Level of Detail
As mentioned in Chapter 10, level of detail (LOD) is an important optimization technique because it reduces the number of vertices that need to be rendered. It is often stated that the most efficient vertex to render is one that isn't rendered at all.
Remember from that discussion that a texture map pasted on a box will represent the Statue of Liberty just fine when shown from Battery Park but as you get closer, the flat nature of the 2D texture becomes more obvious. What we would really like is multiple levels of detail that switch into the scene systematically as we approach and move away from the model.
LODs fall naturally under the Behavior class abstraction. When looking at the Java 3D documentation for the LOD class, you ...
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