Hi,

It seems the upcoming LOD manager currently only support 3 LODs. Please can you make this a user definable number of LODs in future, so users have more flexibility to customise number of LODs and switch points to suit their game type.

Thanks.

The engine supports four LOD steps, so it wouldn't make much sense when the LOD manager supported more. The reason for the limit of 4 is that more would just inflate the model size without making the level run faster or better. A fixed number of steps made the LOD algorithm simpler than an unlimited number.

One quick question:

With shared textures for models is there a way to use the same tex for each lod model but instead of the original texture they use the generated mipmaps?

Or has this to be done manually (resizing the texture for each lod model separately)?

Mipmaps and LOD steps are two different things. LOD is handled by the engine, while mipmaps are handled by the graphics hardware. Therefore, mipmaps are normally switched at different distances than LODs.

That's too bad... is it possible to do a workaround so the mipmap of the texture of the original model is used as new base texture for the lod model?
That would spare quite some video mem, because smaller extra textures don't need to be created.

Does this even make sense? How is the frame rate affected if I use the same big detailed texture for all lod models belonging together? Since they are further away, a mipmap will be used anyway...

Hi JCL,

OK, so I am then asking for more LOD to be suported in the engine too . You know your engine so are certainly correct about getting no more performance gain from more LODs, however there are several other ARTISTIC/GAMEPLAY uses for LOD other than just trying to achieve pure performance gain goals. I can assure you many modern games are doing far more than 4 levels of detail for alternative reasons.

I'm thinking about the future -this capability is very useful , you are switching to ABT model created worlds etc. there are so many possibilities... Algorithm wise even a simple switch based on camera distance will do. If that is not optimal give it to us as an alternative i.e. choice of FAST LOD 4 levels only, SLOWER LOD but user defined number of levels of LOD. Please let me as the game designer decide about 'memory bloat' and what cards I am targeting, please don't limit my choices. This is the sort of open feature thinking will give 3DGS an advantage on the competition.