makemdl Polygon limit

[Guest Fabio Miguez]

Hey guys,Also keep in mind some people choose to do small details as textures, others as actual geometry, which can add to a significant number of polys. Extra detail on parts such as the landing gear can also increase the count significantly, where you can either have a very simple model, with a basic shaft and texture the rest, or model nuts, bolts, springs, etc.. Of course it all boils down to what the modeler wants, and what the customers are willing to sacrifice in fps x looks.In current trends it seems very apparent to me that most customers are willing to have 10 fps less than the same model done by someone else to afford the extra details here and there.This is not to take away from optimization, which should take around 50% of the time it takes for the model to be complete. There is no sense in having unecessary polys in a model.

[Guest sdf]

Hello Bill,it is clear, that some aircraft require more vertex than others. An oldtimer with radial engines, huge propellers and a lot of wires is difficultier than a sleek business jet.Otherwise it could be possible to reduce the use of vertex. A fancy example is Lago's F-16. The first version for FS2002 used more than 80.000 vertices. The update for FS2004 uses lesser than 60.000. But if I see the aircraft in Flight Simulator I can't really tell the difference.But not only the vertices are important, the size of the textures and the animations influence very strongly the frame rate. More than a years ago I made some tests and checked the frame rate of many aircraft under exactly the same conditions. I used the Cessna 208 (the most complex stock aircraft of FS2002) as a reference and then measured the perfermance of the other aircraft.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/73557.gifI discovered that the size of the textures was - on the given system - very important. Look at the Dornier Wal by Michael Garbers and the RCS B-25: the designers used almost the same amount of vertices, but the B-25 uses much more textures than the Wal. The FPS difference is amazing.And then look at Flight 1 Spirit of Saint Louis and Cessna Golden Eagle. This aircraft are the same size, the Ryan uses lesser textures, but the frame rate is worser. Why? I presume that the animation of the spinning windmill need a lot of performance. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I think that any fancy animation is costly. And least but not last: many thanks for your Socata. I liked it very much.

[Guest panzerschiffe]

Textures affect frame rate more than anything else.Take the most complex model (vertices, poly faces, whatever) and load it into FS without textures and it'll be fine.Once you start putting a bunch of textures on there the performance starts getting chewed up, especially any animated parts with such textures since the simulator has to not only display them but rotate, scale, transform, etc etc.The iFDG MD-11 and A320 admittedly use a very high number of big textures, and it allows for some excellent details in the textures at the cost of performance. People also want smooth surfaces on the model, so that is why I use so many polys just for the shaping of the aircraft surfaces.Our fans want this and that, I oblige.

[Guest BWIA330]

Hey,What you can try to do is when exported the model, make sure and unclick optimize in makemdl and middleman if your using that as well. I had that error and my plane was around 60 k.Best Regards,BWIA330

[Guest electeddonkee]

Hehe I believe I'm the one that told you that in the Gmax support forum. :) Thats cool how information gets passed around from forum to forum. nice to see. Anyhows, yes you are right that disabling the optimize function can help. I think that it is possible that the optimize function uses a lot of CPU power. I think the only thing limiting the number of polygons in a model is the power of your computer; amount of memory you have, etc (many people have mentionned this I think). So, I guess by disableing the optimize function you are freeing up some of the computer's resources thus allowing for more polys/vertices. Also I guess on some models there are many more optimizations that can be performed so I guess the effects of disabling the "optimize" funciton can vary.