In our city building games we manipulate large parts of the height-map. For example you can build a predefined hill or river. The shape data of this river is stored in 1000’s of height-map points. (using less points is unfortunately not an option for our “serious” games)
We used to call TerrainPage/Quad.setHeight() several times to manipulate the height-map and thus create the river. However in JME3 each call to setHeight forces the setHeight in TerrainPatch to update its VertexBuffer for the LOD geomap. This is of-course a good thing, but makes the method to slow for realtime gaming when called several times.
Is it possible to delay this update until after setting the height of several height-map points at once? For example adding a setHeight method that uses a parameter with a list of coordinates and heights instead of just one point?
That might be an option, I will look into it today.
Yes I agree, there could a method for example for updating points in a radius or a box with a given “function(x,y)”
Here are some preliminary speed results of the changes I am making. You will now be able to pass in a list of coordinates and corresponding height values and they will be updated in bulk. I will commit the changes this evening.
Old setHeight():
Modified 3207 points, took: 206 ms
Modified 3207 points, took: 191 ms
Modified 3207 points, took: 179 ms
Modified 3207 points, took: 142 ms
Modified 3207 points, took: 136 ms
Modified 3207 points, took: 135 ms
Modified 3207 points, took: 136 ms
Modified 3207 points, took: 138 ms
Modified 3207 points, took: 147 ms
Modified 3207 points, took: 138 ms
Modified 3207 points, took: 138 ms
Modified 3207 points, took: 136 ms
Modified 3207 points, took: 137 ms
New setHeight():
Modified 3207 points, took: 18 ms
Modified 3207 points, took: 14 ms
Modified 3207 points, took: 10 ms
Modified 3207 points, took: 4 ms
Modified 3207 points, took: 3 ms
Modified 3206 points, took: 2 ms
Modified 3206 points, took: 3 ms
Modified 3207 points, took: 1 ms
Modified 3206 points, took: 1 ms
Modified 3207 points, took: 1 ms
Modified 3207 points, took: 1 ms
Modified 3207 points, took: 0 ms
Modified 3207 points, took: 1 ms
Modified 3207 points, took: 1 ms
Thanks @Sploreg, your preliminary result look very promising and the solution for our game! The list parameter is also the best option for us. Tomorrow is a busy day at a conference, but I will certainly give it a try this weekend.
Cheers,
Maxim
Ok it is committed.
Check out TerrainTestModifyHeight to see what it does as an example.
I have changed our code to work with the new method parameters and the results are perfect. Thxs @Sploreg !
No problem 