Megatextures in QW's

Post by **Lenard** » Tue Oct 11, 2005 3:25 am

You guys know about this, right? How does it work? Why is it so awesome? I know the basics but how does it really work and why is it better?

Post by **Mr.Magnetichead** » Tue Oct 11, 2005 6:43 am

because you touch yourself at night

Post by **Eraser** » Tue Oct 11, 2005 7:27 am

I have no idea how it works tbh, all I know is that it's related to terrain mapping.

Post by **^misantropia^** » Tue Oct 11, 2005 10:27 am

It's supposed to render large slabs of high-detail terrain without performance loss. As to how it works, no idea (extensive use of LOD?). I believe the D3 engine has it already built in but doesn't put it to use in the game.

Post by **Lenard** » Tue Oct 11, 2005 10:42 am

HAh, quite blatantly.

Post by **o'dium** » Tue Oct 11, 2005 10:46 am

To put it simple, take a massive res texture. Cut it into chunks to fit into the memory, place it over the terrain, and load what needs to be loaded the in the detail it needs to be loaded.

Its not id's tech, its been around for YEARS. Its jsut id have suddenly said "we made it, bwha!" and everybody suddenly wants to know

Post by **Eraser** » Tue Oct 11, 2005 10:53 am

o'dium wrote:To put it simple, take a massive res texture. Cut it into chunks to fit into the memory, place it over the terrain, and load what needs to be loaded the in the detail it needs to be loaded.

Its not id's tech, its been around for YEARS. Its jsut id have suddenly said "we made it, bwha!" and everybody suddenly wants to know

Maybe the theoretic idea wasn't originally from id Software, but the way to implement it and put it to use in a game certainly was.

Post by **MKJ** » Tue Oct 11, 2005 11:11 am

im pretty sure morrowind uses this system as well (although its not called megtexturing there)

Post by **o'dium** » Tue Oct 11, 2005 11:13 am

Eraser wrote:
o'dium wrote:To put it simple, take a massive res texture. Cut it into chunks to fit into the memory, place it over the terrain, and load what needs to be loaded the in the detail it needs to be loaded.

Its not id's tech, its been around for YEARS. Its jsut id have suddenly said "we made it, bwha!" and everybody suddenly wants to know
Maybe the theoretic idea wasn't originally from id Software, but the way to implement it and put it to use in a game certainly was.

Negative

Its the same as Per Pixel Lighting as well. id didn't invent that either, its been around for ages. So yeah, the way id do it may be a bit better, may be a bit worse, may even be the same, "we dont know yet". But the fact remains, people on QuakeSrc have been messing with it for years before ET:QW was even heard of, before Q4 even went public.

Post by **Grudge** » Tue Oct 11, 2005 2:08 pm

As long as one haven't released an actual commercial product using this shiny new tech one should just shut the fuck up with the "Oh noes, I did it first!!!1" bullshit.

Post by **Eraser** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 7:32 am

o'dium wrote:
Eraser wrote:
o'dium wrote:To put it simple, take a massive res texture. Cut it into chunks to fit into the memory, place it over the terrain, and load what needs to be loaded the in the detail it needs to be loaded.

Its not id's tech, its been around for YEARS. Its jsut id have suddenly said "we made it, bwha!" and everybody suddenly wants to know
Maybe the theoretic idea wasn't originally from id Software, but the way to implement it and put it to use in a game certainly was.
Negative Its the same as Per Pixel Lighting as well. id didn't invent that either, its been around for ages. So yeah, the way id do it may be a bit better, may be a bit worse, may even be the same, "we dont know yet". But the fact remains, people on QuakeSrc have been messing with it for years before ET:QW was even heard of, before Q4 even went public.

PPL? I think Creative were the first to do that

Post by **MKJ** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 10:41 am

Kaziganthe wrote:
MKJ wrote:im pretty sure morrowind uses this system as well (although its not called megtexturing there)
nope

IIRC it's more procedural than a big-assed texture being swapped out in chunks

oh. well i dont know the advanced details of such procedures, but the way odium explained it is how morrowind does it (and maybe even tribes2 too, even

)

Post by **Kat** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 8:26 pm

Kaziganthe wrote:
MKJ wrote:im pretty sure morrowind uses this system as well (although its not called megtexturing there)
nope

IIRC it's more procedural than a big-assed texture being swapped out in chunks

Yep MorrowWind loads 'zones' into game, blocks of predefined map space, MegaTexture is more 'procedural' when compared to that 'old' method.

Although no one's released any info on it officially, the way it seems to be implimented has parallels with LOD on patch meshes in Q3 - the further away you are the less detail in shown - it's a sort of continuous LOD applied to terrain.

Don't ask for any more than that though because generally speaking aside from the academic papers on this nothing is known about how it's been implimented in Q4 or ET:QW.

Ah found the thread I was looking for
http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=10673