[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > On Tuesday 02 December 2003 16:21, Curtis L. Olson wrote: > > > > > But when the data is allready in the RAM we wouldn't need > > > to load the data from the slow hard drive. > > > > Right, but sending that much data across the AGP bus isn't fast > > either, especially when you want/need to draw at 60hz. Sure, > > everything else being equal, I'd rather fetch the data from RAM rather > > than a HD, but the AGP bus can be a real bottle neck if you need to > > shove too much info across it every frame. > > How long could it take until we see the first videocards > with 1024 MB RAM in the computer stores for an acceptable price (100-300 $,1tL(B)? > Are 2 years in the possible range?
If a person is working on some feature that won't be finished for 2 years, then I think it is reasonable to try to predict card performance that far out and write to future hardware. In large part, that is what we did when we started the current FlightGear scenery system. > Ok, do you know any good documentation and information about this > particular real time rendering topic. That doesn't mean that i will > write such an engine, but i just want to read the basic stuff so > that i know what i am talking about. ;) I would recommend doing a net search for CLOD (continuous level of detail) and ROAM (I forget what that stands for.) There are a lot of spiffy demos out there. However, there are some non-trivial issues in taking a chunk of demo code and making it work for the entire world. Most demos just handle a small fixed area. You need to consider paging terrain data in/out, paging textures in/out, and making your chunks of data fit seamlessly together in the context of your CLOD algorithm. You could always start out by doing a small fixed area in FlightGear and work on some of the more complex issues later. These things never get developed all at once, and the issues are large enough that a patient, step by step approach will probably be needed. > What alternative ways do we have to make the visual quality > especially of the ground scenery in flightgear better? The FlightGear scenery engine renders an arbitrary set of triangles, painted with arbitrary textures. It is actually quite flexible. Currently FlightGear scenery is autogenerated via the TerraGear tool set. A person could conceivably develop there own set of tools to produce FlightGear scenery, or extend the TerraGear tools, or use some commercial package like Multigen Creator (with it's associated add ons.) FlightGear can also load quite a variety of 3d formats, so it's not unreasonable to consider building a terrain area by hand. That is what many high end simulators do. > And did someone read those LOD (level of detail) planet rendering > documentations i mentioned last week? What do you think about that, > is that possible with the flightgear scenery? I personally haven't had a chance to look at these. But this is outside my personal focus and priority right now. Regards, Curt. -- Curtis Olson HumanFIRST Program FlightGear Project Twin Cities curt 'at' me.umn.edu curt 'at' flightgear.org Minnesota http://www.flightgear.org/~curt http://www.flightgear.org _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
