LOD & Landscapes

I'm making a program that loads a heightmap and displays it in 3D. Now, how would you reduce the level of detail in areas of it that are farther away from you? I came up with one idea of deviding the land into small patches and telling D3D to draw only the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and so on polygon in each one, depending on the distance from the camera, the would work out great, but the patches wouldn't match at their edges. Any other ideas?

Got it ? ;)

This is a fairly hot topic in the graphics development area. You may want to take a look at algorithms such as ROAM, and the Roettger Algorithm. Be aware though, that these algorithms are seriously processor intensive, and may not be suitable for implementation in VB.

Z.

Thanks. I've tried to learn VC++ like 10 times, but it's too confusing for me.

Hum can't you easily use fog in DX? That would do the trick :)