Polygon count in modern games?
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I realize that you can't give me a precise number but a range on average would be nice.
I would like to know the ranges for these kind of games:
FPS - Such as Call of duty 6
RTS - Such as Age of Empires
As for MMORPGs, how many polygons if the game focuses on graphics such as Age of Conan, and if it focuses on gameplay, such as Darkfall which promises that it can handle battles with 200+ players
Thanks :)
There isn't really an answer to this question.
It depends on all kinds of variables.
Quote:As for MMORPGs, how many polygons if the game focuses on graphics such as Age of Conan, and if it focuses on gameplay, such as Darkfall which promises that it can handle battles with 200+ playersThese aren't mutually exclusives. There are tons of techniques that can be used.
It depends on all kinds of variables.
On even roughly modern hardware, the number of draw calls is massively more important than the number of vertices. In fact this isn't scaling with time at all - you shouldn't be drawing more than several hundred batches today and that's the same as it was 5 years ago. Which explains the below - all other limits have moved on a long way...
You can render a single model with literally millions of vertices at silly frame rates. If you want to render 1000 of them, the difference between a 1000x models with 1000 verts and 1000x models with 100,000 verts won't be as much as you might expect.
Given there are other limits, the number of vertices you use in practice is unlimited and has been the case for some time. You will always hit something else as a bottleneck before this unless you're doing something truly bizarre.
You can render a single model with literally millions of vertices at silly frame rates. If you want to render 1000 of them, the difference between a 1000x models with 1000 verts and 1000x models with 100,000 verts won't be as much as you might expect.
Given there are other limits, the number of vertices you use in practice is unlimited and has been the case for some time. You will always hit something else as a bottleneck before this unless you're doing something truly bizarre.
Yeah # of draw calls is the most important generally
After that it's typically fillrate (the amount of overdraw you have)
Polygon count isn't really generally an issue anymore up to a certain point
Otherwise, it's so entirely dependent on the rest of your engine that it's not really a generalizable metric anymore.
-me
After that it's typically fillrate (the amount of overdraw you have)
Polygon count isn't really generally an issue anymore up to a certain point
Otherwise, it's so entirely dependent on the rest of your engine that it's not really a generalizable metric anymore.
-me
Quote:Original post by Palidine
Yeah # of draw calls is the most important generally
After that it's typically fillrate (the amount of overdraw you have)
Polygon count isn't really generally an issue anymore up to a certain point
Otherwise, it's so entirely dependent on the rest of your engine that it's not really a generalizable metric anymore.
-me
a higher polygon count can quite quickly become an issue if you do have non-trivial vertexshaders though (which quite alot of games do these days).
Quote:Original post by SimonForsman
a higher polygon count can quite quickly become an issue if you do have non-trivial vertexshaders though (which quite alot of games do these days).
For sure. I claim immunity under my "it's so entirely dependent on the rest of your engine" clause though [smile]
-me
For the record, a lot of MMO's keep their graphics really simple and not CPU or GPU demanding so that they have access to more potential players.
If someone made an MMO where you had to have the very top of the line computer to play it, they wouldn't be making much money because nobody would be able to play it!
If someone made an MMO where you had to have the very top of the line computer to play it, they wouldn't be making much money because nobody would be able to play it!
A good modeler can get complex models down to a few hundred polygons, covering the details with a good texture. That's generally not a problem.
When it comes to raw polygons, cards from five years ago could easily handle 5 million polygons per frame @60Hz if they are batched up properly. There were some tech demos with extremely dense models using per-pixel color rather than textures. You are likely to hit other bottlenecks long before you hit raw polygon limits. (Consider that a 1280x1024 screen has 1.3M pixels, so that's five polygons per pixel!)
Bigger problems are fill rate and overdraw, shader complexity, bus transfer rates with too many batches or too many transmitted items, etc. Less likely is being CPU-bound. The book GPU Gems has an article on finding those problems, which NVidia made available to the public. It even includes a flowchart of how to identify the issue. Yay.
When it comes to raw polygons, cards from five years ago could easily handle 5 million polygons per frame @60Hz if they are batched up properly. There were some tech demos with extremely dense models using per-pixel color rather than textures. You are likely to hit other bottlenecks long before you hit raw polygon limits. (Consider that a 1280x1024 screen has 1.3M pixels, so that's five polygons per pixel!)
Bigger problems are fill rate and overdraw, shader complexity, bus transfer rates with too many batches or too many transmitted items, etc. Less likely is being CPU-bound. The book GPU Gems has an article on finding those problems, which NVidia made available to the public. It even includes a flowchart of how to identify the issue. Yay.
frob, a few hundred doesn't really cut it for humanoid models. You need a few thousand for everything to work well, especially in certain areas that deform, you need a few edge loops to get it to work right. It's hard to get them under 1.5k when doing retopology on a bigger mesh.
Also not mentioned in this thread are impostor billboards, LOD meshes, using less complex shaders on distant objects, etc...
Also not mentioned in this thread are impostor billboards, LOD meshes, using less complex shaders on distant objects, etc...
eh the old blocky look is good imo:) state of the art graphics have entered an 'uncanny valley' of sorts.
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