[The Kraken]

Originally Posted by Heliocon

LOD and Tesselation are different effects.

Actually what you describe is using tesselation for continuous LODs in contrast to distinct LODs, which is the classic technique; but let's skip the semantics...

LOD requires making more then one model, tesselation does not. Tesselation is mapped onto the model, so you could use 1 model and have its polygon count gradually increase as it gets closer.

True but irrelevant as long as distinct LOD models are still needed for users without tesselation-capable cards. Also making a model purely out of primitives and surface maps is a nightmare, and that would be required if tesselation is supposed to provide continuous LODs.

LOD is not gradual it switches out a low count for a high count model at distance which creates often a "popping" effect. Also it should be noted LOD means either the game has to page the harddrive, or you store the models in your ram which takes up space, which tesselation does not.

RAM is cheap these days, even on the GPU, and tesselation does require memory for its data as well. The difference is insignificant. Popups can definitely be an issue with distinct LODs, but that's again a quality and not a performance issue.

You previously said the game would be "badly coded" when not using tesselation, and that without it all planes would have to be rendered at full quality all the time. That's why the standard LOD approach was brought up, and as it doesn't come with an additional calculation overhead, can make use of geometry instancing for much improved performance, is perfectly compatible with GPUs from several generations and vendors and doesn't need a completely new modeling approach, it certainly looks like the better solution at the moment. Nobody is against tesselation as such, but right now the technology simply isn't mature and widespread enough.