[tuxracer-devel] Update

[Jasmin P. <jf...@mu...>]

I placed a copy of the development plan on the web page.  I'll be
updating it as I get stuff done and get more ideas (currently I'm
getting ideas at a much faster rate than I'm getting them done :-).

I've committed some stuff to CVS:

- I added some options to the configure script

- I reduced the complexity of the Tux model by reducing the resolution
  of the smaller objects in his body; this should gain you a few FPS

- I relaxed some of the ODE parameters to try to get a few more FPS

- I added some new parameters to ~/.tuxracer: forward_clip_distance (the
  distance in meters down the course at which geometry is clipped),
  backward_clip_distance (the distance in meters up the course at which
  geometry is clipped), and tree_detail_distance (the distance at which
  trees are rendered using two polygons instead of one). 

  If tuxracer is slow, try decreasing these values (especially the first
  two).  I decreased the default forward_clip_distance from 100 to 75,
  and this results in a fairly noticeable FPS boost.

  Note that this type of clipping is a stop-gap measure until I
  implement real clipping to the view frustrum.

- I worked a bit on level 4.

If you encounter any problems with this update, please let me know.

Jasmin