Hide objects by max view range

[reddozen]

Is there an existing way to do this without looping through every object in the scene and doing additional expensive distance calculations?

 

If not, could a new variable be added to mesh for "max view range", default 0 (unlimited), and with the same distance check loop that the LOD engine goes through, set these meshes to visible / invisible based on this range if not 0?

[RaananW]

camera has minZ and maxZ variables to limit the view range.Defaults are 1 (min) and 1000 (max) . is that what you mean?

[reddozen]

I'm talking about at the mesh level sadly.

 

Similar to how LOD models will hide the parent and unhide the LOD model, but I want max view range on the mesh to hide everything about the mesh while out of range.

[amorgan]

The LOD systems allows you to do this by calling:

var viewDistance = 100;mesh.addLODLevel(viewDistance, null);

[reddozen]

 

The LOD systems allows you to do this by calling:

var viewDistance = 100;mesh.addLODLevel(viewDistance, null);

 

Interesting, but how can this be incorporated with the auto LOD?

 

For example:

I have my parent part that  assign my auto LOD to.

I have a couple instances that i need varying view ranges on for scene optimizations.

I cannot set a generalized null distance on the parent to feed down to the instances because it's situational.

[Dad72]

The automatic LOD is not designed for it (not yet). It would add another parameter to hide the object along a certain distance.
 
for exemple:

 

add: show: false => hide meshe

newMeshes[0].simplify([{distance:250, quality:0, show: false}]) //Default show: true.

What do you think Raanan ?

[reddozen]

This wouldn't fix my specific situation though dad72. Have to remember that I'm loking for a solution at the mesh level. Be that a parent, clone, instance, whatever. LODs are assigned at the parent level, so my max view range setting would then be only at the parent level.

 

This new variable would be in there with the position xyz, rotation xyz, and scale xyz variables assigned to every mesh.

mesh.maxRange = 100;

[RaananW]

I haven't tested this nice suggestion of amorgan, but I think adding it to the parent mesh with a specific distance will cause all others to behave the same, as the LODs used are the same.
So setting a null at distance 200 will make all instances disappear if the camera is 200 units away from them.
Again, haven't tested, but should work :-)

Seems like it is working. making it variable is another thing (200 for one mesh, 300 for another) - http://www.babylonjs-playground.com/#2JBSNA#1

Edited January 23, 2015 by RaananW

[reddozen]

I think you're right RaananW. It won't work for me though.

[Venerated1]

This was good to know, but it turns out that my skybox was the only reason I couldn't see things far away... so I made it bigger.