| Submitted by , posted on 13 February 2002 |

Image Description, by These are some screenshots from TYPHOON, a landscape engine by Stefano Lanza. Technology:

> - Quadtree area mapping
> - CLOD geometry reduction
> - Unique terrain texturing
> - Illumination based on horizons mapping
> - Bump mapped water reflections
> - Trees
> - Realistic skydome
> - Sky fx (lens flares and sun burnout)
> - D3D 8.x hardware acceleration

Top screenshots show CLOD technique in action. Typhoon uses Peter Lindstrom's CLOD algorithm "Real-Time, Continuos Level of Detail Rendering of Height Fields" to reduce geometry in realtime, the results being high detail and long-distance views at interactive fps.
Next are some sky images: the skydome is smoothly coloured according to day time. Scrolling clouds, lens flares and sun burnout are the sky effects that add to its visual impact.
Terrain illumination is based on horizons mapping. Horizons are calculated for each point, then used to get the sun and sky contribution to the terrain lighting. The first image was taken in a dark valley, an other image shows a mountain peak casting its shadow on the terrain below. Note that also water and trees are properly lit. The terrain is mapped with unique textures, these are generated in realtime blending a set of base textures according to the slope and altitude of each point of the terrain, then cached. Near terrain is rendered a second pass with detail-mapping.
Last images show lakes reflecting the surrounding scene. Latest Typhoon version supports bump-mapped reflections. The terrain is pre-compiled by an utility. Huge terrain size are supported (up to 8193x8193 grid size), catmull-rom interpolation is used to interpolate the original heightmap.
Visit Typhoon homepage at http://gpi.infomedia.it/typhoon (soon http://gameprog.it/typhoon) to download the latest demo.

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