Re: pfLightpoint alpha

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Lance R. Marrou (marrou++at++vsl.ist.ucf.edu)
Thu, 9 Mar 1995 10:33:28 -0500 (EST)


On Thu, 9 Mar 1995, Simon Bennett wrote:

> 2000 - Performer doesn't do anything clever with lightpoint nodes. The
> only way that I can see to do what you want is to create/destroy new
> lightpoint nodes on the fly.

I don't think that 1000 extra (invisible) light points are worth the expense
of checking every light point to see if its alpha value is close to 0. (Via
some PF_ALMOST_EQUAL function with a certain tolerance threshold). It takes
about 4-5ms on an Indigo2 Extreme to display 5000 light points (all same size,
but varying colors & alpha values). I was thinking about making each light
point (a star in my case) be a different size, but I haven't gotten around to
it yet. It would require a different light point node for every size, or for
every point, which might be a serious drain on memory and cause performance
loss. Any comment on how (or if it is worth it) to make varying or random
sizes for about 5000 light points?

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