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Right now, each node of my octree contains a list<Triangle*> (pointers to mesh triangles).

So basically an octree query returns poly soup.

Sometimes I want to query the octree for entire objects however. Each Tri has a pointer to its "owner object", but should I park the object references in the same octree (ie give each node a list<GameObject*> or maintain a completely different octree altogether?

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The thing is, your object octree's final structure is going to be different than your poly octree's structure, because the objects are larger than the polys in your soup. So I think it might be wise to aim for a separate octree. After all, octrees are an optimisational bit of architecture. If aiming for faster throughput, I would definitely duplicate the octree so each one fits it purpose. Space optimisation, as you know, is not usually our primary concern as game developers :)

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You must not work on consoles where space is the number one limiting factor in game development. – James Sep 8 '11 at 20:20
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@James a list of pointers should not be a space concern for you. – Daniel Sep 8 '11 at 23:00
@Daniel I was commenting on the last sentence. In a for instance say you have a memory tracking system that uses a pointer to track the allocations. Now suppose you see you have around 200,000 single byte allocations (was not happy when I came across this and replaced it with a pool). You now use 5 bytes of space for every 1byte allocation taking up a meg of space for those 200,000 allocations. This is a huge problem on a PSP where you have 32MB of RAM, a big chunk is reserved for OS and another for your exe leaves you around 20MB say. 1MB is gone and you have to allocate 19MB still. – James Sep 10 '11 at 0:08
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In that case the cost of the list is almost the cost of the data itself, I'd visit using a different method altogether. A list of 200,000 pointers to single bytes stands out as bad design to me. – Daniel Sep 10 '11 at 0:37
That's a handheld device, not a console, in any case. And really one has to accept that the complexity of what you can construct on that device is not the same as what you can expect from a desktop or console. It may be that expecting a performant AND large voxel world there is a biting off more than you can chew. In other words, much as I'm a fan of making minimal resources work for you, something has to give. – Nick Wiggill Sep 10 '11 at 7:41
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