P-152: Virtual World Concept Update 23: Spherical Terrain: Collision Concept Test

I have succeeded in implementing a simple box Collision hull for my spherical terrain. I have basically created a square collision hull and aligned it to the bounds box. I have confirmed player collision is working against this box.

This is an excellent starting point for implementing the much more advanced collision system that I will need for the final system. In fact, I may be able to use a simple system like this in combination with other, more complex systems. I could use a Level of Detail, or “LOD” based approach, where I use very simple collision when the player is far away from the object, and then add more complex collision as the player gets closer.

The following resources were extremely useful in understanding T3D’s collision system:

https://gist.github.com/eightyeight/77cedbf5ac56b54469f1

http://www.garagegames.com/community/forums/viewthread/139149/7#comment-861287

http://wiki.torque3d.org/coder:collision-system-overview

T3D’s player collision system is based around generating a collision hull from simple objects, and then performing collision calculation on that shape. Based on what I have learned, I think my custom collision system will be to determine where exactly the player is standing on the terrain, and select all of the polygons from a certain radius around the player, and add them to the polylist, to be checked for collision. By returning only the polys close to the players position, I can keep the poly list small enough to be processed quickly, while at the same time keeping it complex enough to provide realistic collision mechanics.