The new terrain scene management features are working great! I’ve invested a lot of time and hard work to make this happen. I can now finally knock this huge milestone off the list.
The custom client and server architecture is now effortlessly handling and rendering a grid of terrain blocks that is nearly 400 square miles in size! Terrain blocks are loaded in (including all of their associated content such as buildings and trees, etc.) and automatically unloaded on demand as the viewer progresses through the scene. Out of the hundreds of available terrain blocks, up to 9 may be active at any given time. Furthermore, the potentially visible ones are clipped away from the viewing frustum very quickly using axis-aligned bounding volumes.
The grid boundaries are also exceptionally handled. You can’t tell where the transition from one terrain block to the next is! The polygons line up perfectly. The texture does not have any artifacts either, it appears seamless! The map view automatically changes, and additionally tells you the name of the current land area. It’s all good stuff, I’m very excited!