I just had a look at that hardware heightmap thing on flipcode, and while the screenshot looks great, when I actually ran the demo, it was pretty unplayable. I mean, it ran fast enough, but as you turn your head, all the terrain points wave up and down as the sampling moves from point to point. It''s sort or hard to describe, but basically it looks like there''s ripples in the terrain.

I''m certainly no expert on this, so I was wondering if you guys knew of how to remove this rippling? Is that what the map( x, y ) function does? I don''t see how, because the height of one point would still move up and down as you turn your head. The only way I can think of removing it is if you shoot rays out in a direction-independant way (i.e. always shoot rays in the world-space direction, no matter which direction your head is face (but only shoot them in direction you''re looking...) - if you get my meaning), but even then, you''d still get it when you walk around...

codeka.com - Just click it.

Voxels are probably best suited for things other than rendering, such as Collision detection, world deformations, and pathfinding. It would be cool to see someone implement a polygonal engine that uses some of the other features of a voxel engine.