Performance Decrease with 3D Mesh object

I'm not sure if this is the right place to put this. But I was just doing some tests. I heard that the 3D Mesh object is now hardware accelerated (it does have a d3d9 option in anycase)

In Normal mmf I could create 47 meshes before I hit 30 fps with the benchmark program

In HWA mmf I could create 18 meshes before I hit 30 fps with the benchmark program.

I'm not sure if this is a problem with the extension, MMF, or if work is still being done on it. But I heard that the 3d Mesh extension was supposed to be ported to HWA already so I thought I'd give you guys a heads up.

Thanks. :)

Uhhh, it was always 3d accelerated. 3D like that IS hardware acceleration. In 3d, every object is made up of thousands of triangles, and in 2d games, each object is made up of 2 triangles (to make a square).

That extension is really slow anyways because MMF2 wasn't designed to handle 3d.

Hardware Acceleration hasn't changed anything with regards to that object.

The problem with the 3D mesh object was that it creates an instance of a completely seperate 3D engine to draw into an image in memory which then is put back into the 3d card for rendering.
As you might have guessed that is extremely slow.
The object has to be remade for the new hardware acceleration to work fast.

From what I understand, the 3D Mesh Object works by somehow rendering 3D objects onto a standard MMF 2D image surface, which is not accelerated by hardware. This is what accounts for its slow rendering speed when too many objects are displayed at a time.

The HWA version of MMF now renders sprites and other 2D objects directly to the screen as flat polygons with textures. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it should finally be possible to natively render 3D objects directly to the screen and with full hardware acceleration.

So, either a new 3D Mesh Object will have to be programmed from scratch, or else the current one will possibly have to be converted somehow.

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it should finally be possible to natively render 3D objects directly to the screen and with full hardware acceleration.

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Correct! Villy has already done it.

Excellent news! Thank you very much. :cool:

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But I heard that the 3d Mesh extension was supposed to be ported to HWA already

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The 3D Mesh object is not yet optimized for HWA, but we plan to convert it asap (if possible - i.e. if there is no conflict between the Irrlicht library it uses and the way MMF2 handles Direct3D).

Awesome. I was hopeing to be able to make large background objects such as trees out of simple 3d meshes for a top down 2d game. Can't wait to see the performance increase :).

I think what Jamie is refering to, is irrlicht rendering to the mmf window, which is not quite the same as having a fast controllable 3dmesh object :) .

No, I was referring to drawing 3D polygons directly to MMF2 HWA's window.

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Originally Posted by Jamie

No, I was referring to drawing 3D polygons directly to MMF2 HWA's window.

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That's very interesing, I hope some information about how to do that rapidly will be available for developers and maybe some functions to interface it will be available in the future HWA SDK. :)

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Originally Posted by Jamie

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it should finally be possible to natively render 3D objects directly to the screen and with full hardware acceleration.

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Correct! Villy has already done it.

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Heya Jamie. Are you saying that someone has already made an optimized version of the 3D mesh object for HWA?

If so do you know when it will be released. Not something I have to have for what I'm working on but it would be nice and increase the visual presentation a bit.

No, I am saying that someone has already managed to natively render 3D objects directly to the screen and with full hardware acceleration.

Ah. Sweetness.

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Originally Posted by Jamie

No, I am saying that someone has already managed to natively render 3D objects directly to the screen and with full hardware acceleration.

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How'd they do that?

With a custom extension, programmed to grab the D3D9 surface of the MMF2 window and then draw to it.

Ah.

Umm... they're not uh... thinking of releasing that extension now are they? (I don't suppose it's 100% complete though?)

All he did was draw a cube..

Coincidentally enough, that's all I need. I need a cube with textures on it so I can make a Myst IV style game (where you can look around and such). I've tried using the 3d Mesh object, but it's really slow at high resolutions (1280x1024).

Will the 3d mesh object get faster when it's made HWA compatible? (or will a better object replace it entirely?)

I didn't say he made an extension which allowed you to create a dynamic textured cube and look around it with a camera. I said he drew a cube to the HWA screen using a custom extension.

By custom extension I mean no actions, conditions or expressions.. just hardcoded C++ to draw the cube.

Ah. Ok.