Mesh Disintegration

[zpox357]

Hello,

I don't often post suggestions, but I was thinking about re-entry the other day and wondering how damage will be handled and rendered (if all) on re-entry. I then struck upon an Idea whilst watching one of the old re-entry demos on YouTube that I would like to share. Unfortunately, I have very limited experience when it comes to game development and modelling, so this is as much of a question as it is a suggestion, asking the more experienced among the community "would this even work", as well as "is it a good idea?".

Rather than rendering more particles to simulate parts breaking up, or simply applying a charred effect, I wondered if the parts mesh could have a transparent "disintegrating" effect applied to the sides being heated, along with a charring effect around the edges. This effect would be animated and slowly grow and eventually cover the part at which point it would become invisible and be deleted. The joints between parts would also break and fall off. I sketched up this diagram to visualise the concept.

Using my nooby logic, I guess this would be easier to render as it would not involve the creation of new entities, only the modification of meshes belonging to the parts.

I would love feedback on the idea, and maybe improvement suggestions (Provided the idea would even work, of course)

Thanks

+ I know re-entry damage is listed under the "what not to suggest" thread, but I assume that means don't suggest it as a feature, rather than don't suggest ways of implementing it.

[Majiir]

Realtime mesh manipulation is possible, but it would have to be done on the CPU because KSP is built for DX9 (which doesn't support geometry shaders). It may be possible to sidestep a lot of the performance issues by offloading the triangle/vertex computations and only assigning them on the main thread.

To be clear, this isn't an easier method than particle effects, but it would look a whole lot better.