Geomipmapping

Okay kiddo, so you know how when you look at a picture, things that are closer to you look bigger and things that are further away look smaller? Well, have you ever played a video game where the world is really huge and you can walk or run in any direction you want?

Now, it would be really hard for your game to show everything in super high-quality at the same time, especially if you have a slow computer or lots of things happening in the game. So, what the game designers do is they use something called "geomipmapping" to make the game look really cool but also load faster.

Geomipmapping breaks up the world into little pieces that are called "patches." Each patch has a different level of detail depending on how far away it is from you. The patches closest to you are more detailed (with more little bumps and textures), and the patches further away from you are less detailed (with fewer bumps and fewer textures).

When you move around in the game, the computer only has to worry about showing you the patches that are close to you, which saves time and helps the game run faster. Pretty cool, right?