What causes terrain pop up?

[Udgnim]

an example of terrain pop up would be running the GPU benchmark in Crysis Benchmark Tool. the camera starts out in the sky with the island in view and starts moving down toward the island. as it progresses, objects like trees, bushes, and rocks will pop up.

why aren't these objects rendered initially with all the other trees, bushes, and rocks that have been rendered correctly? is it a quirk of the engine? is it an issue with bandwidth? is it drivers? is it a combination of hardware?

 

[Tsavo]

Level of detail:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_detail

 

[Phil1977]

Basically because that's how they designed he game...

It's a tradeoff between visual quality and performance...

 

[jvroig]

I know what you mean, OP, it also annoys me a little. For example, in Fallout 3, even with all settings maxed out, I still notice that "terrain pop up" you mention. Unfortunately, if maxing all settings (including draw distance) doesn't solve it, then that means that's how the game was designed, so as not to be too much of a GPU hog I suppose.

 

[sandorski]

I know what you mean, OP, it also annoys me a little. For example, in Fallout 3, even with all settings maxed out, I still notice that "terrain pop up" you mention. Unfortunately, if maxing all settings (including draw distance) doesn't solve it, then that means that's how the game was designed, so as not to be too much of a GPU hog I suppose.

Depending on the Engine, it's to increase overall Performance and can help either GPU or CPU depending on which is used. Older Engines Like the Unreal Engine 2.x/3.x used Distance Fog to hide Terrain popping and was one of the main reasons why those Engines were very good for large Maps.

Thinking about it, I sorta remember it occurring in Fallout 3, but it was generally so far away as to not bother me.

 

[scooterlibby]

Definitely happens in maxed out BFBC2 beta.

 

[Rubycon]

Isn't this a function of draw distance?

Or now they can call it a feature - think Avatar.

 

[jvroig]

Isn't this a function of draw distance?

Yes, but still happens when that setting is maxed out (at least, on Oblivion and Fallout 3; haven't played anything else recently where it would matter). I wonder why they just didn't make it so that there is no "terrain pop up" at the absolute max settings in case you actually had a machine that could handle such load, CPU- and GPU-wise.

 

[bobsmith1492]

I think that rendering every single object in Oblivion across the massive view distances available would stop dead any video card out there.

 

[dguy6789]

I dislike it too. It would be nice if game developers really made max mean max, but they don't. They just name a pretty far draw distance setting as max or full while leaving no real option to completely avoid pop in for those who have a system that can handle it.

This is incredibly annoying to me in NFS Shift. With all of the details maxed out, you still see grass popping into view nonstop while you race, it looks very bad.

 

[tweakboy]

Its the devs fault for that. I mean their responsible for the terrain popup NOT your nvidia graphics card.

 

[Schmide]

Its the devs fault for that. I mean their responsible for the terrain popup NOT your nvidia graphics card.

They're providing a feature on any platform. GTFO with your insertion of bias in an unbiased thread!!!

 

[Rubycon]

Why not increase bokeh so this is masked?

 

[zerocool84]

Definitely happens in maxed out BFBC2 beta.

You mean maxed out in medium settings cus the Beta was all medium settings even if set to high.

 

[happy medium]

You mean maxed out in medium settings cus the Beta was all medium settings even if set to high.

I just played BBC2 with max settings ,it still does it. And its NOT the beta.

 

[james1701]

One thing I found that helped with the texture pop up was going with a fast ssd. It still had it, but it was much faster coming on screen. My fps were about the same, but the textures loaded much faster.

 

[Hyperlite]

Why not increase bokeh so this is masked?

I wouldn't mind that, and that exact thing is implemented in STALKER, but there are also some people that can't stand any sort of depth-of-field effects. Most people don't understand that in this situation you can't eat your cake, too.

on a somewhat related note, i have some massive texture mods for Fallout 3 that fix this problem...and make the game friggin gorgeous.

 

[Tsavo]

Why not increase bokeh so this is masked?

Bokeh masking algorithms require 64-bit float accuracy that's both iterative and transitive, current cards only support iterative masks.

You should know this stuff.

 

[pmv]

Ideally LOD should be set at the appropriate level for the distance and the resolution of your eyes. LOD would then increase perfectly smoothly as you approached, so you'd never notice there was any optimising going on (though there still would be - no point in wasting gpu power rendering details too far away to be noticable)

So the only detail not rendered at great distances would be detail you wouldn't be able to make out properly anyway, because its too far away.

Perhaps one day graphics cards will become powerful enough to do that - except of course texture and terrain detail will increase so as to gobble up the extra power and probably leave us still with pop-up.

The pop-up in Oblivion is very noticeable indeed, unfortunately. Its so bad sometimes I keep wondering if it might be worse than it should be because of some problem with the vast number of mods installed, or if the graphics card is simply forgetting to load textures/polygons some times.

 

[vj8usa]

The pop-up in Oblivion is very noticeable indeed, unfortunately. Its so bad sometimes I keep wondering if it might be worse than it should be because of some problem with the vast number of mods installed, or if the graphics card is simply forgetting to load textures/polygons some times.

Oblivion had an ini setting you could change to increase draw distance. Even with my X1900XT, I increased that value beyond what the game menu let you use. Today's video cards should be able to make pop-in a non issue in that game.

 

[konakona]

There were mods in oblivion made specifically to reduce this, and the performance hit from enabling them was rather noticeable.

 

[Hyperlite]

Bokeh masking algorithms require 64-bit float accuracy that's both iterative and transitive, current cards only support iterative masks.

You should know this stuff.

maybe in the most literal sense, but you can achieve that effect with depth of field.

 

[Schmide]

Why are we talking depth of field? The original question was about Level of Detail. Totally different effects.