Originally posted by Shadow12345
I understand that. The thing I don't understand is if octree is necessary if you already have bsp implemented in your game. I assume it isn't, but seeing as how I don't know the specifics of either i cannot be sure.
No, you'd usually use either BSP or Octree, not both -- You generally wouldn't want to partition the same level with 2 different types of partitioning. It's a waste of memory and you'd then be working with 2 sets of partitions on the same level.

One place that you might use octree WITH BSP is with a single level that has both indoor and outdoor environments. You'd partition the insied with BSP and the outside with octree because octree lends itself better to outdoor scenes. It's hard to use BSP outdoors because it's so open -- it makes it makes it problematic to make conves sets and uneccissary because since the level is so open, you CAN see most of it. That's when you'd rely more just on frustum culling without any frustum clipping and use octree instead of BSP.

But still, you'd mostlikely never use octree and BSP in the same location. That's why it's kind of silly to ask "Is an octree necessary if you use the bsp format?" Both are used for partitioning so if you are using one method for one part of a level you don't want to do it again for the same part with another type of partitioning. It just wouldn't make sense -- there would be no reason. IE Quake does not use octree, it's just BSP.