by Aaron » Wed Nov 08, 2006 1:33 am
Hi Cliff,
Parts of this request are already on the to-do list, and this is in fact closely related to the recent request by Calsa for network rendering support insofar as both requests require the calculations to be tileable. I have completed this process for the terrain normals, light mapping (but not shadows), and texture generation calculations (per-pixel algorithm only), and I plan to have this going for the shadow-mapping, attributes map generation, alpha maps generation and 'regular' texture generation fairly soon. Extending this to the heightfield generation and water-mapping algorithms will be tricky, however, because these calculations are not 'well contained' (i.e. they spill-over into neighbouring tiles without warning).
In any case, for the calculations that are tileable, I probably won't include the option to run only specific tiles as an 'official' feature because it could be oh-so-confusing, but I probably will provide it as a plugin (with source) for those daring souls willing to try it.
Thanks again for the request.
Cheers,
Aaron.