Distance LOD`s

[+76.IAP-Blackbird]

If you have a plane with LOD0 and around 15k polys and than a distance LOD5 (example) with just 1500 Polys for a greater distance, do I need to keep the part structure for it?

 

Like outer Wing, Inner Wing, Nose, Fuselage, Tail ??

 

Or can i simply build a model like:

 

Fuselage

WingLeft

WingRight

Vtail

VStabL

VStabR

 

?

 

just curious, does it affect the FM?

[+Brain32]

It's a visual thing only so no effect on FM, as for the part structure AFAIK you have to respect it in the lower lods so if you have WingL in the mail lod it has to be there in every of the lower lods. I hope somebody will confirm this too as I remember that from long, long time ago...

[+76.IAP-Blackbird]

Yeah but if I have on the orig Model

 

Leftwing Outer ---> Leftwing Inner ---> Fuselage

 

Do I need the same layout of can I switch to:

 

Leftwing ----> Fuselage ?

 

@Old Diego

 

you were faster, So I need to cut the current wing into 2 peaces .. but I dont need to cut out ailerons or rudder?!

Edited December 13, 2014 by 76.IAP-Blackbird

[+RAVEN]

A child mesh can be removed without effecting anything except what's rendered at its distance setting.

On all the ones I do for example, the .004 .005 lod's have no landing gear at all, you never see it. One thing that must be maintained is "mesh pivot points. Or the mesh will move when switching from one lod to another. For example: _001 nose mesh is high poly, _002 Nose mesh is a lower poly by removing say the air scoop. Changing its pivot point, if it's not set to the same location in both .lod's it will appear to flicker at the distance threshold as the mesh moves. Also the "Reset XForm" must match also through the range of .lod's, if not, the texture will flip. This happens mostly on pre-mapped and textured mirrored meshes. I've forgotten to do it on a mirrored horizontal stabilizer, in Max it looks fine, but in game the texture will flip. On a last note, an easy way to check the ,lod's is to lower the distance setting in the Aircraft.ini, the settings I use are 10, 25, 50, 80, 8000, with 5 lod's Zoom out only renders to 100, unless your in Free Camara mode in game.

I hope this helps.

[+RAVEN]

Just saw your wing question. On my -003 to -005 lod's the wings are one low poly mesh. With the mesh name matching whatever _001 mesh name that's linked to the Fuselage. So if the first mesh is named Left_Inner_Wing then the combined low poly mesh in the next lod must be the same and the pivot point must match.

[+76.IAP-Blackbird]

@ Raven, Great! This explains my Truck problem, I had a wrong pivot point on one of my meshes, so it started to jump around. Thanks I will try it out with my project!