Thinking of buying world machine 2

[Jack]

Hey im thinking of buying world machine 2 is it worth spending an extra 100bux on pro or should i just stick to the standard version?
cheers jack

[Henry Blewer]

The full version would give you larger terrains. It also has better masking features. If you think you can spare the cash, why not? The only reason I can think of not to buy it, is the fact that you use the built in tools of Terragen 2 so well. More tools are always good.

[jaf]

The pro version also comes in a native x64 version, which is great for large terrains.  My only concern is there hasn't been much activity at their forums lately and the developer hasn't communicated very much (guess we are spoiled by the Planetside folks.)  However, I see there a new release due soon.

WM is a great TG "companion" program, in my opinion.

[Njen]

I bought the standard version, and I am very happy with it. Though I am not on a 64bit system yet and I don't need tiled terrains so going pro was not really an option for me.

[Oshyan]

Stephen (developer) is a great guy and should be pretty responsive to customer needs. If replies on the forums are slow, maybe a direct email.

As for Standard vs. Pro, it's hard to say what you really need. Standard is great and it's really the mainstream market product. Pro is useful for really higher-end work, really large and/or tiled terrains, multithreading (faster building of many functions and parallel network branches), and scripting. But you can go up to 8193 with Standard, so unless your terrain resolution needs are really extreme, I think it should be fine. The only question would be regarding speed with multithreading I think, but whether that's worth the extra, I don't know for you...

- Oshyan

[reck]

How does world machine 2 compare to geocontrol 2?

I don't really know either but I do see posts now again with people mentioning GC2 and importing flowmaps, terrains etc. Maybe that would be a better option?

[Oshyan]

As far as their output - terrain quality, types of maps, etc. - I think they're fairly comparable, though I personally (slightly) prefer World Machine's general terrain look. GC's always just seems a bit rougher to me. Ease of use is probably the biggest differentiator, or rather I should say *style* of working. WM uses a node-based approach similar to TG2, so if you're used to that method for building a terrain, you should find it very intuitive, fast, and effective. GC uses an interesting mix of painting and procedurals, so you can more easily define explicit terrain shapes, and if you're comfortable with more painting-like methods of terrain creation it may be preferable. Personally I like WM more, but again it's personal preference. Finally in terms of cost, WM has a slight edge unless you need Pro (which most people don't).

- Oshyan

[cyphyr]

Just to add that if your a registered owner of WM0.99 you can upgrade to the full versions at a significantly reduced rate as if you were a registered WM1 user. ($59 standard or $125 for the Pro version)
Thinking of doing just that myself.

Richard

[EoinArmstrong]

Hey there.

I have WM2 pro 64-bit and it's fast (with one exception) and the results are superb.  I just find it so easy to use, and the layout generator is wonderful - pity that it's limited to either hand-drawn or SVG shapes.

My only gripe is with Erosion, which I use frequently.  I'm still not convinced it's multithreaded like I've been told.  I have a few experiments to run first, though   My last pic uses a 4096x4096 WM2 terrain with erosion (with geological time enhancement enabled) and it look nearly 3 hours to generate on a quadcore (3 ghz per), 8GB ram machine.  I remember times like that on my P4 3ghz before.  You can select the number of active threads in preferences, but for erosion, I'm not convinced it works.

But apart from that - using erosion (if you can take the wait), coupled with terrain-based displacement, you can build some awesome looking terrains with it.

Have fun!

Eoin.

[Oshyan]

Eoin, I'm not sure erosion *is* threaded. Have you been told that it is?

- Oshyan

[EoinArmstrong]

Oshyan, yes, that's what I was told by one of the testers:

http://forum.world-machine.com/index.php?topic=1164.0

Okies - I've done my testing.

Same terrain as per my latest pic, but I reduced the rez to 2049 to save my sanity.  I tried 3 tests, And yes, there is some reduction in generation time.  Not as much as I would have thought, though (times quoted are for erosion node only):

- 1 thread selected - 728.63 seconds
- 4 threads selected - 598.64 seconds
- 16 threads selected - 616.14 seconds

Disparity between 4 and 16 threads could be explained by my being a bit more active on the machine while the 16 threads one was processing.

My main worry is that if I select 4 threads in Terragen, even surfing becomes a hassle.  I would expect that, though - all cores are busy on an intensive process.  However, in WM I can see little degredation in system performance.  Perhaps it's because the programs use memory differently? *shrug*

Cheers,

Eoin.

[Oshyan]

It's probably just not terribly efficient in its multithreaded building. It's good that there is some improvement. I think erosion maybe difficult to multithread.

- Oshyan

[latego]

If you have a look at erosion algorithms (especially hydraulic erosion) you will see that they are obscenely difficult to heavily multithread. For sure, in WM2.2 beta the stopping of erosion nodes has become very responsive (just a handful of seconds).

Anyway if you are into terrain generation your almost only alternatives are WM and GeoControl. L3DT generates terrains far too smooth for my taste tough I understand that they are exactly what is needed for game purposes. All other terrain tools are half (or more than half) dead.

Bye!!!

P.S.: TG2 IS a terrain generator: create the node network, and export the result as TER file (I am fascinated by TG2 erosion engine).

[EoinArmstrong]

Fair enough

I have to confess I've zero knowledge of the math!

[Henry Blewer]

Try a fluid animation using Blender. It generates gigs of data and takes almost as long as the anim render.