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Building a harbor

Francois

Francois

FSDevConf team
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italy
As you may know by now I am attempting to build a complete Mulberry harbor in Sketchup........ FSX.

A lot of work.. and a lot of learning. The 'Spud' you see in the picture now consists of 2 drawcalls, 19440 triangles and 19112 texture vertices (and isn't textured yet except for the default SU texture.

Frankly, I have NO idea if this is good or bad !?

spud09.jpg
 
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Hi Francois:

AFAIK, on a practical basis, fewer draw calls may mean more acceptable performance in FSX at run time; but there are other considerations which may weigh in on that 'guess-timation' as well, such as vertex count.


But IIUC, that vertex count may not necessarily have an adverse impact on FSX run time performance if the draw calls are otherwise so low. :scratchch


With structures that large, we know that MCX will have to segment the model every 100 meters to fit the FSX "curved Earth" 3D world model, so one might wonder if there is any benefit to segmenting the object in ex: Sketchup prior to importing it into MCX ?

"Whale Roadways (causeways) & Beetle Pontoons

Concrete Beetle pontoon for Whale roadway in Mulberry harbor
Beetle pontoon for Whale roadway in Mulberry harbor.

The steel whale roadways were up to 3,500 feet long and floated on pontoons (code named Beetle) made of steel or concrete which were kept in place by kite anchors."

http://www.worldwar2headquarters.com/HTML/normandy/mulberries/spud-piers-whales.html


The best 'direct' test may be to simply import a copy of the working project into MCX (with or without textures) to see how it performs in FSX at run time. :idea:


PS: < Never thought you'd ever have much need to give "a tip of the hat" to the FSX FPS counter did ya' ? > :D


[EDITED]

BTW: Nice models, and they seem even better with each preview screenie. ;)

Would you share with us which photorealistic renderer you use, and whether it can be launched from inside Sketchup ? :confused:

[END_EDIT]


Hope this helps, and thanks for sharing any insights which might help other aspiring Sketchup modelers ! :)

GaryGB
 
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Hi Kevin:

Those are some very informative linked threads I shall keep copies of as a reference, thanks ! :)

GaryGB
 
GaryGB said:
Hi Kevin:

Those are some very informative linked threads I shall keep copies of as a reference, thanks ! :)

GaryGB
Click to expand...

Your welcome. In the 3rd post, my point was it depends on what you are trying to accomplish. LODs have a practical aspect, but not performance gaining in drawcalls. Having 1 sheet uv mapped is good, and for large project a better solution.

As for verticies vs texture, I have encountered fewer problems when using more textures rather than more faces. I have a large set of models which do not really affect performance even without messing with LOD or Drawcalls. My models incorporate single face with texture in most cases. The single image/texture to give the appearance of more detail appears to render better as far as performance goes. Having 50 or so textures for multiple models is great when its all on one texture sheet. Now if each texture was being rendered from separate files, you could have performance issues if the textures are large enough and numerous enough, this is when more faces would not affect as much in performance.
Click to expand...

I probably could have explained it better.
 
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