> I'm not sure when level of detail methods came out really, I know in gaming they were around for a while and there was a terrain generator as well that made g

> I'm not sure when level of detail methods came out really, I know in gaming they were around for a while and there was a terrain generator as well that made great terrain that had some level of detail stuff. Perhaps this was in fact novel? Mipmaps were invented in 1983. Keyhole/Earth used "Clipmaps", invented mid-90s. Clipmaps solved the problem of how to fit gigantic mipmapped textures into memory. Basically, you can keep the lowest LODs in memory always (the zoomed out views), and then Clipmaps show an efficient way for storing the higher resolution as needed. As an aside, RIP the wonderful people behind both these techniques. Lance Williams passed a few years ago, and Michael Jones just a few months ago. Both were kind, humble, and generous geniuses.