I am waiting to start a new engine in OpenGL until there is support for fast referenced meshes. From what I understand, D3D9 allows you to pass a transformation array to the gfx card, along with a mesh, and all instances of the mesh are drawn in one pass.
I am waiting to start a new engine in OpenGL until there is support for fast referenced meshes. From what I understand, D3D9 allows you to pass a transformation array to the gfx card, along with a mesh, and all instances of the mesh are drawn in one pass.
Then keep waiting. The ARB is too busy not releasing our render to texture extension to bother with instanced rendering.
Yeah, I complained about this a bit too. But there is a bright side (sort of). Instanced rendering isn’t really faster on todays hardware when dealing with geometry more complex than a box. In our tests, its actually significantly slower when dealing with complex geometry (>~1000 polygons).
Instanced rendering isn’t really faster on todays hardware when dealing with geometry more complex than a box. In our tests, its actually significantly slower when dealing with complex geometry (>~1000 polygons).
There’s quite a bit of room between “more complex than a box” and “>~1000 polys”. Tufts of grass, for example. More complex than a box, certainly, but hardly 1000 polys. Bushes. Things like that. Things that are clearly decoration indended to improve the look of a game.