Hello fellow game programmers,
For quite a while now i'm trying to create a planet renderer, just for fun. The fun seems to be taken over by frustration however since i can't really solve the LOD problem for spherical terrains.
The thing is, i read almost everything i found and i'm still having troubles understanding the concepts behind some of the techniques.
1. Most of the techniques i hear are using quadtrees.
So they use 6 quadtrees forming a cube. Question is, how is that cube mapped to the actual sphere?
2. How can i make it fast?
Some techniques use the old school glVertex* and some use VBO.
Using the deprecated features of OpenGL is out of question, so how can i
use the VBO here?
Do i really have to create a VBO for all of my children quads down to the lowest recursion level?
If so, that could take a hell lot of VRAM space.
Or do i have to constantly update the VBO and IBO, thus abusing the glBufferData every time i need to update a quadtree?
3. Cracks in the ground.
How is this issue solved when using the VBO/IBO?
From what i've learned, it's all a matter of checking whether our neighbours have a lower LOD than us, and if they do, cut some edges
and weld some vertices.
How do i do that using VBOs and IBOs?
4. Are there any documented open sourced projects that i can use for reference?
I know about proland, but i can't really find my way inside it's source code.
Thank you!