Character Controller

This example demonstrates a third-person character controller that walks on procedural terrain using the library's performant height testing API.

Key Features

• Capsule Character: A capsule geometry represents the character, properly grounded on the terrain surface
• Third-Person Camera: Smooth camera following with configurable distance and height
• WASD/Arrow Controls: Standard movement controls for navigating the terrain
• Performant Height Testing: Uses queryHeightAtPosition() for fast terrain height lookups

Performant Height Testing

The character controller uses TerrainMesh.queryHeightAtPosition(position) to query the terrain height. This method:

1. Finds the leaf quadtree node containing the position
2. Converts world position to local UV coordinates within that node
3. Performs bilinear interpolation on the CPU-cached heightmap

This approach is extremely fast (typically <0.1ms) because:

• It samples from a CPU-side cache of the heightmap
• No GPU readback is required per-frame
• The cache is automatically updated when terrain tiles change

// Example usage in your character controller
const terrainHeight = terrainMesh.queryHeightAtPosition(characterPosition);
if (terrainHeight !== null) {
  characterPosition.y = terrainHeight;
}