Another round of benchmarks

[VGA]

I get : gz_benchmarks.zip wasn't found on the server

Graf, maybe you should try a profiling method to see where most of the processing time is being spent. Maybe there is some bottleneck somewhere. Multithreading sounds like too much of an undertaking.

[Graf Zahl]

There is no specific bottleneck except the fact that processing large levels spends a lot of time everywhere. The most time is spent in the line renderer but I got no idea how to optimize that. Everything I tried resulted in performance loss due to cache misses.

[VGA]

Maybe you can implement some aggressive culling method, so people with framerate problems can enable it and geometry at a distance will be totally ignored / not rendered. You can also use fog to mask it, so walls aren't flickering at a distance.

Also, maybe using more RAM and precaching ... stuff ?

Haha, I must sound pretty naive

[Enjay]

I can't speak for Graf but, IMO, at some point you have to stop trying to cater for people who have hardware that can't run your program because the hardware is below your target spec. Adding a significant feature to allow people to run GZdoom on below-spec hardware that they are likely to upgrade sooner or later anyway seems like pointlessly investing time and effort in an ever shrinking userbase. Of course weaker systems have to be considered but there has to be a cut off point.

[Graf Zahl]

I concur with everything you just said. GZDoom works fine on my Geforce 8600GT and that's hardware I consider low end by now. The computer I'm on was mid-range when I bought it 3.5 years ago and by today's standards the hardware is hopelessly outdated.

I also got an older system with a GF 6800 but it's no fun playing large maps on that anymore. However, that thing is almost 7 years old now and I hardly call it reasonable to expect some of the huge maps from recent years to run well on it.

Bottom line: Consider everything not compatible with OpenGL 3.x as obsolete. It's merely a courtesy that I don't remove the code that's needed to support it.

[VGA]

I agree with you. I was merely advocating against multithreading, since it will not benefit most weaker systems anyway, since they are single-core

[Graf Zahl]

So what? Optimizations for today's computers are bad or what?

[VGA]

Today's PCs get epic fps. I always get 60 (vsync) on my c2d e8400 @ 3.3ghz

My dreams for (g)zdoom are voxel items and some advanced monster/bot AI scripting. And what about those fancy things like bumpmapping, are they possible ?

[Rachael]

Bottom line: Consider everything not compatible with OpenGL 3.x as obsolete. It's merely a courtesy that I don't remove the code that's needed to support it.

I think that is quite a great courtesy - and I appreciate it - and quite a lot of other people do too.

While I can't really complain - my card handles everything GZDoom throws at it (yes, even the dreaded TUTNT2) - OpenGL is horribly supported all across the board, and the "lowest common denominator" for hardware that is available today does not even have to support a high OpenGL version yet.

When your map/mod is targeting GZDoom, you still want to reach as wide an audience as possible, and the fact that such grossly outdated hardware still exists is one limiting factor that by itself is already hurting your audience base.