Terrain Rendering

I have a quick question... What are some of the best/simplest ways to render large terrains for games such as a MMO or a FPS like Far Cry? I have skimmed over some LOD stuff using quadtrees and this seems to be ok but I was thinking of using an LOD technique that changes with distance from camera. I am not sure what this is called. But i was wondering if this would be a good way to go about it. Thanks in advance.

[417 byte] By [Zwigby] at [2008-1-13]

«« Where is VSTO Installed?
»» June CTP - Multi Value Parameter

# 1

take a look at the book "real-time 3D terrain engines using C++ and directX 9" by gregory snook. it covers pretty much every aspect of terrain management, with several strategies for dealing with LOD.

LOD is tricky with terrain, since the transition between levels is usually more obvious than LOD on smaller, moving objects like players. what you want to avoid is terrain "pop", like you get in everquest2 while riding the griffon.

umuhk at 2007-9-9 >

top of Msdn Tech,Game Technologies: DirectX, XNA, XACT, etc.,Game Technologies: Graphics...

# 2

thanks for the info...

and I know what your talking about with the griff, hehe

Zwigby at 2007-9-9 >

# 3

Check out this site: http://www.vterrain.org/
They have some excellent sample terrain engines and optimisation info.

JasonBarrett at 2007-9-9 >

# 4

One thing you may wish to pay particular attention to if you're planning on having massive worlds (you mention MMO?) is streaming/paging in new terrain data from disk.

The basic idea of it is that in RAM/VRAM you store only the terrain information that is close to (or visible) by the camera, and as the camera moves you load in new data that wasn't previously (but is now) visible, and discard data that is no longer visible...

It's not always necessary, but I've found it to be a particularly useful technique for keeping the applications memory footprint respectable, yet not having an overly small/limiting world/terrain.

hth
Jack

JackHoxley at 2007-9-9 >

# 5

Sorry to hijack a bit here. But I have heard abou streadmin/paging before, but it is hard to find any info on it. Info like, how big should the terrain parts be, and how do you load the other terrain? In an other thread with low priority? And so on. Do anyone have any links or anything that would cover this?

Thanks and sorry for the small hijack
- ?? -

NoteMe at 2007-9-9 >

Game Technologies: DirectX, XNA, XACT, etc. Hot Topic

Game Technologies: DirectX, XNA, XACT, etc.

Java / MSDN / Linux Tech / PHP Tech / MSDN DotNet / MSDN TECH / Health Library / Programmers Tech / visual basic Tech / Developer Tech / Ipod faqs / Msdn China Tech