openvistapro/README.md

OpenVistaPro

OpenVistaPro is an early-stage, open-source Rust project to build a modern landscape generator inspired by classic VistaPro.

The goal is not to redistribute or reuse proprietary VistaPro code/assets. The local reference/ directory is intentionally ignored by git and is used only for historical/product research.

Current status

This repository currently contains:

• A Rust binary crate scaffold.
• A first-pass knowledgebase under docs/knowledgebase/.
• An implementation roadmap under docs/plans/.
• Legal and reference-material hygiene notes under docs/legal/ and docs/research/.
• A clean-room terrain import boundary with project-owned ovp-text fixtures, a PNG heightmap script importer, an SRTM/HGT byte importer behind the hgt Cargo feature, an ESRI ASCII Grid parser behind the ascii-grid-import feature, a narrow GeoTIFF importer behind import-geotiff, and a deterministic terrain-generation module in src/terrain_gen.rs with TerrainGenerationSpec / TerrainGenerationSettings / DeterministicTerrainGenerator (see cargo test terrain_gen and its determinism/seed note). The UI shell and CLI both expose a seeded fractal preset alongside the legacy plane and hill fixtures.
• A project-owned script parser + executor in src/script.rs / src/script_exec.rs, MakePath-inspired camera path generation in src/path.rs, a project-owned color-map model with editable thresholds/bands in src/scene.rs, a light model with azimuth/elevation/intensity controls, and an app feature shell with top-level menus, about/help dialog surfacing, and working import/script/path/project/lighting controls in src/app_state.rs, src/app.rs, and src/ui_shell.rs.

Development

cargo build
cargo test
cargo run -- info
cargo run -- scene export --output /tmp/openvistapro-default.ovp.toml
cargo run -- render --preset hill --width 256 --height 256 --output /tmp/openvistapro-hill.png
cargo run -- render --preset fractal --seed 1337 --width 256 --height 256 --output /tmp/openvistapro-fractal.png
cargo run -- render --preset hill --scene /tmp/openvistapro-default.ovp.toml --width 256 --height 256 --output /tmp/openvistapro-hill-from-scene.png
cargo run -- render --preset hill --camera-demo --width 256 --height 192 --output /tmp/openvistapro-perspective.png
cargo run -- render --preset hill --quality final --output /tmp/openvistapro-renders/
cargo run --features app --bin openvistapro_app

The crate’s default cargo run target is the CLI binary (openvistapro), so the commands above work without an extra --bin flag. Use --features app --bin openvistapro_app for the optional GUI shell.

The optional app shell is gated behind the app feature so default CLI builds stay GPU-free. It opens an eframe/egui window titled OpenVistaPro with scene controls, top-level menus/dialogs, and a CPU-rendered terrain preview. The native shell uses eframe's Glow renderer under X11/Xvfb, which keeps the app smoke launch independent of WGPU backend feature selection.

Importer status:

• heightmap: project-owned script input that imports grayscale PNG heightmaps with import heightmap "path.png" and maps brightness to elevation. This is a terrain-ingest convenience path, not a legacy VistaPro compatibility claim.
• ovp-text: project-owned plain-text heightfield fixture format used for import-boundary tests.
• hgt: enabled by the optional hgt Cargo feature; parses SRTM HGT payloads as square grids of big-endian signed 16-bit metre samples. The implementation and tests use open specifications and synthetic/tiny fixtures only.
• esri-ascii-grid: enabled by the optional ascii-grid-import Cargo feature; parses open ESRI ASCII Grid text with synthetic/project-owned fixtures only.
• geotiff: enabled by the optional import-geotiff Cargo feature; parses single-band GeoTIFF elevation tiles in memory via the pure-Rust geotiff-reader crate (no GDAL, no native dependency). It supports a deliberately narrow subset — a single-band raster decoded as f32 — and is reported by openvistapro info only when the feature is built.

These importers all terminate at the same internal HeightGrid model. Legacy VistaPro landscape/image compatibility is intentionally out of scope for the clean-room project unless it returns as a separately reviewed compatibility plan.

All importer tests use tiny synthetic, project-owned fixture data: HGT uses inline synthetic byte arrays, ESRI ASCII Grid uses tiny project-owned text fixtures, and the GeoTIFF tests generate a tiny single-band tile in memory rather than reading committed binaries or real geodata.

To verify the importer feature surface:

cargo test import
cargo test hgt
cargo test hgt --features hgt
cargo test ascii_grid --features ascii-grid-import
cargo run --features hgt --bin openvistapro -- info
cargo run --features ascii-grid-import --bin openvistapro -- info
cargo test --no-default-features
cargo test geotiff --features import-geotiff
cargo run --features import-geotiff --bin openvistapro -- info
cargo test --all-features

The default render mode writes a deterministic top-down elevation preview. Passing --quality preview|balanced|final selects the project-owned quality profile; if --output points to an existing directory, the renderer derives a quality-specific PNG name there. Passing --camera-demo switches to the current CPU perspective renderer spike: a simple pinhole-camera raymarcher with bilinear height sampling, fixed step size, sky gradient, and distance haze. It is intended as a readable reference renderer for architecture validation, not a performance target or final visual model.

Scene files use the project-owned .ovp.toml format. Version 1 stores a top-level schema = "openvistapro.scene", version = 1, and a serialized Scene payload containing camera position/target, camera heading-pitch-bank, lens/FOV/clip ranges, light direction plus the UI-facing azimuth/elevation controls, water, tree-line, snow-line, haze, and hydrology overlays/settings. The format is intentionally human-readable while the data model is still evolving.

Script language (MVP)

OpenVistaPro includes a small, line-oriented scripting language for driving terrain and render jobs from a plain-text file (src/script.rs). The grammar is clean-room and project-owned: it is not VistaPro-compatible and deliberately does not mirror the legacy VistaPro scripting syntax. Its only terrain-ingest command today is import heightmap, which loads grayscale PNG input for the project-owned clean-room pipeline.

Each line is a blank line, a # comment (also usable as a trailing comment), or one command:

use preset fractal                          # `fractal`, `hill`, or `plane`
set thresholds water=0.18 tree=0.42 snow=0.77
import heightmap "data/demo-height.png"      # optional grayscale PNG terrain input
render output "out/demo.png"

Run the checked-in demo script with:

cargo run --bin openvistapro -- script run --input examples/demo.ovps

Script paths are resolved relative to the script file. use preset and import heightmap select the active terrain; use preset fractal (or the CLI --preset fractal --seed ...) drives the seeded procedural generator, set thresholds updates scene bands, and execution writes each render output to a deterministic PNG.

Project principles

• Clean-room implementation: do not decompile, copy, or translate proprietary binaries.
• Use open data formats and openly licensed datasets.
• Preserve the spirit/workflow of VistaPro while designing a modern UX and renderer.
• Start with a small, testable terrain engine before building advanced rendering or UI.