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What are the limitations on level size in this scenario. If you move in one direction, and the models are purged from memory as they leave the clip distance, would you theoretically be able to continue forever?



Constantly purging and reloading models and entities from memory isn't always a good idea. Reloading a purged model means hard drive access and this is *really* slow. The hard drive is the slowest component. It may be slow (SATA II hard drives might be an exception, depending on whether the 3.0 Gb/s means "gigabytes per second" or "gigabits per second"), but it has a huge capacity. The maximum level size, as far as I can tell, is the real limit of the var, or 2,097,151.999 quants from the origin (on all 6 axes). With a map scale of 16 quants as 1 foot, that's 616 1/4 square miles of land area. Even if you used a level of this extreme size, you would not run out of video memory provided that you use the same grass, snow/icecap, dirt, water, and building textures throughout this level you wouldn't have a problem and so their total file size adds up to within the video memory.

If you run out of video memory, regular system memory is used. If you run out of system memory, the hard drive is used. Stuff that otherwise uses memory stored on the hard drive is called swapfile or virtual memory.



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I understand LOD, and plan on implemeting this. I also have read alot of posts about optimal texture resolution, and I understand the concept that you make every attempt to conserve on poly count and texture sizes.



I have a much more flexible LOD system that is just as fast as the engine's LOD system. With it, you can use an unlimited number of LOD entities for a single entity and also have other effects as well. The 256x256 texture size is the fastest. What matters more than the poly count is the vertex count as vertices take much longer to render than that of polygons. From 2000 to 5000 polygons (1000 to 2500 vertices) is where you'll have the fastest frame rates and the most detail.

"You level up the fastest and easiest if you do things at your own level and no higher or lower" - useful tip My 2D game - release on Jun 13th; My tutorials