Can't see the wood for the trees

Thoughts to all those scenery makers out there...

This idea came to me while thinking about adding orchards of olive trees to Greek sceneries.

One thing very typically Greek is the Olive - there are orchards everywhere and most look pretty much the same. But putting orchards into the sim adds polys!

OK, instead of individual trees, let's look at the nature of tree objects: A tree is three transparent polys with a front, side, top view.

A 200 by 100 metre orchard with trees every five metres means 800 trees (40 x 20) or 2400 polys. Just one orchard! There are thousands in Greece... (and technically you can say the same for forests)

So instead of making individual tree objects, why not make long transparent strips with a tree every five metres and then simply place strips in a grid patternwith 5 metre spacing? The above orchard would then only be 61 polys. (40 lengthways and 20 widthways plus the horizontal one.

Level ground? OK, so of course not all orchards and forests are on level ground... so maybe a sloped orchard is in tiers... 40 long two wide? You can simply use varying length strips of trees and map from one texture accordingly. I could even conceive a way of programming autogen forests for some areas. With the right programming, you could even add randominter spaced single trees and tree rows that would break up the regularity of an "orchard".

Especially when you consider commercial cultivated pine forests...

Take a standard FSX square of 1.4 kilometers. The default autogen max load is 4500 trees - that's 13500 polys. Put a flatland cultivated "forest" on it and you would need only 561 (280 each longitudinal and lateral plus one horizontal).

Yes - it could look odd. But only if you don't create the grid intelligently. You could even used honeycomb pattern transparent "walls" with tree images at random interfaces. You may increase polys slightly more, but you would be creating less "objects". I'll see if I can work out any pictures that help illustrate this...

Oh... by the way, in my suggested 561 poly solution abouve, you would get a tree at each intersection, so that means 280 x 280 or in other words... 

78400!