Re: [Plib-devel] Terrain optimization in ssg?

[Sam S. <sa...@sp...>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve Baker" <sjb...@ai...>
To: <pli...@li...>
Sent: Monday, August 21, 2000 4:10 AM
Subject: Re: [Plib-devel] Terrain optimization in ssg?


> Gil Carter wrote:
> >
> > At 02:15 PM 8/20/00 -0400, you wrote:
> > >I seem to remember a while back that someone
> > >was talking about adding one of the terrain optimization
> > >algorithms (ala ROAM and others) to ssg.  Does anyone
> > >know who brought this up and if anything has been done about
> > >it?

Yeah, it was me.  And I haven't done anything about it - although I still plan to .. It's for a game I'm working on in my spare
time. I thought an extra planet based environment would make it seem like I'd achieved more, but in the end I decided that
concentrating on the network engine would be more productive. :)

If anyone's interested I was using the implementation on gamasutra as a starting point -
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20000403/turner_01.htm

I was only ever really playing with it though, for the practice and experience.  In the end I think I'll be generating the terrain
from perlin noise (which of course already has lot's of LOD benefits), overlayed with pregenerated (but slightly randomised)
features.

But in the short term the gamasutra ROAM code seems to be an easy way to get fairly complex pre-generated landscapes into my game in
the short term.

> >  Ben Discoe's VTerrain site
> > has a good summary of these techniques, with links to their original papers
> > at http://vterrain.org/LOD/published.html
>
> There was significant discussion of ROAM and other continuous terrain LOD
> mechanisms at SigGraph.  The bottom line conclusion was that the decision
> as to whether to go with fixed levels of detail - or continuous LOD - changes
> with the prevailing graphics technology - and that currently the availability
> of cheap T&L hardware means that the pendulum is swinging back towards multiple
> fixed levels of detail - or perhaps no level of detail management at all.
>
> This definitely reduces my enthusiasm for implementing ROAM in SSG - although
> if someone did want to write it, I'd be very happy to accept such a contribution
> into the codebase.

Well, I only have a TNT2 (no T&L), so *I'm* still interested in ROAM :)

Sam