Re: [Algorithms] Terrain performance comparrisons

[Charles B. <cb...@cb...>]

In fact, I would say that all this concern for terrain LOD is absolutely 
ridiculous.  Rendering the terrain is just about the easiest aspect of any 
system that would make use of it.  Say, for example, that I want to a huge 
continuous MMORPG with detailed terrain.  What kind of problems do I have 
(that are directly related to the large world and desire to have far view 
distances and seamless movement) ?

1) seamless paging/streaming of lots of data
2) LOD/locality of network data
3) network prediction and lag compensation for many/far entities
4) server distribution and seamless links
5) LOD for all the game logic in the distance
6) LOD for all the characters, plants, shaders, etc.
7) LOD for the client-side physics engine
8) LOD for the terrain rendering

Hmm, terrain rendering is just about at the bottom.  As a concrete example, 
have a look at Planetside or Asheron's Call 2.  Sure, both could be served 
by a better terrain renderer, but in terms of the failings that need 
improvement, terrain rendering is way down the list.

At 01:17 AM 7/29/2003 -0400, Thatcher Ulrich wrote:
>2. In my opinion, the *real* reasons people don't always use LOD (of
>    whatever flavor) are based on practical engineering economics, not
>    anything social or purely technical.  The fact is that except for a
>    few game genres, like flight sims, there are way more important
>    things on the agenda than scalable LOD.
>
>    Take shading.  Maybe 50% of the traffic on this list concerns
>    shading techniques.  And that's because quality of shading has huge
>    leverage over the player experience, and is still heavily
>    resource-constrained.  Whereas LOD generally isn't making or
>    breaking anybody's game nowadays, due to faster hardware.  So
>    anything (e.g. LOD) that takes developer time and makes shading
>    more complicated has to have an extra big payoff, over and above
>    any intrinsic benefit.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Charles Bloom    email "cb"    http://www.cbloom.com