Clipmap

A clipmap is like a really big picture that is made up of lots of smaller pictures. Imagine a giant puzzle with lots of small pieces that make up one big picture.

When we want to see the big picture, we only need to look at some of the smaller pictures at a time because our eyes can't see everything all at once.

Clipmaps work in a similar way. When we're playing a video game or using a computer program that has a really big picture (like a map), the computer can't show us everything at once because there are just too many small details.

So instead of trying to show us everything, the computer uses a clipmap to break the picture up into smaller pieces that we can see at once. The computer only shows us the smaller pieces that we're looking at, and it changes which small pieces it's showing us as we move around or zoom in and out.

Just like how we only need to look at some puzzle pieces to see the whole puzzle, the computer only needs to show us some parts of the clipmap at a time to give us the big picture.