VIS and acceptable tri-count these days.

Post by **obsidian** » Mon Nov 06, 2006 2:25 am

Quack wrote:Are there limits for the viewable distance of an object? Let's say you have a skybox, and the distance from the building you are standing in and the structural object being rendered is about 30,000 units away. Since the skybox has a very low tris count, could you add some very low tris structural to add perspective without any serious rendering problems? Most of the things I would like to add are just simple planar images of buildings/motifs that mesh in with the skybox.

Use Q3Map2 projection skybox entities.

Post by **Shallow** » Mon Nov 06, 2006 1:23 pm

One thing that can happen with geometry placed in the _skybox area is that the 'inflated' version of it can get so big that the engine can't handle the triangle sizes, and they become degenerate. You'll know this if you see it. It's an easy thing to fix though, just subdivide the geometry until it stops happening.

Post by **Quack** » Wed Nov 08, 2006 8:55 pm

How does VIS deal with six sided skyboxes that contain buildings or sfx? I know that the default q3 skyboxes show one row of the sky at a time as it becomes visible. Although, most of the maps I've seen with skyboxes that contain buildings or sfx almost always calculate the extra geometry when it's not visible. I'm wondering if there is a benefit to making geometry within the map itself, instead of the skybox, so that VIS will know not to render the structures that are meant to be part of the skyline.

Post by **Hipshot** » Thu Nov 09, 2006 8:12 pm

Quack wrote:How does VIS deal with six sided skyboxes that contain buildings or sfx? I know that the default q3 skyboxes show one row of the sky at a time as it becomes visible. Although, most of the maps I've seen with skyboxes that contain buildings or sfx almost always calculate the extra geometry when it's not visible. I'm wondering if there is a benefit to making geometry within the map itself, instead of the skybox, so that VIS will know not to render the structures that are meant to be part of the skyline.

I've noted this a while ago. Just adding a little sun in the skyportal adds about ~350 extra tris and adds little to the fillrate and overdraw. I think it has something to do with that the 3d sky surrounds the map in another way. But since it's so few triangles added (if you don't have an insane amount of things in the portal) I don't see it as a problem. I think it would be a bigger problem making the actual map size 300x larger, both to r_speeds and compiletimes.