VAST FORESTS & STREAMING TERRAIN
Posted: Sat Sep 02, 2017 6:22 pm
I opened this topic after having chat with Gavin (Intercarma) and he suggested to post it here. Ive took few days to think about it is it worth to talk about this. This topic would mostly consider coders, ofc if there is some out there (in this forum) moderate programmer as it is somewhat of a challenge. I will try to elaborate my [Idea] as it is a bit complicated to understand without showing fully.
The idea is how to build and have real sense of wast forests, but without using today standard technique of (tree) sprites springing them in the distance.
Ill try to elaborate - when you want (in game) to represent forest, dense forest areas ofc you have different LOD levels, but for the last element of which you build your image of dense forested area (in the distance), you use sprite right. However this is really CPU taxing and the results are always have been mixed at best. There was no way you could show wast forests on the terrain in full compact way -it always looked like its sparsely populated (sprinkled), like there are just a few trees here and there and not compact.
My idea was to use mesh (voxel) technique (as a separate element from the terrain but it lays on the terrain itself), as that last LOD element. So, instead of 100k of sprites in the distance, you have that jagged mesh (resolution could wary). Also other good point is that because it lays on the terrain, that parts of the terrain mesh dont need to be poly-heavy as they will not be seen. Ofc, in front of that "background" forest mesh, you can have few tree sprites as an LOD2...and so on to LOD0.
Here is the rough example.
Note -Ive zoomed camera way in, but in my concept this would be in far distance from the camera.
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OTHER PART OF THE TOPIC
This is considering complete world map renewal. As Unity itself support streaming it would be possible to rebuild entire world map using tiling technique.
I've made this example in the World Machine editor:
I know, it looks like there are loads of tiles in there and you would be right -1024 to be exact. However this actually covers the real area of the entire Daggerfall terrain map and thats >>>400x400Km<<< (or 160,000km2), with the resolution of just 3m per PIXEL! Which is great.
I know this looks a lot, but its just an example, resolution could be increased (6-9m/pixel instead of 3m/p) and you can have other form of optimizations.
The idea is how to build and have real sense of wast forests, but without using today standard technique of (tree) sprites springing them in the distance.
Ill try to elaborate - when you want (in game) to represent forest, dense forest areas ofc you have different LOD levels, but for the last element of which you build your image of dense forested area (in the distance), you use sprite right. However this is really CPU taxing and the results are always have been mixed at best. There was no way you could show wast forests on the terrain in full compact way -it always looked like its sparsely populated (sprinkled), like there are just a few trees here and there and not compact.
My idea was to use mesh (voxel) technique (as a separate element from the terrain but it lays on the terrain itself), as that last LOD element. So, instead of 100k of sprites in the distance, you have that jagged mesh (resolution could wary). Also other good point is that because it lays on the terrain, that parts of the terrain mesh dont need to be poly-heavy as they will not be seen. Ofc, in front of that "background" forest mesh, you can have few tree sprites as an LOD2...and so on to LOD0.
Here is the rough example.
Note -Ive zoomed camera way in, but in my concept this would be in far distance from the camera.
[]-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[]
OTHER PART OF THE TOPIC
This is considering complete world map renewal. As Unity itself support streaming it would be possible to rebuild entire world map using tiling technique.
I've made this example in the World Machine editor:
I know, it looks like there are loads of tiles in there and you would be right -1024 to be exact. However this actually covers the real area of the entire Daggerfall terrain map and thats >>>400x400Km<<< (or 160,000km2), with the resolution of just 3m per PIXEL! Which is great.
I know this looks a lot, but its just an example, resolution could be increased (6-9m/pixel instead of 3m/p) and you can have other form of optimizations.