Some real-life experience w/ height meshes:
I have a heigh-mesh data set for 981x1121 points
Thats about 1 million queds, or 2 million triangles.
The file is under 2MB (one 16-bit short per vertex.)
I have a renderer that can sustain about 3-5 frames
per sec fly/hover/explore of this data set. It runs on
a pentium class machine, with no h/w assist whatsoever --
the software is drawing lit, gouraud-shaded, etc. trinagles.
This trick is to render using a quad-tree (2D version of
the 3D octree, or 2D version of the 1D binary tree), and
mip-map like techniques to choose between levels. The
source code for height-mesh renderer (using OpenGL to draw)
is about 2Klocs.
So, in short -- it can be done.
P.S. I'm working on getting this code to public domain, but
its kind of ugly, kind of hacked, kind of broken, so I am worried
about embarrassing myself if I do put it out ...
-- linas
Sincerely,
Linas Vepstas
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<a href="http://w3.austin.ibm.com/~linas">
Linas Vepstas Graphics Architecture
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11400 Burnet Road External Phone: 1-(512)-838-1116
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