I’m making a 3d application and have a question about performance. My entire scene is static so I have made a display list containing all the verticies etc.
Is this the most effective way to do it, or can I improve performance further by putting the data in a bsp-tree (or similar) and then use it to draw just the visible parts of the scene?
If possible, I would prefer to keep my display list. What should I have in mind for the display list to be as quick as possible?
For very large scene’s bsp tree’s would be far quicker. These can be coupled with vertex arrays to provide far faster performance.
Display lists can be made to be slow however if their contents is badly laid out. For example, if you do silly amounts of calculation within them etc. Try to keep them to purely drawing.
As far as I’ve found, it usually better to use some sort of vertex array for levels, the advantages are that you can do mass culling of the faces to improve performance. Imagine you are viewing the inside of a room, you wont be able to see whats behind you so whay draw it? Even if itas in a display list, it will be slower than not drawing it at all…