RE: [Algorithms] Terrain Organization

[Tom F. <to...@mu...>]

Indeed - my goal for graphics systems is that when they are released, they
should be able to bring even the best existing machine down to sub-1Hz speed
if you turn all the detail levels up, and yet have perfectly acceptable
performance on five-year-old machines with the auto-LoD system on. That way
you know (a) you've done a good job of scaling stuff, (b) you're pretty sure
you can re-use the engine (or something derived from it) for the next
project, and (c) people will still play your game in five years - it won't
look sad. Oh yes, and (d) you might get some good bundling deals with new
graphics cards - and they're always welcome.

Tom Forsyth - Muckyfoot bloke.
Whizzing and pasting and pooting through the day.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jim Offerman [mailto:j.o...@in...]
> Sent: 31 July 2000 08:09
> To: gda...@li...
> Subject: Re: [Algorithms] Terrain Organization
> 
> 
> > As for not everyone having TnL cards, well, I thought that 
> any game which
> is
> > *now* in development will probably run on fast systems. By 
> fast I mean
> either
> > TnL, or on CPUs which are fast enough that regular cards 
> don't suffer too
> > much. Anyway, this is up to you, it depends on you budget 
> and a lot of
> other
> > things.
> 
> If you are going to implement some form of CLOD (this is 
> where Tom Forsyth
> would promote using VIPM - which is not a bad idea at all), I 
> think you
> should couple the runtime error calculations to your fps... 
> i.e. if your fps
> drops, crank down all lod levels in the game until the fps reaches an
> acceptable level. Your gime might be spitting out 100K tris 
> per second on a
> souped up PIII with GeForce2 GTS and pump through a humble 
> 15K on a PII with
> TNT PCI.
> 
> And, since you have tied your CLOD calculations to the fps you could
> (theoratically) also truly design your game for the future - 
> i.e. use models
> which by todays standards contain far to many triangles, the 
> CLOD will keep
> performance acceptable on today's high end hardware and 
> increase detail on
> tomorrow's hardware. Imagine playing Half-Life again, finding that the
> overall detail has increased by a factor ten.
> 
> Jim Offerman
> 
> Innovade
> - designing the designer