P-152: Virtual World Concept Update 169: Planet-sized Terrain: Part 48

by PhoenixGames on Sep.04, 2016, under Astral Realms, P-0, Software and Games, Spiritus Astrum

I believe that some of the issues that I am seeing with the current problem are in fact not issues at all. After moving the player several times,by 10,000 units each time, the number of rendered nodes gradually reduces until there are none visible.

In actual fact, this makes sense, since I am simply moving the player by 10,000 units on one axis, ie, they are moving in a straight line, and not following the curvature of the Earth. By doing this often enough, the player will end up getting further and further from the Earth’s surface, which will cause the distance based calculations in the spherical terrain code to render fewer and fewer nodes until finally, none are visible.

I still need to solve the issue with the Z-offset however.

My new “solution”, which is really a temporary workaround, is to move the player and the terrain as normal, then use a raycast from the players position to find the actual height of the terrain. I can then adjust the players height so that they are standing on the terrain surface. This is simple, and it should work, but it is really not an elegant solution at all.

I will also need to take into account the fact that the Z-axis will not always be “up”. The solution will need to take into account the players orientation on the terrain, but this should just involve some very simply vector math.