Three significant updates.
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Performance improved greatly.
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My terrain shader got a major overhaul as I finally noticed proper documentation here. I had previously assumed input in the vertex shader came from the semantics, but it turns out they’re totally irrelevant and only the variables’ names seem to matter in practice.
Anyways, I’ve combined hdr per-pixel lighting and bloom with my terrain shader, despite my lack of shader expertise. This still works with my shader generator
To do: Make these new effects configurable by the generator. Also I would like to switch my detail texture from an ugly blend to a normal map.
- There is a simple GUI control in the demo that can be used to alter the terrain shader parameters on the fly. Of course, these shifts in textures can be achieved programmatically as well and smoothly transition a landscape to a totally different climatic appearance.
To do: Expand the gui and engine to allow new textures and regions to be added during run-time.
Just for fun… some screen shots of the latter feature at work.
http://stephenlujan.com/panda3d/terrain/menu1.jpg
http://stephenlujan.com/panda3d/terrain/menu2.jpg
http://stephenlujan.com/panda3d/terrain/menu3.jpg
Oh yeah, and here’s a Ralph on a mountain I liked. Forgive the jpeg artifacts/blurriness. I didn’t want this thread to drain everyone’s bandwidth. 
