First Pass at LOD

So frame rates were not horrible with the instanced terrain method before, but I knew there was room for improvement, 210 FPS for a 1024x1024 terrain. Once I got the rough LOD system in using Index offsets and 4 Draw calls for the different LOD levels I about crapped my pants at the FPS improvement. The instanced grids degrade from 64x64 to 16x16 to 4x4 to 2x2, these are easily tweaked as well as the range.



My testing heightmap is total crap so nothing looks very smooth yet. And the expected gaps between LOD levels are there, but with the full 1024x1024 terrain in view and the camera centered so all LOD levels are engaged I am getting around 1360FPS. Thats a bit over a 600% improvement in frame rate.

The instancing method really starts to shine when I loaded in a 2048x2048 height map and clocked in an even 1200 FPS with the full terrain in view and LOD engaged.

Next step is to work on edges and normals.