ScrumbleShip is the most accurate space combat simulation devised to date. Gather resources, construct a capital ship out of individual blocks, then pilot it with AI or human help against other players.
This image is released on a CC-BY-ND 3.0 license
And so yesterday, I implemented a Quad-Cache system to go with our Eight-Cache system, and hooked high resolution, medium, low, and single-block rendering up to our level of detail system. You can see the result here.
For a fun exercise, try to pinpoint where each level of detail changes into the next. It's trickier than it seems!
There's still a little work to be done here - Partially transparent objects do not cache horribly well, for example.
I also created a system for caching animations yesterday. It automatically caches them at every LOD, making them animate cheaply at any distance. It's also remarkably cheap - Rendering an animated block used to cost a huge amount of cpu power. Now it's as cheap as any other block, although it does cost a little extra ram.
Cheers,
-Dirk
This is fantastic. Being able to see more blocks with a much more gradual LOD falloff will make the game more visually enjoyable.
Also, this pic is inspiring me to get back to work on the QMA! She is my ScrumbleShip opus.