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Fun with level of detail

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Fun with level of detail

from JoeUser Forums

One of the cooler technologies that has really come of age in the past few years is level of detail. It doesn’t get as much attention as it deserves.

But it’s a big, big deal in terms of letting us make a game that scales seamlessly from an old laptop all the way up to a Core I7 system with a monster video card.

Level of detail lets us seamlessly use different models and assets depending on the level of detail a user needs.

To illustrate this, let me use something as simple and basic as the cloth map in Elemental.

 

Detailed:

image

A nice simple picture right? You can’t easily tell but it has a nice texture that makes it feel like it’s part of a cloth map (ah, screenshots are so limiting sometimes).

image

Zooming out, now a different image is used that uses less memory.

image

Zoom out further and now you can probably tell that a different image is used.  But when zooming out quickly, the transition is subtle.

image

Zooming out even further yet a simpler version is brought up.

So why do this?

Because by doing this, you can have a much much more complex world and a lot “fancier” graphics than one would expect to be able to have even on slower systems.

Level of Detail as evolved over the years in response to the demand that people be able to have their cake and eat it too – people with high end systems should get beautiful graphics and people with older systems should still be able to play an attractive game at a decent speed.

And bear in mind, this is alpha level here. We haven’t even started working much to make it “pretty”.

In our case, we want to have randomly generated worlds that are FULL of lots of exciting things without having to compromise.

137,776 views 56 replies
Reply #51 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting pigeonpigeon, reply 24



Quoting Denryu,
reply 20
I have a couple of questions regarding the 4th image. There are grid lines on that image. What is the scale of the game world (how many x how may of these grids?) It appears that a unit would have a lot of room to roam within one of those grids - how many "movement squares" is one of those grids made up of?  


I'm pretty sure that you can think of those grids to be analogous to sectors in GC2, not individual tiles. For example, if you look here you can see roughly the size of each tile if you look at the edges of the land, and they are much smaller than the cloth map grids (of which there are 2 sizes).

Also, if you look at the images in this thread you can see multiple units in the same grid boxes, which indicates that the grids don't represent individual tiles. And the fact that the grids are so huge kinda gives it away. too

Thanks that was very helpful! k1

Reply #52 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting psychoak, reply 25
It could also be latitude and longitude lines.  It is a map after all.

That would be to simple for most to consider. Where is the razor when you need it? :-"

Galactic Civilizations III
Reply #53 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Spartan, reply 2
That would be to simple for most to consider. Where is the razor when you need it? :-"
*starts cutting into the cloth map*
"This is all wrong! All wrong!"

*_*

Reply #54 from Elemental Forums Top

Very nice journal and informative too. 

Reply #55 from Elemental Forums Top

Level of Detail as evolved over the years in response to the demand that people be able to have their cake and eat it too

Stardock: Making sure the cake is not a lie since *insert company foundation date here.*

Reply #56 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting alway, reply 5
Stardock: Making sure the cake is not a lie since 1991.
Fix't.