Removing atlas outer edge skirts
by Henri Aalto · in Torque Game Engine Advanced · 07/22/2007 (10:15 am) · 1 replies
Howdy.
I'm trying to maximize the usable surface area of my atlas terrain without completely losing the "immersiveness" at the edge of the terrain. The easy solution would be to use a large enough terrain and restrict the player/camera from moving too close to the edge (i.e. keep them far enough so the edge fades into the fog) but this requires a whole lot of "waste" terrain geometry and texture to (specially if using a long visible distance).
The other easy solutions would be to construct the terrain in such a way that it is either surrounded by water or ends in a massive mountain range (basically a wall) -- both of which I find pretty restricting and unsuitable.
So, I tried a third approach, where the lower half of the skyboxes is painted with the same color as the fog and the edges of the atlas texture fade to the same color. This provides a smooth transition at the outer edges of the terrain (the terrains looks to disappear into a dense fog surrounding the terrain). It is far from perfect, but still suitable for my needs. The only problem are the skirts around the atlas chunks at the outer edges of the terrain, as they tend to change color during LOD changes which spoils the fading effect.
I checked out some of the atlas geometry generation code for creating the skirts, but I found it pretty daunting. What I'm trying to do is to simply prevent the skirt generation at the outer edges of the terrain.
Any thoughts/hints?
P.S: if anyone has a better suggestion for making the terrain edges look aesthetically more pleasing, feel free to share :)
I'm trying to maximize the usable surface area of my atlas terrain without completely losing the "immersiveness" at the edge of the terrain. The easy solution would be to use a large enough terrain and restrict the player/camera from moving too close to the edge (i.e. keep them far enough so the edge fades into the fog) but this requires a whole lot of "waste" terrain geometry and texture to (specially if using a long visible distance).
The other easy solutions would be to construct the terrain in such a way that it is either surrounded by water or ends in a massive mountain range (basically a wall) -- both of which I find pretty restricting and unsuitable.
So, I tried a third approach, where the lower half of the skyboxes is painted with the same color as the fog and the edges of the atlas texture fade to the same color. This provides a smooth transition at the outer edges of the terrain (the terrains looks to disappear into a dense fog surrounding the terrain). It is far from perfect, but still suitable for my needs. The only problem are the skirts around the atlas chunks at the outer edges of the terrain, as they tend to change color during LOD changes which spoils the fading effect.
I checked out some of the atlas geometry generation code for creating the skirts, but I found it pretty daunting. What I'm trying to do is to simply prevent the skirt generation at the outer edges of the terrain.
Any thoughts/hints?
P.S: if anyone has a better suggestion for making the terrain edges look aesthetically more pleasing, feel free to share :)
About the author
Torque Owner PuG
It would be difficult to get a a smooth join on other than flat surfaces but with some experimenting it could be matched nicely enough specially if you limit the player from approach the join too closely.