Game Development Community

Light Culling Possible?

by Marcus L · in Torque 3D Professional · 03/22/2010 (3:32 pm) · 3 replies

After asking so many questions i can't separate whats a bad or a good question anymore, anyways ->...

Is light culling possible, or is there any particular reason why that's a bad idea. And if it works, is there any way to make zones cull lights. I'm getting this idea form my previous thread where Steve Acaster said
Quote:I have triggers that turn lights off if players aren't in an area

Note: I hope this isn't already integrated, and btw. I'm on 1.1a.

Thanks,
NextNext Thread
PrevPrevious Thread
More from Torque 3D Professional


Associate Tom Spilman
Sickhead Games
#1
03/23/2010 (11:26 am)
Culling lights based on zones is a good optimization, but we have not implemented it yet.

The reason is that the zone culling is all tangled in the old Interior/DIF code which makes it very difficult to do proper culling for arbitrary scene queries like getting lights.

The win from culling lights would 1 draw call per unshadowed light and *possibly* some draw calls from the shadows. I say possibly because we already test occlusion of shadowed lights to skip updating the shadows.

So it would help... but unless you have 100s of lights and a well zoned level the win may be minor.

Torque 3D Owner Marcus L
#2
03/23/2010 (11:32 am)
Good to know Tom, but will this ever be implemented if "the win may be minor" is the case?

Associate Tom Spilman
Sickhead Games
#3
03/23/2010 (12:16 pm)
It will... its just not a high priority for us at the moment.