class.

The complete list of API changes is available in the API Migration Guide.

C# Integration Samples

• Restored D3D11SharpAppForm and GLTKAppForm samples (integration of the engine to the Windows Forms).
• Added new D3D11SharpWPF and GLTKSharpWPF samples (integration of the engine to the WPF - Windows Presentation Foundation).

UnigineEditor

• Added the “Combine by LODs” option to the FBX import. It provides settings for custom LODs combination.
• Updated OpenFlight Import plugin:
  • Increased import speed due to skipping the recurrent DXT textures compression.
  • Added support for semi-transparent materials.
  • Added default specular texture.
  • Added additional relative paths for textures search.
  • Disabled “Instance material” option by default.
• Added play and stop of WorldTransformPath node animation to Unigine Tracker.
• Fixed creation of extra clones when several nodes are selected.
• Fixed incorrect hierarchy of the cloned nodes.

Experimental UnigineEditor2

• Fixed work with Starter and Professional builds.
• Fixed work in the Windows 7 builds.
• Fixed bugs with assets renaming.

Documentation

Added C++ tutorials on physics:

• Creating a Car with Suspension Joints
• Creating a Simple Mechanism Using Joints
• Creating Pylons and Wires Using Ropes
• Enabling Selective Surface-Based Collision
• Creating and Attaching a Cloth