Yes... needs to be 30 fps to at least be on par with FF7's field speed.
Speed ups
Abuse FF7 type fade geometry.
Use multiple DLists in sections, then use said DList when that section is viewed.
Add a horizon (IE fake curvature like FF7 used part of fade geometry).
I've added a "low-level display-oriented not-editable" mesh data structure that uses a
prebuilt vertex array. With this I get 60/90 fps on my machine. It is a GL-oriented structure,
in the sense that it is *not* an interleaved array, which is the prefered way of DirectX;
I don't know if it may be a problem...?
I am planning to do frustum culling, which is totally equivalent to what you propose.
I've built the bounding box of each mesh/cell, all we need is a camera with an explicit
frustum volume.
If I remember correct FF7 loaded sections of the map and unloaded sections of the map as one traveled over it.
This kept loading mostly in the background as you moved through the map.
This was/is certainly a way to minimize loading time (CD access actually) and memory usage (PS1...
).
It is pretty elegant, but right now I will focus on textures, as memory is not really a problem today,
and loading time is ... ah... "acceptable" when using PSX CD, and invisible using PC/HD version.