Level of Detail for 3D terrains/models in Mobile Devices (Android / XNA )

Question

I am planning to develop for WP7 and Android.

What is the better way to display (and traverse) 3D scene/models in term of LoD? The data is planned to be island-wide (Singapore).

1) Real-Time Dynamic Level of Detail Terrain Rendering
2) Discrete LoD
3) Others?

And please advice some considerations/algorithms/resources/source codes. something like LoD book also Okay.

Side note: I am a beginner in this area but pretty well-versed in C/C++. And I haven't read the LoD book.

Related posts:
- Distant 3D object rendering [games]
- Chris Pruett's 3D benchmark for Android

Answer 1

Hi, you may want to watch Chris Pruett's talk about writing real-time games for Android at Google I/O 2010 (he's talking about LOD).

Answer 2

With modern hardware you should not be doing ad-hoc geometry fiddling for (C)LoD as is done in ROAM. Instead you should chunk the terrain up in blocks (organized in a quadtree or similar setup) and push it to the device in nice hardware-friendly batches.

See Thatcher Ulrich's excellent writings on the subject.

Answer 3

As Ranieri already said best bet would be Thatcher Urlich's Chunked LOD. If you have a bit more memory you can also try CDLOD (full C++ source code available).