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Why no Octrees in V12?

by Wael Zeenni · in Torque Game Engine · 04/10/2001 (8:52 am) · 2 replies

Hey people,

I was wondering,since Tribes2 is both indoor and outdoor,howcome Octrees were not used in the engine? They seem easy to implement and would be perfect for indoor+outdoor games since it would be easy to do all that visibility determination and collision detection. Maybe I missed something or there is a big disadvantage to using Octrees?
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Torque 3D Owner Brian Smith
#1
04/10/2001 (10:29 am)
Well, for one, there isn't a straightforward way to sort polygons via oct-trees. One could use small BSPs in each terminal oct node, I suppose.

Another thing is that it's not always apparent what the optimal heuristic for finding the most appropriate terminal node is. Size versus face count is the primary issue, and it's slightly context sensitive. All in all though, this isn't too major of an issue I guess.

In any event, after the initial gee-whiz aspect of oct-trees wears off, it becomes plain that they're not REALLY that big of a deal. An ordinary BSP engine with quad-trees works quite well.

Torque 3D Owner Pat Wilson
#2
04/10/2001 (12:13 pm)
Tribes 2 uses BSP indoors and something like a 2d quad tree outdoors.