Bending Time
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Technical Details

Technical Overview

Bending Time is in System Alpha for Phase 1.
Picture

​Technical Details

1. Observer – World
  • True Observer-centric design and implementation; world is built around Observer as they move around
  • Globe and planar 3D worlds
  • Globe, planar and first-person cameras
  • High performance observer-world updates

2. Map
  • File formats including Quantized Mesh, DEM, FLT, BIL, HGT, RAW, JPG, PNG, TIF, GML, KML, SHP, OSM, Vector Tiles
  • Web services including WMTS, TMS and TileJSON
  • 2D and 3D planar software primitives including points, lines, polygons, spheres, cubes, etc.
  • Map projections including Mercator, Lambert Conformal Conic, UTM, UPS, MGRS and more
  • Significant open map data retrieved, processed and hosted in Bending Time's public cloud

3. Geo
  • Geodetic (lat-lon-alt) and XYZ coordinate systems
  • 2D and 3D globe software primitives including points, lines, polygons, spheres, cubes, etc.
  • Distance, bearing and waypoint calculations on ellipsoid
  • Aerospace capabilities including pitch/yaw/roll and ENU/NED coordinate transformations

4. Celestial
  • True Sun and Moon positions
  • True star positions
  • Equatorial, ecliptic, galactic and supergalactic coordinates

5. Misc
  • Multi-threaded tile loading and rendering
  • Comprehensive units of measurement
  • BT developed and owned (performance-optimized and no license encumbrances)
  • Code is military quality

Alpha Demo

While the video below may seem like a regular 3D globe, it is running within the Unity game engine and lays the foundation for the terrain shading, forest generation and dynamic ocean rendering solutions in large-world coordinates.

Technical Status

Working towards MVP that shows the value-add beyond a regular 3D globe.

1. Terrain
  • COMPLETE: PBR terrain pipeline
  • IN PROGRESS: add fractal terrain refinement
  • TODO: add terrain shadow pass

2. Forests
  • COMPLETE: GPU instancing prototype complete
  • TODO: add tree placement from forest map data
  • ​TODO: implement ground textures at long view distances
  • TODO: implement grass at surface

3. Ocean
  • COMPLETE: Ocean prototype in Unity (www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY3URAswwdU)
  • COMPLETE: Initial geoid tile implementation
  • IN PROGRESS: Ocean geometry in ENU coordinates
  • IN PROGRESS: PBR ocean shading
  • TODO: ocean rendering at long view distances
  • TODO: sunlight and terrain reflections

4. Sky/Atmosphere
  • COMPLETE: Initial atmosphere implementation
  • COMPLETE: True Sun and Moon positions with intensities and direction vectors
  • TODO: improve transition from space to surface
  • TODO: sunlight colour from scattering solution
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