Due to the low resolution of the occlusion buffer, small gaps between occluders can be closed and incorrectly occlude instances which should show through the gaps. To ameliorate this problem, this PR jitters the occlusion buffer over time, making it more likely an instance will be seen through a gap. This is used in conjunction with an occlusion timer per instance, to prevent instances flickering on and off rapidly.
As many open source projects have started doing it, we're removing the
current year from the copyright notice, so that we don't need to bump
it every year.
It seems like only the first year of publication is technically
relevant for copyright notices, and even that seems to be something
that many companies stopped listing altogether (in a version controlled
codebase, the commits are a much better source of date of publication
than a hardcoded copyright statement).
We also now list Godot Engine contributors first as we're collectively
the current maintainers of the project, and we clarify that the
"exclusive" copyright of the co-founders covers the timespan before
opensourcing (their further contributions are included as part of Godot
Engine contributors).
Also fixed "cf." Frenchism - it's meant as "refer to / see".
Added an occlusion culling system with support for static occluder meshes.
It can be enabled via `Project Settings > Rendering > Occlusion Culling > Use Occlusion Culling`.
Occluders are defined via the new `Occluder3D` resource and instanced using the new
`OccluderInstance3D` node. The occluders can also be automatically baked from a
scene using the built-in editor plugin.