I'm building a new worldspace and I happen to have some flat terrain patches, here and there. I've noticed that were the terrain is flat, LOD vertices are rarefied so that it gets very wide triangles.

Skyrim engine seems to work the Full-to-LOD transition as some sort of lift-up: LOD is always fully loaded, but you cant see it near you because it gets hidden few meters below the full terrain; where the full terrain ends, the LOD meshes get moved up to the same height as the full.
The problem is that LOD vertices are moved up only if they're out of the full area: so, where vertices are distant from each other, and thus we have wide triangles, you can see large pits between the full terrain and the LOD one.

So, by reading Oscape documentation, I decided to try using .pts (points) files to tell it to not skip certain points of my terrain. I've even made a C program that generates coordinates for grids of points that perfectly fit tiles so that, theoretically, I'd always have an even distribution of vertices.
I've noticed, by using NIFSkope, that Oscape seems to use only the points I set on tiles' edges and ignore all the rest. So, to give an example, if I set a grid of 16641 points (129*129) for each tile, the 129 points on each side are taken and all the rest that should be in the middle is nowhere to be seen.

Trying a higher "resolution" would be a PitA because my program takes seconds to generate the 4.260.096 coordinates (x,y couples) for a 2x2 quads worldspace, but Oscape takes several minutes to load the resulting 55MB file. I've also tried with lower resolutions like 65*65, 33*33 and even 5*5, but nothing changes, except the vertices at the edges of each tile.

So I'd like to know if there's something wrong with my pattern or with some limitations I didnt know about. Anybody knows why Oscape should ignore my points?


Please, help.... =\

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3rd page and only 17 views....? -.-

Help....! =\

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Help.... =(

I'm not really sure what you're trying to do, but the whole idea of LOD is to have a distant terrain that uses very little processing power (hence the low vertice count).

You'll see a lot of faults in the transition areas when the worldspace is empty. Tamriel is the very same. Once you start to populate the world with trees, rocks, mountains, etc... these transitions are usually obscured / hidden and are hardly noticeable.

Improbable.

I'm talking about pits that are tens of meters wide, like whole cells and over, sometimes.

I'm not trying to use insane high-poly LODs, just distribute vertices more evenly to avoid those pits. =\


Edit: and I'd like to build a landscape that resembles the salt desert in America, which, curse on me, is totally flat and with nothing but salt on it. -.-'

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Anybody....? =\

Zehryo, judging by the response you're getting (or rather, the lack thereof) I think you may be breaking new ground here. It's certainly beyond my expertise, and I think if anyone else here knew the answer they'd have chimed in by now. I'm willing to bet what you're getting into can only be answered by gamesas devs directly, and they hardly ever comment here.

That said, don't give it up... people like you are tremendously valuable to the community by establishing what can and cannot be done with the engine and the CK. If your code is general purpose enough, perhaps you'd consider releasing it? Others might be able to figure out answers if they had your tools to experiment with.

I'm afraid I've already replied to my own questions..... =(

The fact is I realized, by having a look at the source code, that Oscape is probably built just to use ONLY edge points.

I'm tempted to build my own version of Oscape using a custom algorithm with the only purpose of generating meshes from RAW heightmaps. The problem is I lack much of the knowledge I'd need.....and yet....I'm moving in that direction more and more.

If only Ethatron would come back to "public life" and answer some questions!! -.-

Actually:

Anybody's interested in building a different version of an Oscape-like software? Anybody with C/C++ knowledge, patience and spare time who'd like to help me?

I'll check with Geggakloss and see if he's interested.

Thank you! ^.^

He is interested, but don't really have the spare time right now, sorry.