Re: PVS generation

Olivier Montanuy (montanuy@lsun80.lannion.cnet.fr)
Thu, 13 Jun 1996 10:58:19 +0200

Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 10:58:19 +0200
From: Olivier Montanuy <montanuy@lsun80.lannion.cnet.fr>
To: quake-dev@gamers.org
Subject: Re: PVS generation

> Are there actually any games that do PVS or PVS-like computations on
>the fly?

Descent, for instance.
"on the fly" computation is made for a single point (the player) and is
fast, whereas for a whole volume it's much more complex.
But you have to do it for all players position, i.e. almost all the time.
Guess why Descent can set a limit on the max distance for rendering.

For more info, see the Descent editing FAQ and the Descent engine description.

I don't know of any other real full 3D games that does it, and Descent is pretty
limited to mine-like levels. Maybe id is right, but I doubt it.

>> Anyway there ain't no good alternative to an Indigo Impact.
>Awww. But that sucks all the fun out of clever optimizing!... ;-)
Well, a dude from SGI told me they had to use a Z buffer (no other way possible)
and for anti-aliasing they rendered 8 pixels for one on the screen (and took
the mean color, I suppose). Then I looked at my pentium and millenium, and cried.

Olivier