   Terrain Rendering
  What is the best method for heightmap terrain rendering? I have looked at ROAM CLOD and Geomorphing (the articles linked on gamedev). What method is the best? To me, geomorphing  looks like the best method so far, but then you are limited to lightmaps, which I kind of want dynamic shadows but it is up in the air. Is there another method that is good?Thanks.   
  Hi, also take a look at the geometry mip maps. The paper's found at http://research.microsoft.com/~hoppe/. It's a really fast algorithm, and there's a version that can be run almost 100% on the GPU (with shader model 3.0 only)The compression / decompression part can be ignored if you don't need terrain of hundreads and hundreads of kilometers ^^   ;  You should also take a look at Chunked LOD. It is rather simple, at least compared to ROAM, and more efficient on modern GPUs. (ROAM is from 1997, there were different truths about fast rendering back then)http://www.tulrich.com/geekstuff/chunklod.htmlI wouldn't advise to use ROAM. It's too complicated and it isn't HW friendly, because there aren't (semi-)static vertex buffers. You have to add and remove vertices every frame. HW doesn't like that.Geomorphing is better in this, but Chunked LOD ist simpler and at least as fast. But I don't have numbers to back that up. You should probably do a little more research.Why is there a problem with dynamic shadows in the geomorphing approach? Can't you just project a shadow map on the terrain? What kind of shadows are you interested in? Dynamic shadows of the terrain on itself, like from a moving sun, or dynamic shadows of objects on the terrain, and the objects are moving.There are different solutions to these problems.cheers,Florian   ;  I would say that it depends on how big the terrain is and how detailed you will want it. If it's big... then sure, go with some LOD algorithm, but if it's small. Take a look if you can't just bruteforce heightmap it and then just frustum cull it. Take a look at the Virtual Terrain's index of LOD algorithms. It's probably one of the best places to look at what each LOD algorithm does accompanied by their papers.I hope this helps.Take care.;Quote:Original post by Anonymous PosterWhy is there a problem with dynamic shadows in the geomorphing approach? Can't you just project a shadow map on the terrain? What kind of shadows are you interested in? Dynamic shadows of the terrain on itself, like from a moving sun, or dynamic shadows of objects on the terrain, and the objects are moving.Well I wanted to do dynamic sun shadows, the other shadows shouldnt be affected, correct? I will try the methods listed, but I have not done any shaders yet, so it will be an experiance. I really wanted a tutorial on it, papers dont really show someone who hasnt done it yet how to do it, but I will try.