Using the Crystal engine for non-game applications

[briancnorton]

Hello,
I am interested in adapting the crystal engine to become a viewer application for geospatial data like satellite imagery, terrain data, buildings and landscapes.  I am not a programmer, nor do I have one on staff.  I am somewhat familiar with using the Unreal runtime engine for this, but that requres no programming expertise.  What would be required for me to adapt the crystal engine to do this?  Is it simply a matter of figuring out some way to create "maps" out of my data, or do I need to pull some fancy footwork to get it to run?  Do I need to program camera movement models, lighting, etc?  What about elevation?  Does CE use a surface mesh or a height field?

Assuming I could get this to work, how large of an image can I use as a surface texture?  I am working with commercial satellite images that are often 1 gb or more.  Obviously I would need to tile it somehow, but I can probably figure that part out myself.  What kind of performance bonuses does CE have that would help me out?  Occlusion culling, Auto-tesselation, etc?

Am I asking all the worng questions?  Does anybody have any idea of another product that would suit my needs better?
Thank you

[sunshine]

As a general response, Crystal Space should be suitable for your type application. CS is not specifically aimed at production of games, but, of course, many people use it for that purpose. You do probably, however, want to avoid using the factory-supplied run-loop in CS (the function csDefaultRunLoop()) since it is aimed at maximizing the client's CPU usage, which is typically what is needed for 3D action games, but which is not typically suitable for general applications with more relaxed requirements.

CS has a fairly steep learning curve and it is definitely aimed at programmers, as opposed to non-programmer end-users. There are, however, a number of tutorials available to help ease you into things. These may or may not prove helpful to you, depending upon your programming experience.

[tony]

You could give Ogre a try http://www.ogre3d.org/ But it's different from Crystal, Ogre tends to be a graphic engine and there's already export/import for Ogre that can be use with Blender3D.

And also take a look at Irrilicht http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net

[azuron]

Hi,

I am using CS to develop non-game application, and I think it's great.

I have experience in Ogre. Ogre is only a graphics rendering system, so it cannot make VR apps directly, you will have to integrate lots of things yourself.

Talking about Irrilicht... They got a defect in design, coz their engine even don't support vertex buffer.

Crystal Space is best engine to me, it's powerful, easy to learn and use, and reliable.

[tony]

Anyone try Coin ?

http://www.coin3d.org