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Jul 26, 2002, 2:19am

I'd like an option for the terrain to disappear (turn into holes) when it is covered by another object. Terrain is nice for making a world have more visual continuity but since it can't accept action commands and have its mipmapping state altered (among other things), it's fairly useless to me. But instead of having holes everywhere where I have ground objects, it would be nice if the terrain disappeared when something covering it was rendered. Since terrain can be fairly complex and unnecessarily add to the total polygon count (which, of course, lowers frame rate), if it disappeared it would give the best of both worlds in terms of visual continuity (more visible ground) without the abilities it lacks (no action commands, etc).

Jul 26, 2002, 3:08am

I guess that's not so easy, as it depends very much on the
type of object covering it. If it's a masked, translucent,
invisible or non-solid model, the terrain needs to be there.
Even if a model has gaps where you can look through the
terrain needs to be there. I guess it would need more time
to find out wether a terrain has to be rendered or not than
actually rendering it.


[View Quote]

Jul 26, 2002, 4:25am

Well, a per-terrain-cell could be implemented then but I would be happy with just an overall all-or-nothing option.

[View Quote] > I guess that's not so easy, as it depends very much on the
> type of object covering it. If it's a masked, translucent,
> invisible or non-solid model, the terrain needs to be there.
> Even if a model has gaps where you can look through the
> terrain needs to be there. I guess it would need more time
> to find out wether a terrain has to be rendered or not than
> actually rendering it.
>
[View Quote]

Jul 26, 2002, 5:29pm

Just as a foot note to this, having put holes in the terrain where I have a
"ground" object for the cell, it tends to look messy from distance where the
cell is outside the visibility setting. If you look from 210m away for
example, there are still holes in the ground but no apparent reason for
them, and they're really obvious unless you have a ground object underneath
the terrain (defeating the object) or a skybox with a dark lower half ...
under ground level.

Essentially, I'd like to see terrain cells which are "holes" that are
outside the browser's viewing radius being filled in, otherwise there is no
context for the hole when the surrounding objects aren't visible.

Grims

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Jul 26, 2002, 6:08pm

If you have a dark skybox, activating a black fog helps to hide the holes that could be seen far away.

[View Quote] >Just as a foot note to this, having put holes in the terrain where I have a
>"ground" object for the cell, it tends to look messy from distance where the
>cell is outside the visibility setting. If you look from 210m away for
>example, there are still holes in the ground but no apparent reason for
>them, and they're really obvious unless you have a ground object underneath
>the terrain (defeating the object) or a skybox with a dark lower half ...
>under ground level.
>
>Essentially, I'd like to see terrain cells which are "holes" that are
>outside the browser's viewing radius being filled in, otherwise there is no
>context for the hole when the surrounding objects aren't visible.
>
>Grims
>

Jul 26, 2002, 6:31pm

Too bad the gradient sky doesn't do it too. I have it going from light blue horizon to black bottom but the fading isn't the same as that of the top half so it's mostly blue on the bottom half. :/

[View Quote] > If you have a dark skybox, activating a black fog helps to hide the holes that could be seen far away.
>
[View Quote]

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