RE: [Algorithms] Terrain performance comparrisons

[Tony C. <to...@mi...>]

This is all true, but the guy who is working on the renderer wants to
make the best renderer they can. They're not in a position to fix many
of the other issues you mention. So it seems perfectly reasonable to
have the discussion about how to make that renderer as good as you can
make it.

For example, I know that the biggest problem with my game right now are
some issues in AI. Does that mean that I tell my graphics dev that he
should stop tuning the renderer and get up to speed on the AI code? Of
course not.

It's definitely true that you should focus your resources on what gives
you the biggest customer impact, but it's also true that in a reasonably
sized team there is going to be some partitioning of skills and
expertise. So, if you can't bring all of your resources to bear on your
top problem, you do the next best thing, and bring resources to bear on
the problems you can do something about.

Tony Cox - Development Lead, Hockey
Microsoft Games Studios - Sports


-----Original Message-----
From: gda...@li...
[mailto:gda...@li...] On Behalf Of
Charles Bloom
Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2003 8:28 AM
To: gda...@li...
Subject: Re: [Algorithms] Terrain performance comparrisons



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=20
system that would make use of it.  Say, for example, that I want to a
huge=20
continuous MMORPG with detailed terrain.  What kind of problems do I
have=20
(that are directly related to the large world and desire to have far
view=20
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,=20
have a look at Planetside or Asheron's Call 2.  Sure, both could be
served=20
by a better terrain renderer, but in terms of the failings that need=20
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.