Do the textures still look good when you are zoomed in all the way or do they inflate and lose resolution?

Ground Control looks pretty cool. I have been wanting to make an RTS/Strategy hybrid for a while and we were going to use Ground Control for the name - oh well - time for a new name.

Last screen shots I've seen from B&W it seemed they had simple detail texturing on terrain, doubt that it would extend to unlimited detail.

That video with worm in apple on barrel was propably made to impress the press. I don't believe many that kind of details will be seen in the game.

I've not seen the movie, but it's just a matter of LOD. The worm could be fully textured at milimeter resolutions while the barrel is at centemeter resolution, the house at a foot, etc.. At some point you simply stop drawing the worm because it's too small to see, then the barrel, then the house...

It's the fact that no one else has done it before which makes Black & White special. Not the technology they are using.

To answer your question: I'm guessing that the textures do not lose detail as you zoom in.

Anyone have a link to that movie, BTW? I'd love to see it.

ftp://west.download.won.net/files/simulations/bw_movie_interview.zip

It's about 42mb compressed, 57mb uncompressed.

Viewing it again, I notice that it wasn't a closeup on the worm, but is clearly visible wriggling in an apple...on top of that barrel.

It also shows off the realtime 3D clouds (sorta cartoonish looking, heh) casting shadows on the terrain.

I know I promised to finish the paper soon, but my jobs always keeps interfering with my plans. In other words: Yes, I'll finish it, but it'll probably take a month.

But... Have you noticed that I posted I link to the source code of my terrain engine? It's in one of my previous mails. Sure, the code isn't exactly nice, but it contains the full source code to my texture synthesizer.

If it's urgent or if you run into any troubles with the code, then please feel free to ask question. I'll try to provide as much help as possible, until I have the time to finish that paper. And if it's really mega-urgent, then... well, you know my e-mail address.

Take a look at this document for effective OpenGL texturing:
Gamasutra Article on OpenGL Texture Objects

Oh and I am pretty new to OpenGL too for the record, but till now I found it pretty easy compared to D3D

Klaus: Great work! Your paper was exactly what I am looking for and I am looking forward to its completion.

Unfortunately, it turns out, that writing this paper takes far too much time. I completely underestimated the workload. To be honest... there's a chance that I'll never finish it, but the most important pieces (the ecosystems) are already explained. The rest of the paper would be about mixing textures and performing lighting. These are theoretically simple things, but they are very cumbersome to explain. I guess it would be another 20 to 30 pages (because I hate non-in-depth explanations).

This is very embarrassing for me, because I made a promise and I hate if I have to break my promises. I'm honestly very sorry for this.

If, however, you have specific questions, then please feel free to ask. I think the least I can do now is to help people depending on their knowledge... But do me a favor and ask those questions on this bulletin board so that everyone can read my replies.