[MUD-Dev] 3D engines for MUDs

[Mike Sellers]

At 07:42 AM 3/24/98 PST8PDT, Koster, Raph wrote:
>Not to say voxels are bad--they are phenomenal looking in any sort of 
>overhead view application, or fixed distance application. They also do 
>great at terrain as long as you can't get too close to the terrain. 
> They're currently getting trendy in computer game development 

Indeed.  I worked with voxels (real ones, not height-mapped pseudo-voxels
:) ) in medical imaging back in the early '90s.  They are great for showing
irregular or organic surfaces and volumes, and only pixelate if you don't
do some sort of level-of-detail calculations on them -- most products don't
because that requires a huge, well-defined underlying data set and *a lot*
of CPU power.  Still, just as we've seen progressive meshing applications
on PCs, I expect we'll see progressive LOD voxel engines within the next
couple of years.  Personally, I can't wait for my Pentium III GigaPent
machine. ;)

--

Mike Sellers   Chief Alchemist -- Online Alchemy   mike at online-alchemy.com

"One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others 
may despise it, is the invention of good games.  And it cannot be done 
by men out of touch with their instinctive values."  - Carl Jung