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More from Torque Game Engine Advanced


Torque 3D Owner J.C. Smith
#1
01/31/2007 (8:43 pm)
It's a completely differnet system, where the Atlas system is based on ChunkedLOD and the legacy is a heightmap. Atlas is a mesh, it can support things like walls that go straight up, or mushroom head like shapes. Unfortunately there are no tools right now to import anything other than a heightfield, so you won't really be able to take advantage of that.

What you will gain with Atlas though is faster rendering, more control over complexity level, and the ability to create much larger non-repeating terrains. Legacy terrain will repeat after 2x2km. Atlas can create much larger. People throw out that it can do virtually unlimited sized terrains, but good luck importing them. The largest I ever got to go through was 64x64km which is pretty huge. Atlas support both unique terrain (a texture stretched across your terrain) or blended terrain (where it blends 4 textures together and generally gives a better appearance).

What you lose with atlas is the ability to use the in-game terrain editor, and the ability to cut holes in terrain.