[sldev] Re: Why does the simulator do object culling for clients?

[Argent Stonecutter]

Dale Glass:
> On Wed, Jul 18, 2007 at 03:54:42AM -0700, John Hurliman wrote:
>> As you move around in a simulator, the sim is constantly sending
>> ObjectUpdate* packets for objects that become within range or have
>> moved, and it sends ObjectKill packets for things that go outside of
>> your vision. Then when you move back to that area it sends the
>> ObjectUpdate* packets for those objects again. Is there a reason this
>> culling is done across the network by sending ObjectKill packets for
>> things that are not actually leaving the simulator?

> Suppose the sim didn't do that. In that case, the viewer would never
> know when the sim decided the object is too far away. So you'd need to
> have the viewer perform its own culling, or you'd have extra objects
> hanging around.

Why does the sim need to decide which objects are near enough to  
notify you about their existence? The range is determined by the  
viewer and changed by the viewer, and the viewer is performing its  
own culling anyway as it runs level-of-detail calculations.