Thanks for all the help thus far.
I was planning out an area of the world I'm going to have and realized that there will be heavily forested areas. The actors will either be in the forest walking around or flying above.
For the flying above I'd just plaster a canopy texture on some quads to make them look like trees and only properly render the trees that are very close to the player view.
What I'm wondering is what I should do with actors running around in this forest, is there an efficient way to handle it without killing rendering performance. Thinking back about dungeon siege, I don't remember any area with a decent amount of trees, then again I could be mistaken since the game wasn't that memorable.
I'm not really looking for code at the moment, just algorithms that can help in the various tasks.
PS. I'm not keen on limiting camera movement. I'd like the player to be able to see in which ever direction they choose.
I was planning out an area of the world I'm going to have and realized that there will be heavily forested areas. The actors will either be in the forest walking around or flying above.
For the flying above I'd just plaster a canopy texture on some quads to make them look like trees and only properly render the trees that are very close to the player view.
What I'm wondering is what I should do with actors running around in this forest, is there an efficient way to handle it without killing rendering performance. Thinking back about dungeon siege, I don't remember any area with a decent amount of trees, then again I could be mistaken since the game wasn't that memorable.
I'm not really looking for code at the moment, just algorithms that can help in the various tasks.
PS. I'm not keen on limiting camera movement. I'd like the player to be able to see in which ever direction they choose.