Terrain - Heightmap Resolution Performance

Archived Forums Questions & Answers
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Hey guys,

Does anyone know if the performance hit from upping heightmap resolution only applies to visible terrain?

Thanks in advance :)

1 Answer

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As far as I know, your height map is never so much as loaded into memory on the player's computer. The height map is just used as a guide as to how to model your terrain, and after the terrain has been modeled, the height map is discarded. You can increase your height map's resolution to an infinite degree but unless you actually increase the density of your terrain's polygons, nothing will change performance-wise.

If you drop the stats box down on a higher res terrain using an identical heightmap you can see the draw calls, verts and polies all going up proportionally :(

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Right, that's if you increase the resolution of the terrain. You asked about the height map resolution in your question. The height map is the image you import that models your terrain. Obviously increasing the resolution of the terrain itself will increase polygons, since that's exactly what it does.

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