Performance Decrease with 3D Mesh object

[Kalnar]

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.

[LazyCoder]

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.

[Anders]

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.

[Zeitgeist1989]

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.

[James]

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

Correct! Villy has already done it.

[Zeitgeist1989]

Excellent news! Thank you very much. :cool:

[Yves]

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

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).

[Kalnar]

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 .

[Ross]

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 .

[James]

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