Terrain lag
by Mitchell Talmadge · in Torque 3D Beginner · 10/29/2010 (9:59 am) · 5 replies
For some reason, whenever I spawn a terrain block, it lags me quite a bit. I noticed that I can hardly play on a 5x5 terrain block, where as on other games that have terrain blocks that go on and on cause no lag at all. Do you have any ideas of why this might be? I just started torque 3D. :I
About the author
I have been scripting mods for a game called "Blockland" and I decided to take a shot at making my own game. I am currently working on my own game titled "Celestial Online".
#2
How detailed is your terrain? How many material layers? How advanced are the materials -- ie. are they using normals, details, parallax, and/or side projection? How big are the texture sizes for your terrain materials.
All of those play a part in overall performance.
10/29/2010 (6:55 pm)
Output some metrics for comparison.How detailed is your terrain? How many material layers? How advanced are the materials -- ie. are they using normals, details, parallax, and/or side projection? How big are the texture sizes for your terrain materials.
All of those play a part in overall performance.
#3
10/30/2010 (5:43 am)
Alright, so I tried lowering the detail of the terrain, which didn't really help, but then I tried deleting everything; sky, terrain, water, everything. It is still laggy. This is really weird. I can play any other torque 3D game just fine. :I 
#4
10/30/2010 (4:02 pm)
Try changing the lighting from advanced to basic. That can fix a ton of lag.
#5
10/31/2010 (11:01 am)
Thanks! :) 
Associate Steve Acaster
[YorkshireRifles.com]
Terrain comes in 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096 --- keep it a "power of 2". This is how detailed it is. 256 = 100k+ triangles, 1024 = 2m+, 4096 = 33m+ triangles (which is a helluva lot).
SquareSize is how large each square (2 triangles) is.
If you set it to 1, that's 1 metre (in standard scale - but you can choose whatever scale you like by making models to that size).
If you set it to 8 that's 8 metres (which in a 256 gives you just over 2km and in a 4096 gives you a whopping 32km)