### Level of Detail

In PlaneShift we can use Level Of Detail (LOD) to reduce the number of polygons rendered when a model is very far from the player. This is achieved by having different models for the same object that have a decreasing number of polygons. So you can have a tree modeled in 3 versions, one with 80 polygons, a second with 40 polygons and a third with 16 polygons. The engine will calculate the distance between the player and the object and it will render the correct version accordingly. The idea behind is that at far distance the 16 polygons tree will look very similar (if not identical) to the high poly one.

NOTE: Right now LOD works only with genmeshes, do not use with other type of objects.

To implement LOD in your level follow these steps:

1) Create a genmesh factory and some instances as explained here.

2) Create two lower poly version of the genmesh factory. Those must be positioned as other factories (check the genmesh chapter). Name those _n_something so those will not be exported as normal objects.

3) Set these properties on the first genmesh factory (the one at higher res)

LODLOW: it's the name of the genmesh factory model with low polygons
LODMED: it's the name of the genmesh factory model with medium polygons

Example:
LODLOW=_n_newtree_lodlow
LODMED=_n_newtree_lodmed

If you want you can specify "null" for one of the two variables. In that case the mesh will disappear at that distance.

4) Set two custom properties on the Max scene:

lodmax: is the distance at which will be rendered the model with max number of polygons. If you don't specify it the default is 50
lodmin: is the distance at which will be rendered the model with min number of polygons. If you don't specify it the default is 200

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