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Apr 21, 2006, 3:05am

Introduce a new "Level Of Detail" (LOD) parameter to objects.

What the parameter does is make it visible outside of the user's normal
Visibility range, much like the current terrain, up to a Range set in the
world options.

Ordinarily all objects are not rendered outside the user's visibility, but
if a switch is turned on for this object is does become visible outside this
range. But it also would be invisible inside the user's visibility range.
The purpose of this would be to place VERY low polygon objects in place of
high detailed objects. For example, say the users visibilty is set to 100,
and a high detailed house with lots of furniture and walls is within that
range. Currently if the user is more than 100 meters away they would see
nothing there. With the level of detail option they might instead see a
cube roughly the size of that house. At 400 meters away this cube would
become invisible again.

Clearly it is a dangerous kind of thing to implement in open building worlds
so it would also require a per world setting.

The whole concept of LOD is part of VRML modelling but may be in other
languages. In VRML the LOD is set within the object itself, and if it were
to be implemented within AW it would be a command such as "LOD Outside",
with the default being "LOD Inside". An object could be comprised of
several clumps each specifying a different LOD. A tree could be with many
verts/polys for its "LOD Inside" but a sprite for "LOD Outside".

Ref: http://www.vrmlworlds.com/developer/tutorials/basic/lod1.html

~ Justin

Apr 22, 2006, 12:01am

Is this possible to include in AW?

AW generates everything on the fly to each browser, so it would be tricky..
Only way I see it possible is to deny users on lower-end systems.

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May 3, 2006, 12:50am

Purpose of Level of Detail really is to make lower end systems run
better when viewing objects off in the distance. Say now that at 100m
vis they may have issues. Add a LOD that decreases between 50 and 100m
to different levels, and they'd be rendering fewer polygons off in the
distance, so they'd run faster.

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May 3, 2006, 8:37am

Ah, right.. My inaccurate knowledge of LODs..

Thanks for the explaination. :)

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