LOD (for non-vegetation)

[Haydenmango]

Almost every game these days uses LOD in open environments to keep performance steady and reduce pop-ins. I would like an LOD system (similar to the current system in use by the vegetation system) that can be easily applied to any entity.

 

I suggest adding a 'Enable LOD' checkbox as well as 'View Range' and 'Billboard' sliders to the appearance tab. When the 'Enable LOD' checkbox is checked an LOD texture should be generated and LOD shaders applied to the specific entity (similar to how adding new vegetation to the vegetation tab works) and the entity should be affected by the LOD system. When unchecked the LOD texture can be deleted, LOD shaders removed from the entity, and the entity should no longer be affected by the LOD system. 'View Range' and 'Billboard' should affect LOD viewing distance just like the vegetation system.

[reepblue]

Just recycling the vegetation billboard system would be ideal. Although lods are great, making them kind of sucks.

[gamecreator]

Just recycling the vegetation billboard system would be ideal. Although lods are great, making them kind of sucks.

Good idea and I agree. Though some vendors kindly provide LODs with their models.

 

Whoa. What happened to Pure3D?

[Haydenmango]

Just recycling the vegetation billboard system would be ideal. Although lods are great, making them kind of sucks.

 

Yeah, I thought that re-using the vegetation billboard system would be good enough for a lot of cases.

 

I do think a new LOD system that uses 3d models would be great as well because as gamecreator pointed out a lot of vendors sell LOD versions of their models but I'm not sure how to go about setting that up (maybe add LOD model versions directly into the .mdl files and use them when necessary).

[Josh]

I think loading the LOD model onto the main one, like loading animations, is probably the way to go. The surface class would get multiple LOD versions, in the same way a texture contains mipmaps.

 

This is good because it prevents objects from having multiple versions of the same entities, as was the case in Leadwerks 2.

 

An auto-reduction tool built into the model editor would also be ideal, in combination with the manually created objects.

[reepblue]

An auto-reduction tool built into the model editor would also be ideal, in combination with the manually created objects.

 

That sounds great.

[martyj]

An auto-reduction tool built into the model editor would also be ideal, in combination with the manually created objects.