Pacific Breaks 2003
Back in November 2001 I began making a course that challenged the way that the ocean had been represented in golf sims up until then. In all the previous sims we had seen the ocean as a plain, bright blue and to be honest, boring expanse of colour. In all of golf, some of the greatest courses in the world are set by the edge of the ocean and they were simply not being done justice by the lack of effort and artistry put into creating a beleivable ocean scene. With Pacific Breaks I discovered a way to "map" the ocean using many different textures and then sloting them together much as you would do a jigsaw. The effect was at the time groundbreaking and made the ocean at Pacific Breaks its main feature and one that I was very proud of. In the next series of links (2003) Microsoft began mapping their oceans with breaking waves in an effort to make the scenes more realistic. Although better, the main ocean was still the plain blue unrealistic colour as before.
When I decided to start upgrading Pacific Breaks for 2003 a while back I was faced with a problem. The way I had mapped the ocean texture in 2001 didn't transalate very well to links 2003. The seams between the textures were more visible and the size of all the new high res ocean textures would have inflated the overall file size to well over 100 MB! For a while I was stumped and although I succesfully created a highly regarded oceanside course with Atlantic Point the beauty of the Pacific Breaks ocean still eluded me.
Then in a flash of inspiration (luck) I took some of the work I had used on Atlantic Point and started to work on a more advanced mapping system, merged with some of the textures from the original Pacific Breaks course I could see possibilities. Although there were now far fewer textures involved, they were now of a much higher resolution and the ability to map and blend them all together made the goal I had set for myself a reality. The whole ocean at Pacific Breaks 2003 is now being updated with the new methods . I hope it's very similar to the ocean scene on the 2001 version albit now high res and without any nasty seam edge problems or inflated file size.
To go with the new ocean scene I was of course adding high resolution grass textures for the rest of the course and not only that but using the seam blending and mapping techniques I have developed over the past months of heavy apcd use, to their full potential. With the updated textures in place the trees now looked distinctly low res and so a complete replant using more realistic and high resolution trees began. It seems like a never ending job but the result is a much more realistic looking course without any inflated file size and without the very long rendering times that plagued the original.
I'll continue to post more pictures and information as and when I get the chance. Hopefully the course will be ready for release @$3.99 sometime in late September if all goes well.
These pics are a work in progress and so still need work on the textures mapping and planting in places.
The 6th hole, with new tee layout slightly extending the length of the hole and adding two more teeing areas.
The 7th tee shot, a risk reward hole if ever there was one - how much of the ocean can you carry in order to try and reach this par5 in two?
The 7th green area - The dramatic Pacific lies in wait for a risky second shot that didn't quite make the grade!
