I had a similar experience to the author, using XNA during undergrad to explore building a 3D game engine (though mine was not voxel-based). Much like him I spe

I had a similar experience to the author, using XNA during undergrad to explore building a 3D game engine (though mine was not voxel-based). Much like him I spent a ton of time developing the terrain rendering - generating heightmaps with Perlin noise, stitching them together, texturing, chunking, frustum culling, etc. I fondly remember reading and re-reading papers on things like Chunked LOD and atmospheric scattering, and having those breakthrough moments when, holy shit, the scene actually rendered correctly, and when I move around the terrain seamlessly switches between levels of detail... Point is, the XNA tools and community were the base that motivated and enabled all of that, and I too am disappointed that it died an awkward and unceremonious death.