World Construction Set

Price: 119.95
Developer: 
Supplier: Blittersoft



Create some brave new worlds with your Amiga with this
amazingly powerful software. Did the earth move for you?




Computer generated landscapes have many uses, and
practically any form of graphics work can benefit from a
realistic background. Sometimes it's not possible to use a
static scanned image, for example when you are creating an
animation and need a continually scrolling backdrop.

You might want a particular location rendered at a
particular time of day, at a particular time of year. You
might even want to animate the landscape itself changing,
and that's not something you would want to do by hand.

Whilst it is theoretically possible to create a complicated
landscape model in a program like Imagine or LightWave, it
would take a huge amount of effort and time. Also, animating
a long fly-by sequence or positioning lots of the trees and
rivers: (shudder) well I'm glad it's not something I have to
do.

Vista was one of the first automatic lanscape generator.
Feed in the data, then sit back and watch as the result
appear on screen. Vista also used "real world" data, so you
could feed in real geographical locations and an accurate
picture would pop up on screen.

The World Construction Set (WCS) is the latest program to
promise realistic output, and you know it must mean business
because the manual is over six hundred pages would stun an
New Zealand rugby player. It builds on Vista in many ways,
but provides considerably more control. In fact the authors
would prefer it if you called it a "3D geographic
information system capable of generating maps and renderings
of virtually and kind of geo-referenced spatial data". And
yes, it does make some very pretty pictures.



In the beginning...

Creating your own world is straightforward enough: load in a
project file, or create one from scratch. The project file
contains all the information needed to create an image, and
includes everything from the geographic data required to the
position of the imaginary camera with which you'll be taking
your photographs.

As you would expect, there are plenty of controls for
creating animations and fly-by views, but before you even
get to the camera moving capabilities, you can change the
world. By using altering image maps on the landscape you can
give the impression of moving traffic or rippling lakes. Add
some backdrop images and clouds will move in the sky, whilst
the sun drifts across the scene and the shadows (or even
seasons) change before your eyes.

It will be a while before you reach this stage of
complexity, as you'll still be working through the tutorial
sections in the manual. The tutorials are essential, as is
reading the entire manual at some point, because of the
many, many, many different settings which can be tweaked to
make your final image perfect.

Everything from the type of trees at particular altitudes to
the fractal-ness of the landscape needs to be fine-tuned.
You can decide on the level of haze (and how far away it
starts to be noticeable), the appearance of any fog... in
short you can play god with almost everything in the scene.
Before you hit the render button, you could be tinkering
with a scene for hours. Rendering speeds will depend on your
own hardware, but on a 68040 based Amiga, high resolution
images take a few moments, or more if higher image detail is
required.


Dem old DEM files

The WCS uses the now-standard DEM (Digital Elevation Model)
files to provide an accurate decription of the area it is
rendering. What makes WCS special is that it models the
earth as a spherical object, not a flat blank sheet which
mountains are suddenly plopped onto. You can acutally zoom
back further and further until the curviture of the earth is
visable, and then watch as mountains peek out over the edge
before vanishing as the Earth rotates.

You can also set the sun moving overhead to alter the
lighting: enter today's date and time and watch as the view
outside your window is re-created for you on-screen.

Well, strictly speaking that's not possible unless you
happen to be using your Amiga in the Grand Canyon or one of
the other locations describe in DEM format. The Data
supplied is a little limiting for local UK use, and you will
need to do a little investigation in order to track down the
necessary DEM files. This is understandable, as even the
tiny portion of America which is supplied takes up most of
the five disk distribution. The makers of WCS are willing to
help you find files, although internet access would make
things a lot easier (using a World Wide Web browser, try
looking at http://sun1.cr.usgs.gov/landdaac/30asdcwdem.html
for starters.)


A "readme" file on the disks indicates that on sending back
your registration card you'll receive the DEM data required
for rendering the full globe image at resonable detail: a
good incentive to respond.

