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Submitted by , posted on 13 February 2002
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Image Description, by
These are some screenshots from TYPHOON, a landscape engine by Stefano Lanza.
Technology:
Quadtree area mapping
CLOD geometry reduction
Unique terrain texturing
Illumination based on horizons mapping
Bump mapped water reflections
Trees
Realistic skydome
Sky fx (lens flares and sun burnout)
D3D 8.x hardware acceleration
Top screenshots show CLOD technique in action. Typhoon uses Peter Lindstrom's
CLOD algorithm "Real-Time, Continuos Level of Detail Rendering of Height Fields"
to reduce geometry in realtime, the results being high detail and long-distance
views at interactive fps.
Next are some sky images: the skydome is smoothly coloured according to day
time. Scrolling clouds, lens flares and sun burnout are the sky effects that add
to its visual impact.
Terrain illumination is based on horizons mapping. Horizons are calculated for
each point, then used to get the sun and sky contribution to the terrain
lighting. The first image was taken in a dark valley, an other image shows a
mountain peak casting its shadow on the terrain below. Note that also water and
trees are properly lit.
The terrain is mapped with unique textures, these are generated in realtime
blending a set of base textures according to the slope and altitude of each
point of the terrain, then cached. Near terrain is rendered a second pass with
detail-mapping.
Last images show lakes reflecting the surrounding scene. Latest Typhoon version
supports bump-mapped reflections.
The terrain is pre-compiled by an utility. Huge terrain size are supported (up
to 8193x8193 grid size), catmull-rom interpolation is used to interpolate the
original heightmap.
Visit Typhoon homepage at http://gpi.infomedia.it/typhoon (soon
http://gameprog.it/typhoon) to download the latest demo.
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