I programmed a club scene with about 20-30 visible 1500k people (which are clones of 8 base people). Very far away people are sprite animated people with all (sprite-) animation (in the end there are 20-30 mesh people and additional 20 other Srpite people). It works, don't hesitate ^^ though, I would create one or two LOD stages in your case.
[EDIT] for about 100-150 people I would take only 10 base people, right. Use extensive LOD, and don't update them each frame! When you process only the front people (to the camera) each frame and the farer people each second frame you won't notice so much qualiyt loss. process 50% of the 2-frame people in the first and the other 50% in the second frame to distribute performance loss on two frames (which is faster than one idle frame and one "big" frame).
Last edited by HeelX; 04/27/07 06:21.