[sldev] Re: Questions on the particle system

[Dale Glass]

On Monday 03 December 2007 04:12:46 Argent Stonecutter wrote:
> On 02-Dec-2007, at 15:53, Dale Glass wrote:
> > If I'm looking at something that's near, like say, a candle, I want
> > to see
> > the candle in its all full detail glory. Whatever is going on far
> > away is
> > far less interesting.
>
> If you can see details in the flame then the AREA it covers is large,
> so it's not a small particle system.

I still think the area is the wrong approach. Things with large areas are 
usually uninteresting and don't lose that much from being toned down a 
bit. Take this for example:

http://daleglass.net/images/screenshots/overkill.jpg

That sort of thing is going to beat pretty much any nearby effect. And are 
you really going to miss a few particles in there?

Besides, in the current codebase this is going to be counted even if it's 
happening somewhere out of your view. 

My benchmarks show that at least on my hardware, area is THE cause of the 
slowdown. The whole point of having a particle limit is to avoid making 
things down grind to a halt when too, and favouring things by area means 
consistently picking the worst framerate possible.

Worse, IMO, this would encourage waste. Particles are great for small 
details. But this detail will inevitably lose to whatever happens to be 
around. So solution for that: More output, so that it's more likely to be 
shown.

In fact I think that prioritizing *small* effects near the camera could be 
better.
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