Landscape creation/optimisation - streaming? LODing?

[WinningHarp177]

Hi All,

Could some of you knowledgable folk help a newb with some questions relating to UDKs Landscape feature please?

I'm interested in making a largish environment game (approx 3km x 3km); for various design reasons there would be a view distance of about 150m so some fog is fine by me

Is the best way to cut a large Landscape into discrete sections and stream them based on player proximity? But if one does that, after edits across section borders is it simple to match up the edges? Also with lighting, would you make a light importance volume per terrain section? Would that make a seam in the lightmap?

What about occlusion? Would the Landscape have to be in sections to allow occlusion?

I've noticed that the LODing is pretty good too, does anone just let the LODing take care of terrain optmisation?

Oh, sorry for so many questions but the more I play with UDK the questions occur to me

Thanks very much for any help,

WinningHarp177

[DGUnreal]

If the environment is only 3km and you use a Landscape heightmap between the size of 1024x1024 to 2048x2048 you won't have to do anything yourself regarding Landscape actor optimization. Landscape renders quite well. Just keep your total frustum poly count no higher than about 1-1.5 million.