On top of the DEM files, WCS can apply yet more data in the
form of EcoSystems and Vectors. These define the colour of
any vegation and plantlife, and the position of any rivers
or lakes. It's even possible to mark policital or other
boundaries, and so WCS could be used to produce stunning 2D
maps, automatically marked with important locations.

When extra detail is required, the comprehensive DEM editing
system allows adjacent files to be loaded, merged or
interpolated (smoothed) which makes it a kind of word
processor for geographers. If you can track down a DEM form
in one shape or another, there is a very good chance that
the WCS can use it.



Conclusion

Comparing WCS to the obvious rival Vista is difficult
because although both programs achieve the same goal, both
approach it in very different ways.

Whereas Vista tries to make it as simple as possible to
create an image with minimum fuss, WCS requires a great deal
of fine tuning. Practially everything is user-definable to
an incredible degree, with hundreds of buttons to press and
values to select. This is a double edged sword: when
starting out, there is almost too much detail to have to
cope with. However, when you do finally start to catch a
grip you know that it will be a long time before you exhaust
the possiblities.

Yet, there are strange ommisions. There are no buildings, or
cloud generation facilities. WCS seems to think itself above
such trivial details, and instead provides backdrop options
and Z-Buffer output routines so that you can drop the
necessary detail into the landscape in a post-rendering way.
LightWave users will love WCS, because of the ability to
import motion paths and play with the Z-Buffers.

There is no more detailed landscape generation program
available, that's for sure. If you have the need for
realistic image, and you have the beefy hardware to hand you
have no choice: but don't expect as have as much immediate
fun as you would with Vista. The two programs are worlds
apart.





World Construction Set £119.99

system requirements

Wb 2.04 or better
4mb of ram
Hard drive, 8Mb Ram and 68020 or better recommended.


ease of use 75%

There are so many options, it's overwhelming to start with.


performance 94%

... and yet when you get to grips you know there is nothing
you can't do with it.

value for money 90%

Compared to the price of other graphics tools, this is down
right cheap.

overall 90%

The most powerful landcape rendering system money can buy.






Box out: To MUI or not to MUI?

The use of the third party Magic User Interface system is a
contentious one, certainly in a commerical program. It is
easy to see why the authors of WCS decided to use it: there
are so many menus, requestors and gadgets that using a
well-proven system like MUI must have saved a great deal of
development time.

MUI is responsible for the smart looking Graphical User
Interface, although it is noted for a lack of speed.
Certainly on an unexpanded A1200 this might be a problem,
but as WCS realistically needs an 030 and lots of memory,
you probably won't have anything to complain about. One
distinct advantage is that WCS is totally graphics card
friendly, and on an 800 by 600 screen looks superb.


Box out: That Control Panel in Full

(controls.iff)

This control panel is the most important window on the
display.

The first icon is the Database Module, and from here the
various items which make up the project are loaded and
edited.

The second icon is the DataOps Module, where the DEM files
are loaded, edited, merged and saved.

The third icon is the Map View Control module. Click on this
to see a grey-scale 2D render of the area you are editing.
You can also see 3D wireframe and shaded representations.

The fourth icon is the Paramater Module, for fine tuning
everything from the motion of the camera to the ecosystem on
the landscape.

The final icon is the Render Module. Here you can set the
resolution of the final image, and choose background patters
and the various objects (trees, rivers) which can be
included.


Captions


(plane.iff)

Using a digitised frame of some clouds to provide the
background for the WCS image, Imagine is used to provide
some foreground interest. Now image this animated, with the
clouds and landscape vanishing into the distance as the
planes bank and turn.


(haze.iff)

The wireframe image even demonstrates where the distance
haze starts by rendering in blue.

(map.iff)

It looks like a digitised image, but the map view is
rendered from your DEM data as you watch.

(path.iff)

The path of the camera can be finely controlled for
top-quality fly-by animations.

(flat.jpg)

WCS is equally as good at creating flat maps as 3D renders.

(world.jpg)

You can even zoom out so far that you see the entire planet,
and watch as it rotates.