I would be careful with words like Virtual-O is more sophisticated. I admire Greg’s work. I would say that he has done some things more sophisticated than I’m doing them now. As technology has advanced I can do some things simpler than in CF. For example I don’t need to do delanunay triangulation of terrain surface. (shader is drawing terrain on the fly with needed amount of detail based on heightmap)

I wouldn’t say too that Virtual-O will have more complicated work to do, than CF, because of better visuals. Tree is still tree only looks better, same for stones etc. It’s not so different.

But Virtual-O has still long way before its converter will be as automatic as converter from CF. For example now I’m not yet converting buildings. Now OCAD converter is living inside of game engine so its not accessible to users.

Still converting of maps is not easy in CF, people are doing miracles with it. I would say that something may be easier if you will be converting LIDAR based map in Virtual-O. As contours were time hungry to convert. LIDAR map is win win as it’s easier to convert and results in much better more realistic terrain.

I will release some article about future of Virtual-O. But basically here are some milestones to get basic idea (without dates, sorry :) ):

1. single player game with x-maps will move to early access
It will contain full core game simulation + course builder (some way of sharing courses?)
2. than given sufficient interest from users, I will work further on competition mode (offline multiplayer) + public or hybrid converter
3. future…

In few simple words I want to create playable base and than build more advanced features on it. In fact it’s same way how CF was created. OCAD converter was published some time after first release not sure how long it was.

P.S.: send me please an message on facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/virtualosimulator/

And I will add you to early access facebook group. Where you will be able to discuss new features, development. Simply you can influence there what Virtual-O will be.

Thanks
Peter

Another question/concern: given that Virtual-O is more sophisticated than CF, do you think it will ever be as easy for players to convert their own maps and create their own competitions? One great thing about CF is that new competitions are uploaded nearly every day. If it is much harder to make your own competitions in Virtual-O than in CF, then fewer people will do it and there will be fewer competitions uploaded, and playing on the same maps all the time will get boring pretty quickly.

First step will be support for some kind of offline multiplayer mode similar to CF competitions. So you donwload map, run competition and results are uploaded to server. Where you will be able to compare routes, results against other people. Ranking can be calculated etc.

Realtime multiplayer:
This is another beast, problem is that realtime multiplayes is meaningful only if you have big enough base of users. Waiting in empty lobby is not very nice…

And if results of realtime multiplayer will be that only few percent of users will play it, than this would mean a waste of development time. That could be dedicated to more useful features of Virtual-O.

To make conclusion from all of this:
I would be really happy, if Virtual-O will have enough users in future, to make realtime multiplayer meaningful to implement.

It would be very nice to see something like Jukola or 10Mila happening in computer…