Just posted the new features of blitzterrain in first post. Here they are:
BlitzTerrain 1.06 NEW FEATURES!!
Blitzterrain has just been through a complete rewrite! 1.06 is the first version of BlitzTerrain to be released after the rewrite. Some of the new features are:
Brand New Rendering Engine
In the past, Blitzterrain used DBPros rendering engine. But this isnt very good for Terrains so I written a new DirectX Rendering engine from scratch. Its ALOT faster now, especially with high detail terrains.
QuadMapping
This is an algorithm I invented. It allows for quick terrain modification, get ground heights for terrains with quads of different sizes and rotations. It can completely regenerate a 256x256 terrain 70 times per seccond. Or edit every single vertex on a 256x256 terrain 100 times per seccond.
QSP (Quad Space Partitioning aka QuadTrees)
This is used for super fast frustum culling, LOD and front to back rendering. Front to back rendering renders all the detail closest to the player first, this is so DirectX doesnt render things on top of each other and improves Pixel Shader performance! This also causes lower detail sectors to be 4x as big, reducing draw calls and getting rid of most of the LOD "popping". Reducing draw calls is more speed enhancing than reducing the poly count.
Multi camera frustum culling
This is a feature that was added into Blitzterrain 1.05 but was very difficult to get working. It now works perfectly and is easy to add into your games.
60x Faster Loading speeds!
Yes, you have read that right, BlitzTerrain loads and generates a 256x256 terrain in 0.1 secconds. And can load and generate a 2048x2048 terrain in under 10 secconds. In the past it took 6 secconds to generate a 256x256 terrain and 10 minutes to generate a 2048x2048 terrain.
Easier to code with
All the parts of BlitzTerrain which were difficult to understand, are now alot easier! Such as the build loop has been made alot easier and doesnt even need to be used anymore if you don't want to use loading bars!
Dark GDK with OOP Support
Yes, I am being serrious about this. Blitzterrain now supports Dark GDK. Heres a code sample.
BT_TERRAIN MyTerrain;
MyTerrain->SetHeightMap(HeightMapImg)
MyTerrain->SetScale(20.0);
MyTerrain->SetLOD(3);
MyTerrain->Build(ObjectID);
BT SaveTerrain TerrainID,File$
TerrainID=BT LoadTerrain(File$,ObjectID)
These 2 commands load and save terrains.
Save can be called anytime after BT BuildTerrain so you dont acctually have to generate the terrain after building it.
The Load command will load the terrain without generating it. You can then do a build loop to generate the terrain.
