Tips for making large scale map landmarks

jinglesjosh

I want to make a central town in my project that is made in the side of a giant robot arm or a crashed space station type thing. I want this to be large and I want players to be able to see it from any distance. Any ideas/tips on creating/managing such a task?

RyanB

If you brute force the camera to have a far plane that is...very far away, you will create numerous problems.  For example, shadowmaps will look very low res.  I have used multiple cameras in the past, one for near objects with a close far plane (60 units or so) and another camera for farther away objects (say near plane at 6000 and far plane at 7000 with no shadows).

The easiest solution is to limit how the player can see the distant objects.  Let them see it through a window or similar portal.  Then you can optimize for that one case.  If you make some kind of open world where the player can constantly see it, near and far, then there are numerous technical challenges which can't be covered in a forum post.