> Gary adressed those creating the 3d-models and aircraft in FGFS. Yes, quite. And since your own aircraft doesn't repeat and is there independent of visibility range, so in some sense this is a special case anyway.
Problem is, once you have created a model, you don't control what others do with it. Someone might think that a helicopter looks cool parked on a helipad on an airport as a static object, and that a few of them are even better. So suddenly multiple copies of the model end up in the scenery. I don't know first hand what shows up in MP, but some models seem to be a big issue for other pilots from what I have heard. Ultimately, I don't care so much for theoretical arguments of what should scale how, I care for what actually does scale how. The fact is, directly looking at a cluster of ~5 parked AI aircraft decreases my framerate by 25% when I have high vertex shader load whereas I don't recall seeing this for low vertex shader load, that much I have established. The conclusion that models are a potentially large impact and matter is therefore justified. Now, I may be wrong and this has nothing to do with vertices. Then whatever it has to do with would be interesting. > But GPU's getting better and better today, but still the shape of the > aircraft does not need hundred of vertices to make it look smooth. I believe 'as many as needed but not more' is a very reasonable principle. For an AI plane which most of the time appears as a dot, my smoothness requirements are actually not very high, but my framerate requirements are. The argument that GPU's are getting better isn't a very good one. I have enough ideas and schemes for atmosphere light and more detailed cloud rendering worked out to keep the next-to-next generation of GPUs busy, and I'm guessing so do others. Burning performance for more realistic visuals isn't often that difficult after all... As an example, an overcast layer made of 100 m sized cloudlets would look terrific, would be technically easy to code and would drive any GPU you can buy into single digits (yes, I actually try such insanity now and then just to see with 1 fps how it could look if I had the resources to do it). * Thorsten ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel