Hmm, just thinking aloud:

Maybe you could load different Mip-Map levels with different densities of rain particles, making the further ones more 'opaque' or 'dense' than the close mipmap levels. This way you might be able to use less (larger) particles at further distances, still have the visual complexity, and maybe blur the further mipmap levels a little so you could just fog after about 20-50 ft.

If you try it, tell me how it works. (I'm thinking of using quad shaped particles, rather large ones, kinda similar to how some 1/2 complex hair models are (ya know, with the "patches" (not bezier) of hair - maybe you could make "patches" of rain) )

Up close you could scale the polygon and tex coords to lessen the appearent tiles/patches and prevent excessive overdraw. Or maybe just switch from patches to particles at a certian distance. The patch would be 2d, but each patch could represent a 3d cluster of particles... maybe associate a seed value for generating the 3d offsets from the patch's orgin or something (unless that's too much processing)

-Michael

[edited by - Thr33d on October 15, 2003 12:37:56 PM]

*dances around singing* - still no rain

Thanks for the replies guys!!

I guess i'll stick with a particle system and use some sprites, calculate the vertices for each sprite and store them in a vertex array and render that.




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[edited by - Ilici on October 16, 2003 12:23:46 PM]