Quote:Original post by jasjas
Hi Trapper Zoid, the gist of his claims are:
1: a number of nested regular grids (clipmaps) surrounding the viewer,
2: the contents of each clipmap is cached in video memory,
3: each clipmap contains 1/2 the resolution of the previous one,
Surely these three steps have been done before, right? I'm not so sure about storing the data in video memory, but using multiple regular grids to represent terrain data must have been used? That seems reasonably obvious to me; similar techniques are used in computer vision for looking for features.
Quote:
4: geomorphing the vertices between shared edges, and
5: when the viewer moves, the clipmaps are incrementally filled with new data using toroidal (wrap-around) access.
I'm not that sure what steps 4 and 5 involve. Is step 4 linking the seams between the high detail clipmap close to the camera with the lower detail clipmaps further away? I'm also not entirely sure what step 5 means, either. It's possible these are new, because I'm not that knowledgable about the hardware side of things, or what's involved with step 4. However, I have seen LOD implemented in terrain engines for ages.
It could be that the novel part is using video memory for blazingly fast performance; I wouldn't know if that was new or not.
Heh, I suppose I'd be more use if I was actually a graphics programmer [smile]. I suppose I'm just curious about everything, especially new algorithms to do cool stuff.
Quote:Original post by phantom
instead of all this knee-jerk reaction to it why not email the guy who helpped create the system and ask what the score is?
I was going to recommend this as well, but I forgot [smile]. However, a problem might be that the patent is granted to Microsoft, not the researchers involved. Most researchers I know would be thrilled for people to use their algorithms, but the legal department at Microsoft might have other views.