Hi,

I'm working on a project with a tile-based landscape.
There are serval types of tiles: water tiles, grass tiles, wall tiles,... Each tile has its own class (TWaterTile, TGrassTiles,...) with a draw procedure. This procedure uses glNormal3fv, glVertex3fv,... to draw the tile.
I've a 3-dimensional array where all the tiles are stored in. I draw the visible tiles using frustum culling and an OcTree.

This works quite nice. Should I use glNormal3fv, glVertex3fv,... to do the drawings or should I better use other methods?
Previously I used vertex arrays but that's rather restricted.

normally I would prefer using vertexarrays or vertex buffer objects, since these are much faster.
But since you used those before i'd want to know why you these are too restricted for your needs?

It is not possible to enable or disable OpenGL capabilities while drawing a vertex array. If you use vertex array's for a tile based landscape you can't add a tile with more polygons or just remove a tile from the landscape.

I just found that my video card supports Vertex Buffers. I tried a nehe demo but i don't think that Vertex Buffers are faster than using glvertex3f.

Does your card support the buffers in hardware, or are thy yust software emulated?[/code]

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I previously thought VBO's were not supported so they might be emulated by mesa (I'm using Linux) or the driver.

Vertex Buffers are usually many times faster than glbegin/glend. There are supported in hw since the gf1.

Thanks.
I can't find GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object in the extention list at http://www.delphi3d.net/hardware/viewre ... eport=1076 so VBO's are probably emulated.

Vertex Arrays are flexable. You just modify the data passed to them on the fly. For example say u hold all ur levels Vertex's in an arrray called Vertexs, and say u hold the face data in a array called Faces (original Names eh)

You can then have a procedure like



Making a list each frame doesn't seem to cause any lag

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Free Map Editor - Game Requirements - Stucuk.Net
-Stu

Is it possible to change the textures while using vertex array's? Or should I put all textures in one texture and then change the texture coördinates?

when i use them im only sending one face to opengl at a time. so a texture is bound for each face.

Your solution may work better for you.

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Free Map Editor - Game Requirements - Stucuk.Net
-Stu

Your best solution would probably be to sort the frustrum culled tiles by the type of textures you are applying, and use a VBO per list of Tiles

This way you get the maximum amount of polygons in one list, with the least amount of material changes.

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