I thought it was time to introduce a more visually appealing terrain model into Edge. I've been recently using World Machine 2, which is an excellent terrain development application. After learning a few steps I was able to produce the map shown in the video below. I think it makes quite a difference, so thought an interim update was in order. To me the whole point of developing a high performance scene renderer / game engine is to have something great to look at afterwards, if you're going to put maths into motion, it might as well look good.
LOD and rendering performance for a detailed terrain (approx 4x4km), GTS450, 512MB VRam
The scene shows roughly a 4x4km terrain patch which will serve well as an island map and be ideal for the implementation of the sea (you can probably see where the beach and sea will meet). Eventually Edge may branch out into huge terrains, and this is a step in that direction, but for now I prefer to concentrate on implementing localised features.
From video time index 0:52 the higher LOD (Level Of Detail) terrain patch can be seen, morphing seamlessly into the lower LOD patch (I've highlighted the patch so you can see what's going on more clearly). Although the low LOD terrain currently has 16 meters between vertices, it's overlaid with a map containing lighting information for 1 meter intervals, which adds significantly to the scene dynamics and I think is quite effective. The video also shows the high detail transition (1:46) around a very irregular patch. At the end of the video there are 3 stills showing the FPS (top right) looking across the whole map, from mid map and a close up of the ground detail (the video recording software fixes the FPS to 30 while recording, hence the stills).
The next steps are to fill the land with trees, rocks and general vegetation (using improved textures), build a village near the beach area and implement the sea and shadows. The next blogs should show this progress, although maybe not exactly in the order listed here.
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