Outerra packs the whole Earth into a video game

GTA V gives you a city to play around in, Skyrim gives you a country – Outerra gives you the whole world. This game demo lets you zoom in from outer space to ground level, rendered using real-world elevation data – so far, so Google Earth. But Outerra goes a step further, using fractal algorithms to create realistic textures so you can zoom in on the very rocks on the ground.

Developed by a team in Slovakia, Outerra has recently been released as a tech demo that lets you soar around or drive the Earth in a truck. While it's not complete yet – the only flora you'll see are those from northern climes, for example – it is pretty astonishing stuff, as you'll see in the video below.

The Outerra team are currently planning to use the tech in a world-building game called Anteworld, in which humanity returns to Earth on a colonisation ship, only to find the planet deserted.

Anteworld sounds impressive, but we hope they let other developers use the Outerra engine, too – imagine this tech in the hands of Bethesda, or Rockstar, or Peter Molyneux…

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