What is the term used to describe objects appearing from nowhere?
I've noticed that in World of Warcraft, fixed objects suddenly appear as the player moves towards them and then vanish as they move away. For example, as the player moves along a road, a building will suddenly appear by the side of the road, when a moment earlier it was not there and if the player moves back a little, the building will vanish. What is this called?
The "View Distance" setting allows the user to mitigate this behaviour by causing things that are further away to be visible at the expense of system resources.
In conversation, I've noticed one person use the word "Pop" when referring to this, so in an effort to find the correct term I came across the following wikipedia article Popping(computer graphics), which seems to be very much related to the behaviour I have described, but differs in that it's about transitions from one level of detail to another, rather than the instance of an object suddenly appearing out of nowhere.
What is the term used to describe this?
Best Answer
This is typically referred to as an object being "drawn". The distance at which is occurs is known as Draw distance.
Wikipedia has an article on this, specifically relating it to video games and the "popping" phenomenon it produces. Here is an excerpt:
Older games had far shorter draw distances, most noticeable in vast, open scenes. Racing arcade games were particularly infamous, as the open highways and roads often led to "pop-up graphics", or "pop-in" – an effect where distant objects suddenly appear without warning as the camera gets closer to them. This is a hallmark of short draw distance, and still plagues large, open-ended games like the Grand Theft Auto series and Second Life.[citation needed] Formula 1 97 offered a setting so the player could choose between fixed draw distance (with variable frame rate) and fixed frame rate (with variable draw distance).
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Answer 2
Q:
Is there a way to force objects and textures to fade in rather than pop in when a new uGrid is loaded, or is that just how the engine works?
A:
The thing about LOD is that it requires a low detail mesh, and not everything has that. Some objects do, but most don't. That's why you get that pop in (or up or whatever).
–LOD fade instead of pop in? –forums.nexusmods.com
"The LOD-ing algorithms can depend on more factors than just distance from the viewer, but it is often the primary factor that is considered. Popping is most obvious when switching between different LODs directly without intermediate steps." –OP's link
"Draw distance" is the setting that determines when it will : pop, fade in, be rendered (on screen), or otherwise appear.
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