Are there any disadvantages to setting a camera's far clipping plane to 10000?

Are there any disadvantages to setting a camera's far clipping plane to 10000?

 

The larger the far clip plane and the smaller the near clip plane (or the bigger the difference between them) the less precise your depth buffer will be (In simple terms). This could create what is known as Z-Fighting. Z-Fighting is when there isn't enough precision in the camera's depth buffer to know if an object is in front or behind another object that is at a similar distance from the camera. The result is the two objects flickering as from frame to frame a different one is deemed in front of the other.

 

Thank you for this information. I'll be on the look out for Z fighting off in the distance between objects.

 

Antony's answer is spot-on. I just have one additional thing I'd point out: the reason this happens is because the video card has a finite number of depth values it can recognize (this is what they're talking about when referring to 16 or 24 or 32 bit depth buffers). Those finite slices are spread out between the near and far clipping planes, and so when the clipping planes are further apart, the depth values are spread further apart.

As a result, you want to keep the far clipping plane as near as possible while still being far enough for your game, and vice versa for the near clipping plane.

 

Just to elaborate a bit more, what matters is the ratio between the far and near clipping planes. Not the linear difference. So, if you're having problems, pushing your near clipping plane out a few meters helps a lot more than pulling the far clipping plane in by the same amount.

If I had a far clipping plane of 10,000, I would set the near clipping plane to at least 1.0, and maybe try for 2 or 5 (or even 10 if I can manage it).