In simple terms, what is oclission culling and why should I use it?
If you’re in room A and you know there is no possible way you can see room B from room A, then you can say that with occlusion culling. It makes it so the clipping doesn’t even need to check room B, which vastly reduces clipping time and therefor makes your game faster.
okay, how can i implement it, do I need to tell it whats in room a and b or can it work it out based on what the camera currently sees?
I recommend going to this post:
Oclission Culling is some serious next gen stuff… we’re not there yet. Occlusion Culling takes some careful set up as well. I’m working on making a step-by-step guide for it, but I swear if you look at the Occlusion Culling demo and pick it apart a little bit, along with the admittedly sparse documentation, it will become clearer.
Also there are a few links in the temporary FAQ at the top of the iPhone Development section here that might be helpful.
I found that the ideas of cell size and View Area intersection planning were unclear, so, while I may figure it out by doing soon, I’d love to be able to make better predictions going in.