   Few Questions about Terrain
  I have been reading alot of papers lately about terrain rendering and performance.One of my questions is, if i use octree's to space partiton my terrain, and i also what to use some sort of LOD, wouldnt i have to recalculate the octree every time the level of detail switches for a mesh?Also, alot of places it talks about using quadtree's instead of octree's for terrain. Can someone explain to me why you would use quadtrees? Arent they for 2d things? But terrain has height, depth and width..One more thing, does implementing some sort of LOD really help performance? When i am looking at these papers, there is TONS you have to do and you could only be switching one mesh to a lower LOD, does alot of time, the calculating out weighs what you are saving to send to Opengl? What my question is, is it reallay worth it in mose cases?Thanks alot   "What we do in life, echos in eternity" -- Gladiator[edited by - SkinnyM on February 7, 2004 12:18:09 PM]
  It is, but i think it only will when you precalculate the detail meshes. For example look at games like sacrifice (i know they use LODs), the LODs really helped increasing the speed, but artifacts did occur (because the viewing angle wasn''t used to calculate the low detail meshes). ;  if your terrain does not vary much in height (most cases it does not vary much), there is no necesity implementing octrees, quadtrees are enough.and about LOD - well, why do you think people wrote such loads of papers regarding this topic, if it''s not worth looking at. ;  if your terrain does not vary much in height (most cases it does not vary much), there is no necesity implementing octrees, quadtrees are enough.and about LOD - well, why do you think people wrote such loads of papers regarding this topic, if it''s not worth looking at. 