Hi, I''ve been reading some stuff about landscape algo''s (and played a bit with some algo''s), but I''m having some questions. When you use ROAM or some other dynamic algo, the further you go away, the less detailed it gets. Lesser polygons are drawn. You''ll get this effect: Close: *---\ ----* ---*---/ Far: *----------------* (This is just a 2d example). But when you place a object at the center vertex and render it when it''s close, it''ll appear right. However, when you render it when it''s far away, the object will appear "in" the ground. Ofcourse, it all depends how you set your settings in the algo, but like I said before, I haven''t played that much with it (yet). Anybody got any comments on this? Or will I just have to keep my llandscape more detailed? Thx, Steve_-

Yeah, that''s what everyone runs into with the ROAM method. The normal method to fix this is to tesselate your terrain around objects giving higher detail. If you are using static objects, I would make sure that they extend under the terrain by the maximum world-space error bounds of your algorithm so it doesn''t appear to float in the air depending on the LOD used. That way I wouldn''t have to tesselate around the static objects. But I would tessellate with dynamic objects.

One thing I''ve used is to have the height of the terrain be as it is represented on the screen. Basically, an object''s height is an offset from the current terrain height at its location. The terrain''s getHeight method takes the current LOD into account and always places objects above ground. They move so little and with the terrain that you don''t even see it.

Karg

Yeah, that''s also a viable solution. I find that this method only works good if u use a geomorphing scheme with your terrain and geomorph the position of the objects accordingly.

Best to implement both and see what you think.