Course Infrastructure Planning and Integration

[jhauck2]

A place to discuss ideas on how we want to integrate and design courses for OSG.

[jhauck2]

Course Terrain Tool - https://ctt.opengolfsim.com/ - https://github.com/OpenGolfSim/course-terrain-tool
"The Course Terrain Tool is a desktop application designed to automate lidar/terrain sourcing and simulator course creation."

[jhauck2]

I had trouble getting any data from that tool. this site works well: https://usalidar.io/

[jhauck2]

This tool can convert point cloud data to tiff: https://qgis.org/

[jhauck2]

So I was able to get my local course height data imported into godot with the terrain3d importer tool. Rough steps:

1. Use https://usalidar.io/ to download point cloud data in the area of interest.
2. Load the point cloud file into QGIS tool mentioned above
3. Use the point cloud conversion tool in QGIS to convert to raster
   3a. can use the "Filter expression" to select specific layers to export.
   3b. for example, I only exported the "ground" layer.
   3c. could try to do some fancy parsing of low/medium/high vegetation for automatic placing of trees, bushes, etc.
4. export the output as a tif file
5. convert the .tif file to .exr. I just used an online converter. can also use open image io tools
6. use the terrain3d importer tool and select the .exr file as the height file
7. "Run Import"

See Importing instructions for Terrain3D: https://terrain3d.readthedocs.io/en/stable/docs/import_export.html#importing-data

[pfrenette]

I saw a comment in a PR suggesting that a course shouldn't have script within it. 💯

It would be great to be able for the software to accept scripts defining rules of play. Exemple of rules of play:

• Fitting session on the range or a specified hole
• Closest to the pin challenges
• Stroke gains contest all over the bag
• Rough is lava
• 18 holes regular golf
• trackman style combine
• etc

With these variations in gameplay, some course might not support it. A filtering query could use meta data on course to match the desired gameplay. Separating concerns from what a course is and how to play it seems important.

Having extensibility for gameplay scripts feels in line with the open direction OSG has.

[jhauck2]

Yeah I think having a bunch of different play modes is a great idea. The question is what entity is responsible for what part. Like you mention I think it's a good idea for game mode compatibility to be owned by the course metadata but I think the logic of those game modes should belong to the course manager. I'm open to hearing other opinions on this as well

[jhauck2]

@pfrenette actually, I've been thinking about this a bit and there's really nothing stopping a course creator from attaching custom scripts to any nodes in their course scene. The point I was making in that PR is that we shouldn't try to load and run any scripts by default. A course creator could have a script that moves an obstacle on a course back and forth (for example) and the course manager/sim doesn't need to know about it. Of course, this means the course creator is responsible for making sure their scripts don't interfere with the course manager or else there may be weird side-effects. (or not, its open source so people are free to break things as much as they want)