More Polygons vs Polygon Smoothing

[Guest pecrowther]

I am using FSDS2 to design a tube. In order to reduce processing time, I am willing to accept a tube that is less than perfect. However, which takes less processing power?1. Using a higher resolution tube? (i.e. more polygons)2. Using polygon smoothing.I assume that the former involves more time spent computing, drawing and shading the polygon, while the latter involves some kind of averaging of adjacent screen colors.Thanks,Phil

[arno 1]

Hi Phil,That is a good question.If I remember correct the new floating point commands do not use any special commands anymore for the smoothing, so I think that is all in the setting of the normals of the polygons etc. This makes me think that that does not generate much extra workload (only for the videocard maybe, but FS is not dependant on the videocard for the performance in general). So I think you can best go for as less polygons as possible.But it would be interesting to hear if others have different opinions on this :).

[Guest pecrowther]

Hi Arno,Sounds like the only way to find out is to set up landscape with a million tubes and see which type yields the best frame rate! Roughly speaking, I would say that smoothing is about equivalent to doubling the resolution.Phil

[Guest gorchi]

Hi,I haven't made such test but it should be quite interesting :) Well, in my scenery I usually do it like this. When distance is less than 150m (for thick tubes) or 70m (thin tubes-fences for example), I use tube with 6-8 sides and smoothing on.For greater distances, the tube magically converts itself into a line which is displayed for next let's say 300-500m, depending on importance and object. This way I get quite good (to excellent) performance.Best regards,Goran BrumenFS Slovenija 2002 teamhttp://slovenia.avsim.net