there are things where oct tree is really needed.
For example for the scene management to decide what you actually see and what not.
To see a good implementation of it take Blitz3D. To see a bad one take DBP where stuff isn't hidden even when not within view frustrum.
For realtime terrain, OctTrees are really usefull as well.
But there are situation where they aren't needed:
Shooter: Best use BSP like stuff with predefined partitions and a PVS algorithm to determine which partitions ( rooms ) have to be shown
Ground only based games better use Quad tree instead of oct tree to save half the calculation time and nodes
Space Shooters: might use a combination of OctTree and distance as they are normally very fast games and recalculation the visibility basing on OctTree every frame might be too much calculation for the amount of objects they have normally
Implement an OctTree in Blitz3D is quite useless, at lest if it is used for occlusion stuff. You better split large levels into smaller ones ( might be usefull and needed for lightmap calculation anyway ), then they are handled by Blitzs occlusion without any probs
For example for the scene management to decide what you actually see and what not.
To see a good implementation of it take Blitz3D. To see a bad one take DBP where stuff isn't hidden even when not within view frustrum.
For realtime terrain, OctTrees are really usefull as well.
But there are situation where they aren't needed:
Shooter: Best use BSP like stuff with predefined partitions and a PVS algorithm to determine which partitions ( rooms ) have to be shown
Ground only based games better use Quad tree instead of oct tree to save half the calculation time and nodes
Space Shooters: might use a combination of OctTree and distance as they are normally very fast games and recalculation the visibility basing on OctTree every frame might be too much calculation for the amount of objects they have normally
Implement an OctTree in Blitz3D is quite useless, at lest if it is used for occlusion stuff. You better split large levels into smaller ones ( might be usefull and needed for lightmap calculation anyway ), then they are handled by Blitzs occlusion without any probs