Hi,
Since Unreal is using metres and other real life units I am trying to make a simulator where I am using a real life earth curve as a ground.
I already tried to make material which is bending earth accordingly and put it on floor in the level but i don’t think it is working correctly. The earth is either too flat or too pointy.
Has anyone done something like this before and could help me out?
I would really appreciate any help.
Z
Well real curvature of Earth is almost nothing from height humans normally can get into.
Those nasa pictures and movies from low orbit have earth curvature, but it is mostly from fish lenses effect, not from actual curvature of earth.
Just compare those 8000 meters heights of commercial airplane flight to actual earths diameter, it is like flying from basketball at altitude of human hair thickness.
Yeah you are right,
What I’m trying to do it a simulation where i want to slowly lose track of objects of different height.
So i want them to slowly disapear on the horizon not just get smaller and smaller if u know what I mean.
And exactly for the reason u mentioned, I would have to go from these objects very far away to notice the effect. Not less than 7km.
Here I am also worried about settings that will allow me to have a decent quality of these objects since I would have to go away from them about 15km to notice that effect.
What i wanted to achieve is basically make experiment and compare the outcome from unreal to the formulas from studies about range.
Again, I will be very grateful for any opinion or idea.
Z
You need to stop and think:
“Is this curvature and disappearing behind horizon some mechanic that adds to your game-play?”
Yes it is nice to code, however it is nice to play with?
And you can make landmarks actors, that on slow tick check distance to player, calculate some curvature offset, and lower self accordingly to simulate they are behind horizon.
by slow tick i mean you do dispatcher called “slow tick” in place like game mode, and trigger that dispatcher every 0.2 sec (or even slower). Then all those landmark blueprints hook to that dispatcher and recalculate z offset on that slow tick.
That actually sounds like a great idea, I am very new to Unreal so I dont know all capabilities but I will definetely look into that.
Thank you a lot sir
Z