Terrain Rendering Project

All Scenes can be started using the corresponding .bat files. Information about all scenes can be found at the end of this document.

Basic Options

can be changed by modifying the file 'config.cfg'. You can (de-)activate

• Disable_HardwareVertexShader
  If this value is set to 'yes' the vertex shader program is executed by the CPU instead of the GPU. On some systems (those with an old graphics card and fast CPU) this can speed up the overall performance.
  
  
• MergeSmallestPatches
  If this value is set to 'yes' all smallest patches (those with just one quad) will be merged into one large list. For most scenes this will result in a speed up.
  
  

Navigation

Steering is done (if activated) by using mouse and keyboard.
There are three navigation modes (switch by pressing <m>):

All keyboard bindings can be modified in 'config.cfg'.
These are the default settings:

• INSPECT
  
  • forward: <w>
  • back: <s>
  • up: <mouse-left> or <e>
  • down: <mouse-right> or <q>
  • left: <a>
  • right: <d>
  • rotate by using the cursor keys (or mouse)
  • by pressing <shift-left> all movements are accelerated
  • by pressing <space> single step movement is activated
• FLY
  • rotate by using the cursor keys (or mouse)
  • speed up: <space>
  • by pressing <shift-left> all movements are accelerated
• ROTATE
• navigation is similar to the INSPECT mode, but the camera rotates around a point in front of the camera.
  

Miscellaneous settings

pressing <f> switches wireframe on/off
pressing <v> freezes the visibility calculation (no more vis-updates)
pressing <alt-enter> switches to and from fullscreen

It is possible to record and replay benchmarks: New benchmarks are written into a file 'bench.new'.
To play a benchmark add the corresponding line into the scene-file.
(have a look into maps/grandcanyon/terrain.cfg).

Modifying the demo scenes

Any information about a scene is stored in a cfg file.
All settings in the cfg files are documented. The most interesting settings are:

• MipmapFilter: Sets the type of mipmap filtering
• ClipPlanes: Change the viewing range
• MaxTerrainError: Defines how fine the terrain is tesselated
  (the smaller the value, the more polygones will be created)
• RenderMode: Selects a render mode (SPLIT does no Morphing)

Overview of the demo scenes

gamescene

Resembles a typical game scene (without any objects on the surface).
This scene uses three materials plus a cloud shadow layer.
Additionally skybox and a lensflare is rendered.
The complete scene consists of 131.072 triangles.

gamescene_minimum

Same terrain as gamescene but uses only one material and no skybox or lensflare.
The complete scene consists again of 131.072 triangles.

grandcanyon

Part of the Grand Canyon dataset by Hugues Hoppe (thanks).
The complete scene consists of 524.288 triangles.

mountains

Demonstrates the usage of PVS.
The complete scene consists again of 131.072 triangles.

© 2003 by Daniel Wagner