Suggestion: improve LOD system temporal coherence

[bassgojoe 2]

I read rocket's November 2012 update on tumblr regarding the standalone Day Z changes, and I am super happy because it looks like he's making all the right decisions.

But the item I didn't see on his list that I feel needs to be improved is the LOD (level-of-detail) system. The LOD for the trees in particular is abhorrent and detracts from the game because as you're looking around (or sometimes even standing still) the trees can pop in and out of different LOD levels. I realize they're trying to also improve the client performance, which will be a tall order, but I think increasing the temporal coherence of the LOD system is an absolute MUST. I'm not sure what the algorithm is that the Arma engine uses for LOD, but it seems to choose LOD levels sort of unpredictably and then apply LOD transitions over several frames, which is wacky. Something simple like distance to camera determining LOD levels and transition amount and using a stencil-buffer based fade (or for trees possibly a grow/shrink fade like speedtree uses) would be a huge improvement. The key thing is just to make sure that looking around and moving the camera slightly results in a minimum of LOD-related on-screen popping.

[Zodiac13 173]

I'm sorry sir but you do not belong on the internet. Your post made too much sense and I read no lols or can I haz in your post. If I am not mistaken that is part of the ArmA II engine which should be fixed when they go to the 2.5 engine that the SA will use.