Game Master Jon Mayfield gave us a new perspective on Watopia in today’s early-morning tweet:
Adding graphics debugging/profiling tools to our engine and got an unexpectedly cool shot of Watopia in @GoZwift pic.twitter.com/E41AECHYkn
— Jon Mayfield (@JmayfieldCA) May 21, 2018
Jon added this note to the thread:
What isn’t shown here is a stats heavy debug screen that allowed me to select/highlight a specific object, in this case, all the palm trees that were currently being drawn. They are flashing light blue. Everything else is color coded by detail level.
One major challenge video game developers face is determining the level of detail (LOD) different elements are rendered at as you move through the virtual world. The approach commonly taken is to set the graphics up in such a way that elements further away from the viewer are rendered at a lower level of detail than elements which are close.
There’s much more to it than that, of course, but this gives you a little peek into what Zwift developers and artists work with on a daily basis to deliver the quality experience we all enjoy.
