   Triangles Limit in RTS games
  When writing a RTS game like Warcraft 3, what the maximum amount of triangles per frame should I aim for. Considering that user has 16 MB 3D video card (TNT, i810, Voodoo 3, Rage 128 equivalent or better) ? 
  Hmmm... On that low end hardware?  5,000-10,000 per frame? You may be able to get away with more, depending on what kind of CPU you''re expecting.  I think on those cards with that type of game you''ll be mostly transform limited because of the lack of T&L, and if you''re on a fast CPU you''ll be bandwidth limited. If your minimum requirements where a GeForce you could probably pull off 20k or more. Rendering an RTS is pretty nice because there is very little overdraw, there are a lot of instanced meshes, and those meshes can be very low poly and still look good.  ;  Of those cards, the TNT and Voodoo3 would be able to push easily to 15k/frame without lighting with a 400mhz CPU. Since there is hardly any overdraw,and if you can store all the frames of the animated models in display lists, you can push it alot higher. This will depend on the efficiency of your game code. The most optimised RTS is obviously Starcraft, it could handle thousands of land units'' collission detection and pathfinding on a P90 with no slowdown. It still amazes me, how they pulled it off.From my tests, older cards seem to perform better with Display Lists then VBOs.Instancing the meshes is a must. Also try not to use animation interpolation as it can be a huge slowdown on slower CPUs when many models are onscreen at once. Skeletal Animation is obviously a big no-no. ;quote:Original post by GamerSg  The most optimised RTS is obviously Starcraft, it could handle thousands of land units'' collission detection and pathfinding on a P90 with no slowdown. It still amazes me, how they pulled it off.Well, Starcraft is 2d, that''s why it''s simly faster on low end PCs.Still amazing good game though! ;  2D AND   256 colors.  It''s amazing what their artists could do. ;  Considering that you don´t need 100 fps in 3d RTS, you could have 10k tris on 500 MHz with TNT1 easily in about 30 fps. Now I`m not talking about some terrain where you can put it into Indexed Triangle Strip whioch means you could render several times more tris. But when it`s divided into more objects, the fps shall go down due to VB & texture switching along with T&L which shall probably be only in SW.However, I can`t predict how your AI and pathfinding shall bring the CPU to its knees at 500 MHz. So I`d say that triangle limit is not THAT   important, as is the overall design of the engine. Also, if you`ll be happy with just overview 3d camera (at some small angle), you can easily and fast decide what units are in your frustum before firing up some expensive frustum algorithm.Just experiment.  VladR Avenger 3D game;quote:Original post by VladR  Considering that you don´t need 100 fps in 3d RTS,That''s an odd statement. Is there some type of game you do need 100 FPS for? The human eye can''t see over about 75 FPS and can''t make out any noticeable difference above 35 FPS.OP: Your best bet is to use some test models (simple spheres or something) to see what kind of framerates your engine gets with different amounts of faces on screen. Once you''ve got some hard numbers, you can then start modeling with concrete limits in mind. ;  FPS want higher fps more for reaction time than smooth animiation. You might not be able to see faster than 75 fps but you can definitely feel the difference in terms of mouse movement and view change between 75 and 100 fps. You get finer control and shorter response times. At 100 fps the shortest delta between a mouse input and the resulting change on screen would be about 10 ms. Some studies shown the human visual system can extrapalate motion down to 5 ms accuracy, so thats nearer to the therotical limits.-ddn ;quote:Original post by Anonymous Poster  FPS want higher fps more for reaction time than smooth animiation. You might not be able to see faster than 75 fps but you can definitely feel the difference in terms of mouse movement and view change between 75 and 100 fps.Divorce your presentation from your internal model.@Zenith2n:You don''t want to set a maximum. If a particular user can handle more triangles, allow that user to ratchet up the detail to mind-boggling levels. Use techniques like subdivision surfaces (and other interpolative methods like framerate-independent animation) to provide near-limitness ability to take advantage of better hardware. That way, your game''ll still look good on new hardware 4 years from now. ;  The reason that I asked for triangles limit, is because I dont have test computer with above specs and I also dont have resources to create models with different poly counts . Infact I hope I will be able to create everything I need.@Oluseyi:Nice idea about subdivision surfaces, but I dont know that much about DirectX 9, YET .Or should I implement subdivision surfaces in software ?I also heard that ATI uses different techniques than NVIDIA making them both incompatible in this area.Thank you for your responces guys. 