[ODE] Proposal: Change Heightfield Origin

[Martijn Buijs]

Justin Couch wrote:
> Both DEM and DTED run in double precision. At a higher level, the VRML 
> and X3D file formats only specify terrain in double precision. On the 
> graphics side of things we end up doing a lot of local reprojections to 
> try to keep rendering down to single precision that is implemented by 
> the graphics card, but that's expensive calculations - particularly if 
> you're doing it every frame as we would in a dynamic LOD'ed terrain 
> environment.

Sorry, you're right. I realize a lot more data is in double precision than I suspected. I worked 
mostly with freely available datasets (usually low quality) in obscure formats, for things that did 
not require high precision.

 > I think I gave up too easily before, I'm going to have another stab at
 > this because you're right - it is more logical. It's early enough in
 > the life of this feature to change the ground rules about it's
 > origin...
 >
 > I'm not promising anything more successful, but it makes sense to aim
 > for this - if only for the consistency aspect.

Sure, if it doesn't have significant performance/precision disadvantages, I'm ok with it.

Martijn