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Scenario

I have a sphere with an low-quality earth texture on it. I also have a much higher quality earth texture (Gigabytes in size) that I can use but it's too performance intensive to use on most devices, especially mobile.

My current plan is to break the higher definition image into tiles (like how google maps does it) and load higher resolution tiles as the user zooms in.

Question

Is there a better way to do this?

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Your proposal sounds sensible, and as you point out has proven effectiveness in existing applications serving a similar domain. Is there a specific problem with this approach that you'd like answers here to focus on improving? Or is this solution already sufficient for your needs? \$\endgroup\$
    – DMGregory ♦
    Nov 14, 2021 at 22:15
  • \$\begingroup\$ @DMGregory Good question. It's already implemented in prototype form but it seems antiquated. I like to think there's Unity features or plugins that would allow me to do something similar without have to rely on wrestling with hand-rolled map tiling. I'm hoping that reaching out to the broader community will result in a promising alternative. \$\endgroup\$
    – Jacksonkr
    Nov 14, 2021 at 22:22
  • \$\begingroup\$ Are you looking for something like Streaming Virtual Texturing? This is not supported on mobile, so rolling your own solution might be your best bet there. \$\endgroup\$
    – DMGregory ♦
    Nov 14, 2021 at 22:40
  • \$\begingroup\$ SVT sounds very promising but since my imagery is already broken up into tiles I'm not sure how to leverage this. The manual says that svt uses an async process and work in a separate thread to keep things smooth which is helpful as I'll likely follow Unity's direction. \$\endgroup\$
    – Jacksonkr
    Nov 15, 2021 at 15:15
  • \$\begingroup\$ @DMGregory MipMapStreaming looks like what I want BUT I'm working with a single object with a single material which renders MMS useless. Any ideas ? \$\endgroup\$
    – Jacksonkr
    Nov 15, 2021 at 18:38

2 Answers 2

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Sounds like you may want to use the LOD system. It stands for level of detail. You can set different rendering qualities based on the distance you’re viewing it from. It’s really useful for rendering far away things with low quality/high performance while rendering close things with far more detail.

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Ultimately I went with a slippy map and added the following

3d earth from tiles

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