What's the fundamental algorithms? BSP or something else?
by Jane Austen · in Torque Game Engine · 01/09/2002 (1:44 am) · 7 replies
Is there any articles that describes the fundamental algorithms of Torque?
Thanks!
Thanks!
#2
I have some experience with the portal engine, and I know that the terrain will be a bit difficult for a portal based engine. But it seems that torque solved this problem gracefully, so how does it deal with the terrain? And what's the "portal" in an outdoor environment?
01/09/2002 (8:48 am)
You mean the torque is a portal based engine, right? I have some experience with the portal engine, and I know that the terrain will be a bit difficult for a portal based engine. But it seems that torque solved this problem gracefully, so how does it deal with the terrain? And what's the "portal" in an outdoor environment?
#3
It only uses portals between interior and exterior nodes. I think for the landscape it uses a quadtree and some kind of runtime LOD scheme (not a ROAM algorithm, but something similar, Mark F would be the man to speak to).
The portals only really make any sense between interior nodes (between rooms and between the rooms and the outside).
If you look in wireframe (F9 I think in the game, or F8) you'll see the LOD switching on the landscape, from what I can tell its doing some runtime LOD and doing some morphing of points (rather than snapping vertices in and out).
All pretty standard though, although personally I'd have spaced the vertices out a bit more to give a larger area but with less vertices per frame to draw (currently I think the landscape is a bit too poly heavy, so sometime down the road I'll either tweak the LOD metric or space the grid out a bit).
Phil.
01/09/2002 (9:23 am)
Hi Jane,It only uses portals between interior and exterior nodes. I think for the landscape it uses a quadtree and some kind of runtime LOD scheme (not a ROAM algorithm, but something similar, Mark F would be the man to speak to).
The portals only really make any sense between interior nodes (between rooms and between the rooms and the outside).
If you look in wireframe (F9 I think in the game, or F8) you'll see the LOD switching on the landscape, from what I can tell its doing some runtime LOD and doing some morphing of points (rather than snapping vertices in and out).
All pretty standard though, although personally I'd have spaced the vertices out a bit more to give a larger area but with less vertices per frame to draw (currently I think the landscape is a bit too poly heavy, so sometime down the road I'll either tweak the LOD metric or space the grid out a bit).
Phil.
#4
01/09/2002 (2:18 pm)
#5
Another question: which algorithm is more suitable for landscape rendering, quadtree or octree?
Oh, by the way, would you please recommend me some links of articles that introduces LOD and other algorithms you mentioned?
Thank you again!
01/10/2002 (7:27 am)
Thank you very much, Phil!Another question: which algorithm is more suitable for landscape rendering, quadtree or octree?
Oh, by the way, would you please recommend me some links of articles that introduces LOD and other algorithms you mentioned?
Thank you again!
#6
01/10/2002 (8:44 am)
Erm. Mebbe I'm mistaken, but to my understanding, quadtrees are used to subdivide a surface and octrees a volume, so it would be quadtree. Am I right on this? (I'm trying to get these things straight in my head as well) 
Torque 3D Owner Phil Carlisle
Its quite simple really, but you do have to do some work in making the portals to get the most out of it (which is something a lot of mappers arent quite understanding they need to do yet).
Phil.