Distance of visibility?

Game Engine Game Engine Support and Discussion
1

I have a large map, Desert Map, with artillary and tanks. For instance, I need to be able to see further. I guess is can I increase the viewing distance in the camera?

The NDN…

2

I’m pretty sure that would work. :smiley:

3

hmm, i dont think u can, the max vieuw distance is like, 100 blender units, i think youll have to resize the whole thing in the end…

4

you can increase the ClipEnd value to 5000

cheers
Piran

5

there was a demo that was included in the 2.25 package. It was a tutorial on sectoring. Maybe you can use that if the ClipEND option becomes too complex or resource heavy.

6

Just select the camera, and go to edit buttons. There you can change clipEnd to the distance you need.

7

… and if you want to be really savy you can have a property, and an ipo on clipend so that the user (or you) may adjust it in real time

(you can also play with an ipo on the lens property, can make zooming…)

8

Subquestion:

Are Objects out of the Cameras visible Range calculated by the Engine? Can i use that to speed up my Game?

Thx, Doc

9

i dont think so, but it renders all object within the range… ppl arw working to make blender only render on-screen objects instead of everything that is in a certain range…

10

Blender already has visibility culling. I did a quick experiment to test it:

I made a plane, gave it a texture, put it in front of the camera and duplicated it 1000 times. I then started the game and checked the framerate, it was 36 FPS. Then I selected a plane and set it to invisible (since they were linked copies, all planes went invisible.) and checked the framrate again, it was 56 FPS. Then I set the planes visible again but flipped the normals so they were facing away from the camera, the game ran at 56 FPS again. Finaly, I flipped the normals back, and moved all the planes behind the camera, again the framerate was 56 FPS.

The conclusion: Invisible faces are 56% faster for the game engine to calculate, and probably are not being rendered.

11

I’m not totally sure, but in looking through the code, I havent seen anywhere where it culls the faces. So I believe this increase is due to opengl not actually having to draw the faces, however all the faces are still processed in pretty much a brute force manner. I think opengl may have some built in visibility culling, but there needs to be more techniques.

I am trying, but lack much knoledge. Zarf is doing a lot, but I’m not sure how much drive he has to complete it. So we will see where we end up:)

12

Thanx for Your Help Men. :smiley:
Doc