Question about LoD strategy

[Dante80]

Don't really know if this has been discussed before, or if there is any answer by FDEV regarding the subject.

Here is a question. What is FDEVs strategy regarding progression and change for the different levels of detail objects will have in the game?

I was looking at a video for another game in development today, and the developer was trying to explain a couple of techniques they were thinking of using to obfuscate and mask the changes from one LoD to another so that there was no texture popping or other artifacts in the game (techniques like superimposing one lod on top of the other and fading the texture so that transition is smooth, or gradually over-writing the old LoD pixel by pixel until the transition is done).

Considering that Elite deals with huge distances, and has the realistic need to provide a lot of different LoDs for objects like planets or vast stations, is there any information regarding the technique they are going to use for that? If I remember correctly, there is nothing implemented for that currently in PB2.02 (so there is a LOT of texture popping happening in the game).

Any help would be vastly appreciated, cheers..C:

 

[Dante80]

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

This was discussed in the past, and answering my questions devs said mostly that their goal is to nail max resolution model first. When it's done, LoD levels are created and those are usually very good.

Currently popups indicate that LOD levels are either unfinished, or max res model is not finished yet (most likely second one, as they keep adding details to them).

I also asked for fade in/out, but they said that it is costly and they want to nail LOD models as much as they can first.

 

[kwik]

Whilst we don't have max res yet, you can however see frontier's orbis video had a higher quality than what we have at the moment -

http://youtu.be/ex2nGIvbiVI?t=1m41s

can see the trees and buildings and such, pretty sure when I had a look around before it was just one flat texture.

 

[Dante80]

Yep, we don't have max res yet. The question is about transitions though, which is the make of break of any LoD system for immersion imo. Especially if/when planetary landing comes to the table (imagine a planet changing from a dot to a horizon without having LoD transition mechanics in place).

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

I suspect those are two seperate things - one thing is 3d model LOD and other thing is PG LOD - second one is more tricky as you recalculate results of seed according to distance. This however could bring much better LOD performance than for 3d.

 

[StayFrosty]

Considering the visual scape consists mostly of models against a static backdrop, it would be worth it to invest in nice LOD change mechanics, with nice dynamic mesh deformation so you just won't see it, along with geomorphing effects later on when landing on planets.

It's not really a huge worry for small models, you usually never notice LOD changes as long as it's done right, except for huge objects, and indeed, stations and large ships could end up looking akward.