Comanche and LOD

[DEF7]

I was just talking to a friend about playing Gunship 2000 as a kid in the 90s and he was telling me about playing Comanche, which I never played (not that I remember), but looking at footage of it I think it's safe to say that it also includes a sort of heightmap/colormap mipmapping on there - where at different distances from the camera it employs lower-resolution versions of the terrain specifically to cut down on aliasing. It's most visible whenever the aircraft is flying low above rocks on the ground/terrain, and you can clearly see them switch from a lower resolution to a higher resolution.

Just stepping out in successively farther increments would introduce aliasing artifacts as terrain features appear and disappear from existence while the camera is moving over the terrain, which would not be ideal! Taking larger steps farther out is best when matched with mipmaps of the terrain itself so that you don't see (as much) aliasing during the camera's traversal over the terrain.

Anyway, just thought I'd share that because I thought it was really interesting to see the other day when I was looking at footage of the game. :]