Spinoza wrote:QUOTE (Spinoza @ Jul 28 2009, 03:27 AM) I tested this in-game with the LOD slider and the result is thus:
The game does use the low LOD models.
IDK if this is by default, but when I brought up the LOD slider, it was at the extreme end, at which it seems low LOD models aren't used.
The low LOD models only showed up when I pulled the LOD slider way down.
It seems it would indeed be safe to ignore the low LOD models when making changes.
Spinoza, the smaller LOD's are always being used, even when the slider is on the "high" quality settings, but it only switches to a lower poly LoD at a certain distance/size. When the objects only take 3-4 pixels on your screen, there is no way you can distinguish anything, so it uses the lowest LoD available because you can't tell the difference. The default threshholds are designed so that you shouldn't notice the changes in game. However if you pay close enough attention in game, even at the max settings you will sometimes notice the shift. For instance I sometimes notice it on alephs as they switch from 8 to 16 "slices" around.
The slider just moves the threshold, so that instead of switching only when an objects is below 64 pixels across where you can't tell the difference, it instead waits to switch until its much larger, say 128 pixels, where the change is much more noticeable.
Also, not every model has LoD's built in. Alephs/Asteroids do, as do Most bases, but not all the ships, only certain ones. None of the player made factions have LoD's either, because the milkshape exporter doesn't handle them correctly.
So in other words, yeah, you can ignore LoD's, people have been doing so for many years now without breaking anything. We can always add them back later to any models you make if there comes a time where we really need them.
Two Weeks 
