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Re: infinite terrain
[Re: Machinery_Frank]
#75321
05/29/06 14:46
05/29/06 14:46
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Joined: Feb 2003
Posts: 6,818 Minot, North Dakota, USA
ulillillia
Senior Expert
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Senior Expert
Joined: Feb 2003
Posts: 6,818
Minot, North Dakota, USA
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It is faster, provided that you use at least 25% fewer vertices and polygons. I've tested it so I know. Given the flexibility in the shape, 25% is quite easy to get.
"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
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Re: infinite terrain
[Re: Machinery_Frank]
#75322
05/30/06 13:46
05/30/06 13:46
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Joined: Oct 2003
Posts: 4,131
Matt_Aufderheide
Expert
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Joined: Oct 2003
Posts: 4,131
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Quote:
mdl terrain is not faster. mdl uses uv-sets to apply textures. terrain uses only a plane projection from above. Terrain vertices all have same size. So terrain can render much faster.
This doesnt make any sense. Vertices dont have a "size". And the uv mapping on terrains is done the same way as it is on models, the only difference being that you can't edit the uvs for terrains (the projection doesnt matter, all vertices have a uv coord like any other mesh). Also, The terrains are rendered internally in D3D as a normal mesh.
In any case hmp terain are not faster than mdls, in my experiments mdls are faster in some cases.
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Re: infinite terrain
[Re: Matt_Aufderheide]
#75323
05/30/06 15:35
05/30/06 15:35
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Joined: Nov 2004
Posts: 7,121 Potsdam, Brandenburg, Germany
Machinery_Frank
Senior Expert
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Senior Expert
Joined: Nov 2004
Posts: 7,121
Potsdam, Brandenburg, Germany
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Matt. There was a statement from Conitec that terrain renders faster than models and models are faster than level geometry. So it might be that all that is the same in DirectX but the engine will make the difference.
Level blocks are much slower and they will be triangles and textures in your graphic card at the end. But the preprocessing of the engine makes it slow. Maybe it is similar with terrain.
Models, Textures and Games from Dexsoft
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Re: infinite terrain
[Re: Machinery_Frank]
#75324
05/30/06 16:36
05/30/06 16:36
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Joined: Feb 2003
Posts: 6,818 Minot, North Dakota, USA
ulillillia
Senior Expert
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Senior Expert
Joined: Feb 2003
Posts: 6,818
Minot, North Dakota, USA
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It also depends on the design of your MDL terrain. I've also found out, through a fairly recent experiment, if the mesh is regular, such as a grid you'll get a faster frame rate. If irregular, I've noticed a 15% drop in the frame rate (I don't recall the actual result I got; based on this being the only thing seen (and duplicated many times using 1024 polygons or something like that). MDL terrains also allow you to work around corners for odd-shaped buildings and objects as you can just cut out the unneccessary part.
"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
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Re: infinite terrain
[Re: ulillillia]
#75325
05/31/06 02:25
05/31/06 02:25
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Joined: Apr 2002
Posts: 1,246 ny
jumpman
Serious User
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Serious User
Joined: Apr 2002
Posts: 1,246
ny
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I think the "chunked" terrain system dosent really help in rendering the terrain, because we forgot about texture sizes that the terrain uses, or workarounds using a multitexture shader. I remember my friends telling me about the Playstation 1 that it could handle many thousands of polygons on screen at once, but this is when those polygons are untextured goraud shaded objects. Using texture maps on the models(or any 3d object) greatly reduces the on screen polygon amount. So a 6000 polygon terrain with a 256 texture will run faster than a 6000 polygon terrain with a 1024 texture. And I dont know what chunked terrain does in reguards to splitting up the texture, or even if it does anything besides hiding polygons.
About the terrains versus models, dont terrains discard the x and y value of each vertecy? Isnt that why we can only move a terrain's vertex in the z value? (up and down). I would guess terrains would run a bit faster than models if both had the same large amount of polygons, since models have much more information for each vertex (I might be wrong).
But then again with models, you can have a seamless transition into underground caves and holes in the floor, you can increase the polygon density of special places, over hanging geometry etc. Say for example you made a hill with a terrain. The hill's silhouette is only as smooth as the whole terrain's polygon density per distance, so if you made a steep high hill, you would see the facets of the polygons trying to approximate the curve. If you wanted to increase the smoothness of that hill silhouette, you would have to start over and increase the WHOLE terrain's polygon amount. With a model ground howver, you can bump up the polygon amount for your hills, and lower the polygon amount for areas with no silhouette (small dips in the floor, holes).
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Re: infinite terrain
[Re: jumpman]
#75326
05/31/06 03:44
05/31/06 03:44
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Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 2,503 SC, United States
xXxGuitar511
Expert
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Expert
Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 2,503
SC, United States
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Me thinks you might have a lil spellin' error: Quote:
So a 6000 polygon terrain with a 256 texture will run faster than a 6000 polygon terrain with a 1024 untextured
Last edited by xXxGuitar511; 05/31/06 03:45.
xXxGuitar511 - Programmer
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