Visibility culling

[Adversus]

At the moment I have my level split into smaller meshes each of which use 1 texture atlas, that I make visible or not due to set rules. i.e. setion a can see section b but no others etc

I'm looking for a good solution to also perform hidden surface removal on this. Perhaps one bsp tree for them all that is aware of the above rules. I also would like to perform per object visibility culling against the this level geometry.

Anyone have any suggestions on what would be the best way to tackle this problem in irrlicht?

[Mel]

Objects can be culled due to early Z buffer culling. Make sure that you draw the level before the objects. And make the objects follow the same rules, if the Section C can't be seen from Section A, it is clear that the objects inside can't be seen either.

[Adversus]

I haven't actually used that and I know it's supported in hardware.

Is this the best way now as it still requires the geometry to be "drawn" using drawVertexPrimitiveList even if culled after. Would it depend on the buffers being in vid memory so as to avoid bandwidth issues?