What's the latest word on terrain performance?
by Dusty Monk · in Torque Game Engine Advanced · 07/06/2009 (4:15 pm) · 1 replies
I actually did a search for this -- honest! But couldn't find a clear answer, or at least one that was more recent than 2 years ago. So going to fire it out there, and please forgive it this has been answered 10,000 times and my search-fu is just weak.
As of TGEA 1.7.1 - which terrain gives the best performance? The quote-unquote legacy terrain, or an atlas terrain, created with L3DT or some such?
The zone I'm building is relatively small -- 1024 x 1024 should be sufficient, and certainly 2048x2048 will be more than sufficient
Much of my terrain will actually be obscured by .DIF's and .DTS's, but not all of it. The terrain that is visible though, I would like to appear as crisp and detailed as feasable.
In-game editing is not a priority. Once the terrain is created, I'm pretty confident I'll be leaving it alone.
The zone is going to have a LOT going on in it. So right now, the overriding consideration, for me at least, is performance. I read in some very old posts that the atlas terrain boasted like a 20% increase in speed over the legacy terrain. But I know Mr. Spillman has been putting an extraordinary amount of work into the terrain since those claims. Currently I'm using the in-game terrain because it's there and it's easy. I don't, in fact, even own L3DT. But if the atlas terrain is a significant performance boost, I should get started right away tackling the issues of building and exporting an atlas terrain into the game.
Thoughts? Experiences?
Thanks in advance,
Dusty Monk
Windstorm Studios
As of TGEA 1.7.1 - which terrain gives the best performance? The quote-unquote legacy terrain, or an atlas terrain, created with L3DT or some such?
The zone I'm building is relatively small -- 1024 x 1024 should be sufficient, and certainly 2048x2048 will be more than sufficient
Much of my terrain will actually be obscured by .DIF's and .DTS's, but not all of it. The terrain that is visible though, I would like to appear as crisp and detailed as feasable.
In-game editing is not a priority. Once the terrain is created, I'm pretty confident I'll be leaving it alone.
The zone is going to have a LOT going on in it. So right now, the overriding consideration, for me at least, is performance. I read in some very old posts that the atlas terrain boasted like a 20% increase in speed over the legacy terrain. But I know Mr. Spillman has been putting an extraordinary amount of work into the terrain since those claims. Currently I'm using the in-game terrain because it's there and it's easy. I don't, in fact, even own L3DT. But if the atlas terrain is a significant performance boost, I should get started right away tackling the issues of building and exporting an atlas terrain into the game.
Thoughts? Experiences?
Thanks in advance,
Dusty Monk
Windstorm Studios
About the author
Dusty Monk is founder and president of Windstorm Studios, an independant game studio. Formerly a sr. programmer at Ensemble Studios, Dusty has worked on AAA titles such as Age of Empires II & III, and Halo Wars.
Torque Owner Stefan Lundmark
I don't think blended Atlases are any faster than blended Legacy blocks, but it's possible.