Re: [Algorithms] Massive spaces

[Gil G. <gg...@ma...>]

Along with the things Tom mentioned, you can also put your far clip plane
very very far away or even at infinity. Surprisingly, this does not have a
significant effect on z buffer precision.
-Gil



Hey,

I've got a little mind game for you lot.

Say you needed to render an entire solar system, in which you can zoom down
to a planet surface and see detail of about 1/100000 meter, or shoot over to
the sun and see the same sort of detail. There are a couple of immediate
problems:

You would need need an enormous view volume (what say 20 lightyears big)
which gives an appauling zbuffer resolution.
So whats are you to do? Render the distant objects closer than they actually
are (i.e. at the far end of a planet-sized view volume) and scale them down
accordingly?. This surely would give incorrect parralax between the distant
objects

Also you need the planets to be of enormous size so that the front clipping
plane doesn't cut through the planets fine detail when you are in very close
(lets say an ant view for example). Which again buggers the zbuffer, since
you're using a planet sized view volume.

Any ideas?

Regards,

Sam.