Dustin Horne XNA / .NET / Silverlight / Web

I've made the files availble from tonight's QuadTree presentation at the OmahaMTG .NET user group meeting.  The zip file contains the powerpoint deck as well as a Visual Studio 2010 solution with Silverlight demo app as well as a generic QuadTree.  This was a quick and dirty solution so many things can be improved.  The TreeObject could be converted to a container that holds the actual object you're storing in the tree.  This would eliminate the need for you to inherit from the TreeObject with your objects.  You would simply store them inside the tree object using a Generic List and a TreeObject.Add<T>(T object) method.

For a demo of the QuadTree in action:  http://www.dustinhorne.com/quadtreedemo.html

Download Here

Also, check out Brian Legg's introduction to XNA 4.

Up to this point in the series we have accomplished a few major milestones.  We've created a set of data objects to hold the information needed by our terrain, we've constructed a quad tree to allow efficient traversal through different portions of our terrain, and we've implemented the logic to draw our terrain at different levels of detail.  In this part of the series we're going to explore adding LOD to our terrain.  The level of detail code we're going to implement will be simple and linear. 

Only the deepest node containing our camera will be drawn at highest detail and it will step away the detail one unit at a time as it gets further from the camera.  As you'll soon see, this leads to some decent but less desirable results.  Terrain drawn in the distance will be subject to some visible "popping" as the LOD transition changes and vertices not visible to the user will still be drawn, however we will address these issues in the next parts of the series.  For now, our goal is to simply implement a system that allows a transition of detail from our target point outward.  More...

I just wanted to post a quick update.  I'm on a bit of a hiatus from my XNA Terrain tutorial series for a few days as I'm attending the Heartland Developer's Conference in Omaha, NE.  One more day remains and so far the conference has been outstanding.  I had the pleasure of having lunch with Scott Hanselman today as well as attending his keynote and off-the-cuff presentations.  There are some exciting things coming out of the Microsoft stack soon and I'm sure I'll be blogging about them as I dive into them.

If you've never been to HDC I would highly recommend it.  The atmosphere is fantastic, the networking opportunities are phenomenal and the presentations are both informative and entertaining.  If you've never had a chance to see Hanselman speak I would highly recommend that as well.  He has a real knack for providing great information in a humorous and entertaining manner.  Here's a picture I had taken with Scott outside of the conference center: