On Dec 29, 2007 1:59 AM, Kevin Gillette <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I was thinking that baseline support for a LOD system should be mandatory. > every renderer must decide while levels-of-detail to use given those > provided. a basic renderer (such as a software one, if implemented), would > use only the lowest LOD models and textures, while the more advanced > renderers would scale between LOD models in the same way that we scale > between different resolution tertiles (though without the blending). > strictly speaking, this system would make obsolete any need for mipmapping > model textures, as the artist should select a texture resolution to match > the model's level of detail. this would at least solve one problem with > renderer maintaince, as graphics could continue to improve in the higher LOD > realm while the cheaper renderers would use the low-quality stuff.
You are just talking about the easy problem - the sheer amount of data to throw at the GPU. We have already implemented it as you describe it for terrain textures - if the GPU does not support it, or user finds high quality textures too slow, you can select a lower size texture (see Video Options menu in trunk). The hard problem is the *design* of the graphics code. This has nothing to do with quantity, except the constraints which a design places on the amount that can used without reducing speed to a crawl. The current engine is designed to dynamically morph graphics objects each frame (for electronic warfare, fitting defensive buildings to terrain, fitting terrain to buildings, effects, water animation, texture animation, and so and on). This works for immediate mode OpenGL, but not for retained mode. If we are to relax the current *very low* limits on polygon counts and so on, we need to move over to retained mode. Immediate mode will be obsoleted eventually - there is no future in it. We can, as I wrote earlier, keep the current way of morphing objects, *and* use retained mode, but only by using GLSL shaders to do the morphing. This means taking yet another step up the requirements ladder - even my recent Intel X3000 board cannot handle GLSL yet. However, on the bright side, we are not in a real hurry to replace the renderer. We can take the time to do it right. - Per _______________________________________________ Warzone-dev mailing list Warzone-dev@gna.org https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/warzone-dev
