P-152: Virtual World Concept Update 154: Planet-sized Terrain: Part 33

I have decided to adopt a Three-Tier System. Tier 1 is a low-resolution LOD system for very long range, Tier 2 is mid resolution for long range, and Tier 3 is the high-detail short range system for rendering the terrain at close range.

This solution now seems to be generally working. I have had to spend a lot of time fine-tuning the LOD’s for performance reasons, and determining the best combination of LOD’s and view distances. This will likely need more work in the future. I have also verified the the terrain textures still appear at short range (Tier 3) and that the LOD’s at this range are still subdividing correctly.

I also seem to be getting correct subdivision in Tier 2 as well, which is good progress.I also had to fix a few issues with nodes from multiple tiers rendering at once, such as the situation in this image:

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12/08/2016 , 02:48:03 AM
Torque 3D MIT – P152

This is now working. The next goal is to fix the texturing, and then try to implement a smooth transition between the tiers that is as transparent to the player as possible.

I believe the issue with the texturing could be that the terrain painter needs to know the minimum and maximum heights of the terrain at each LOD, and I am setting those heights in Tier 3 only at the moment, which means the texture information is not showing up in Tier 1 or 2.

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12/08/2016 , 01:08:47 AM
Torque 3D MIT – P152

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12/08/2016 , 01:13:05 AM
Torque 3D MIT – P152