alt Hacker NewsNo? Each pixel on a height map corresponds to a column of voxels of the specified height. You could represent the same height data with a fully general octree and it would look exactly the same.
No? Each pixel on a height map corresponds to a column of voxels of the specified height. You could represent the same height data with a fully general octree and it would look exactly the same.
It's kind of weird to call them "columns of voxels" when the columns can't have gaps and the "voxels" below the topmost are ignored completely. Which is to say, they're just columns...which is (definitionally) just a height map.
In fact, an octree for this approach would be _meaningfully worse_ because finding "the topmost voxel" in each column is O(logn)—or maybe worse?—versus O(1) for a height map. With no benefits, because you never look at any other voxels.