Does anyone know where i can find a tutorial that discusses the development of a 3d engine for outdoors environments? Any information would be apriciated.

Flipcode has a rather large tutorial on writing a 3d engine...I'm not sure if it covers outdoor stuff, though.

Martee
Magnum Games


Edited by - Martee on September 15, 2000 10:46:19 PM

Flipcode''s tutorial is for an indoor portal engine

Flipcode''s tutorial is for an indoor portal engine

There''s more than One Tutorial on Flipcode, and a lot of concept aply to both.

You''ve got quite a way... writing a shitty engine will be a fair bit of learning. A good one is much harder.

First of all I''d create a small static level of detail engine, just with frustum culling. Next, create an engine with fine occlusion culling. Then try a dynamic LOD engine.

You''ll need a bit of math to get up and running too.

like a previous poster, go to flipcode. Read up a bit before moving on to engine two. My current fav fine occlusion technique is the beamtree as it worls equally well in all angles and can easily include non terrain occluders. Harmless algoritms has a good run down of the main terrain occlusion techniques. Again it''s at flipcode.

My fav LOD technique right now is called VIPM.

Once you exhause flipcode''s many resources have a lok at charles blooms site. It''s quite a bit more advanced but def worth the read. Flipcode has a link to the cbloom website.

You''ll take a few iterations before you''ll have an engine worth integrating in to your game...

For even more reading try longbows forum (?? www.longbowdigitalarts.com ) and also gamasutra''s site. Two good documents at gamasutra are by Brian Turner on ROAM and another by Thatcher Ulrich on Adaptive Quadtree''s. Once you understand these have a look around for View Indepedent Progressive Mesh''s. They are def the way to go.

HTH

gimp