Help with real-world terrain scaling

I’m adding a terrain based on a real-world elevation model to my map. The real-world dimensions are 16,384 meters x 16,384 m and that is the size I want in game too (1,6384,000 uu square). The .png heightmap is 4096 px x 4096 px, so each pixel represents about 4m.

I followed the tutorial examples, and I’ve referred to Landscape Technical Guide | Unreal Engine Documentation
but I’m still not sure that the settings I get will both preserve the original data and be optimal for gameplay.

What settings do I use to reproduce the proper scale?

What I have now is

Heightmap Resolution: 4096 x 4096

Scale: X 379.347076 Y 379.347076 Z 100
(divided 16,384 by 4319 from suggested verts below)

Section Size: 127 x 127 quads
Sections Per Component: 2 x 2 Sections
Number of Components: 17 x 17
Overall Resolution: 4319 x 4319 (This degrades my 4096 resolution data doesn’t it? I want to preserve all my detail, but no option includes 4096)
Total Components: 289

Does nobody use real-world scaling in their maps?

1 Like

Are you doing this as one level? It wont work in one full level, You need to stream level it…Its still open world but you need smaller parts of terrain and piece them together…500,000 uu is the UE4 level limit size unless you know c++…

how hard is it to put the C++ code into UE4 to make it an openworld game and the same time MMORPG?

Very difficult if you are learning C++.

Theres no point implementing it anyway. UE4 takes care of this for you using world composition.

Its unreasonable to have 1 large landscape in one large cell. The further away from 0,0,0 you are the less accurate everything becomes, causing all sorts of problems.
Using tiled worlds you can essentially have an infinite landscape so long as your computer can handle importing it. You get the same thing as having one large landscape peice, except it doesnt kill any pc trying to load it as its split into sections that stream in automatically as you walk around.

@ gregsandor, read my post here about world machine to UE4 landscape scaling

Also, your heightmap should be 4033, not 4096.

Using a tiled build from world machine would help considerably for performance: A new, community-hosted Unreal Engine Wiki - Announcements and Releases - Unreal Engine Forums