Triangles or Displacements?

"Triangle Terrian"

Pros

Easier to control.

Doesn't have to cover a quadrilateral area (as in, cover an area with four sides)

Easier to optimize

Cons

Takes longer to make

Unknown if it takes a while to render/compile etc

Displacements

Pros

Fast to build

Can use Alphas

We know it doesn't take to long to render

Cons

Harder to control

Has to be in a quadratic area

Doesn't block vis etc

Well? What do you perfer?

(feel free to add to this list as well)

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Displacments I prefer, it doesn't have to be in a quadratic area as you
can use displacements to change it to say a triangle. Also you can just
put a block with nodraw on it to block the vis.

second that, $loth

I imagine that the biggest advantage triangle terrain has over
displacements is the fact that you can tie it to entities, while with
displacements you cannot.

Displacements are awkward. I hate the way you can't easily make a fitting triangular corner piece. Bah!

Displacements. They render like lightning for the triangle count. They are a bit awkward and valve didn't give you as much freedom with them as they should/could, but for ordinary terrain, use displacements.

Not blocking vis just means that you can actually make the bsp simpler by having less clusters by approximating the terrain with larger more structured world nodraw brushes.

Displacements are awkward. I hate the way you can't easily make a fitting triangular corner piece. Bah!

Sew. Although if the vertex ranges are too vertical from one another it
does look horrible. I manually do it with bit at a time. It's tough but
has a nice overall smooth effect.

Displacements are better, end of story.....

Cons
Unknown if it takes a while to render/compile etc

Yes, world polies are one of the hardest hits on performance, when possible you should model complicated geometry or turn it into a diplacement.

Cons
Harder to control

Actually in the hands of a person who knows how to use displacements, displacements are easier to control than triangles.

Effectively displacements ARE triangle terrain anyway, the methods used to raise/lower a point is the just the same as moving a vertex was on the old triangle terrain method.

Displacements were added to make terrain creation easy and move AWAY from tedious and unreliable, bad looking triangle terrain all along so...