yeap, the crude way is the way to go
here is a screenshot of an experimental large scene. ~750 objects are merged into two. it runs at more than 30fps
i was planning to merge consumable items in 50 or so batches to reduce vertex uploads but seems as it's not necessary. no noticable hickups when some vertices are pushed away. afterall it's not done every frame.
i've a few questions:
* how can i determine how many vertices an object will occupy when merged. Mesh().getUniqueVertexCount() does not give the correct number. for example, for a box created by primitives, this methods return 18. but it occupies only 10 vertices when merged.
* is there a best location to push unwanted vertices ? for example, does it matter to push them to same place or is it better to spread them ? besides this, i guess it's always better to push them somewhere behind Config.farPlane