Graphics engines was RE: [MUD-Dev] Jeff's Rant: A World Full of Wheel-Makers

[Brian Hook]

At 10:43 AM 5/22/01 +0100, Dan wrote:

> Surely with MMORPGs, you have a more limited choice as you need an
> engine capable of rendering out door geometry which a BSP based
> engine (a la Quake 3, Unreal (not the latest unreleased one)
> etc. etc.) is entirely unsuited for?

Quite true.

> Of course not using BSP means that the gfx quality is generally
> below peoples expectations.

Actually, that's technically not true.  A BSP is just a form of
spatial organization that has some handy properties, but over time its
relevance has diminished greatly.  I would actually be surprised if
any modern engine heavily relied on a BSP for, say, visible surface
removal or even collision.

> Is there actually an engine available that can cover both indoor
> rendering and outdoor using a hybrid engine with proper portaling?

This isn't that difficult to do intrinsically, the problem is that
you're effectively writing two special purpose engines -- the interior
engine and the exterior engine.  And if you want to get picky, you may
end up having to write two forms of exterior engine: large scale (top
of mountain/flight sim) and near scale (walking on a footpath).

So it's just a lot of work.  In my experience the greater problems
have been balancing the trade offs between:

  - detail and scale (1cm resolution at 10km viewing distances)

  - artist control and massive content generation/storage space

  - cutting edge graphics vs. maximum compatibility

These are far more significant problems than interior vs. exterior,
because the trade offs are tricky and controversial.  If you want
stencil buffer shadows or long distance viewing without Z-buffer
artifacts, you can pretty much kiss Voodoo3 support good bye.  If you
want Dot3 bump mapping support, then you can kiss TNT/TNT2 support
good bye.  And while you hear the mantra of "scalable!  Make it
scalable!" repeated over and over, the reality is that you can scale
the technology but not the content.

Brian Hook

_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev