[sldev] Questions on the particle system

Argent Stonecutter secret.argent at gmail.com
Sun Dec 2 13:17:41 PST 2007


On 02-Dec-2007, at 14:59, Dale Glass wrote:
> Why does the particle limit work by keeping a counter that gets  
> incremented
> in constructors and decremented in destructors instead of just  
> setting it
> to 0 on each start of frame and counting what's actually getting  
> rendered?
>
> Why do invisible effects still count towards the particle limit?

I think that the key point here may be to remember that particles not  
being rendered still need to be tracked, so that (for example) the  
smoke from the campfire behind you blows past you. The other thing to  
consider is that it's probably smarter to sort particle systems by  
the area they cover, so that a nearby but small system isn't given  
priority over a system that's further away.

The last-but-one Windlight release got that wrong, and that's why  
particle systems were screwed up.

They seem to have largely fixed most of the particle systems problems  
in the latest Windlight.

Before spending a lot of time on this, you probably need to see if  
the problem you're trying to solve is still a problem, and... if you  
want it in your own viewer without Windlight... whether you can't  
just lift the code from there. Also, note that both Nicholaz and I  
have spent a lot of time digging into this already.



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