alt Hacker NewsIt's kind of weird to call them "columns of voxels" when the columns can't have gaps and the "voxels" below the topmost are ignored completely. Which is to say, they're just columns...which is (definitionally) just a height map.
In fact, an octree for this approach would be _meaningfully worse_ because finding "the topmost voxel" in each column is O(logn)—or maybe worse?—versus O(1) for a height map. With no benefits, because you never look at any other voxels.
> It's kind of weird to call them "columns of voxels" when the columns can't have gaps
No, it's not weird. The columns don't have gaps because they are columns represented by a height map, which can't display arbitrary voxel geometry (unlike octrees), but that doesn't mean they can't display voxel geometry at all.
> Which is to say, they're just columns...which is (definitionally) just a height map.
Yes. A height map is representing voxel data without overhangs.
> In fact, an octree for this approach would be _meaningfully worse_
That's irrelevant. The fact remains that rendering the same height data using an octree would look exactly the same. If the latter displays voxel geometry, the former does too.