Surprisingly, I can’t find any benchmarks online, as there are for Tween engines etc.
Has anyone here created a moderately complex scene, and constructed it in Papervision, Away3D and Sandy to see which one has the best performance?
[quote=rumblesushi;2342288]Surprisingly, I can’t find any benchmarks online, as there are for Tween engines etc.
Has anyone here created a moderately complex scene, and constructed it in Papervision, Away3D and Sandy to see which one has the best performance?[/quote]
The only benchmarking test I’ve seen done was by Mrdoob, and that was almost a year ago. [link] It didn’t include Sandy, only Away and PV3D.
All three of them are impressive, however, and I’ve found it best to choose which one to go with based on the requirements of the project. I’m just starting a new side project (game), and have used PV3D in the past. Ultimately, though, I chose Away3D for the game due simply to the fact that what the game requires will be most easily accomplished with the classes set up in Away.
I think all three handle performance fairly well, and that your real gains will be seen in smart development/asset management.
Oh, and while we’re talking about 3D engines, don’t forget Alternativa3D! 
I’ve messed with all of them, but at the moment PV3D just seems like the best by far. It has the biggest user community too, so finding documentation is much easier.
Anogar makes a good point. PV3D definitely has the largest active community, which can be very helpful when you need to figure something out (plus they’re friendly!).
My one gripe about PV3D, though, is the lack of updated documentation. I won’t fault the dev team for that, though, since docs are a pain to maintain and they’re always coming out with new, kickass stuff. Still, it can really bring your development to a grinding hault if you have to wait for a forum post reply because the docs don’t cover what you need to know.
As an aside, that was an added benefit to picking Away for my current project, as the latest release (2.1) came with completely revised documentation (including source examples in the docs). Really, picking Away for this project was because of the docs, as I was able to quickly find out if all of my requirements could be met. Could they be met in PV3D? Quite possibly, but I wouldn’t know it for certain until I asked 20+ questions in the discussion group and then waited for answers. So there’s definitely a give-and-take to it all that’ll tie in to the goals you want accomplished.
There actually is a full Great White API document, it’s just really hard to find. Fault their web team! Lemme see if I can dig it up.
*edit:
*Okay, this isn’t official, but it’s pretty comprehensive.
[quote=Anogar;2342313]There actually is a full Great White API document, it’s just really hard to find. Fault their web team! Lemme see if I can dig it up.
edit:
Okay, this isn’t official, but it’s pretty comprehensive.
http://www.flashbookmarks.com/pv3ddoc/[/quote]
Nice, Anogar! And yes, fist-shaking for their web team! ;D
I haven’t the time to poke through it atm, but do you know if these docs include their recent incorporation of the effects branch into great white?
Edit: Okay, so looks like offhand it’s not in there, but regardless, super helpful. One of my coworkers is singing your praises, as he’s using Great White for one of our contracts.
Thanks for the replies guys.
I’ve messed very briefly with PV. It seems easy to use, for someone with no experience of 3D at all, like me.
I must say I’m surprised with that result. I thought away3D would win in the performance stakes.
Some of the more complex demos I’ve seen from both engines, away3D’s seemed to have significantly higher framerates. This is the official dev demos I’m talking about too.
Oh and by the way, I didn’t mention Alternativa because it blows the others out of the water
Pretty big 3D scenes, full of texture, plus gravity and collision detection, running at 100 fps 
Insane.
I didn’t mention it because it’s new, and because it wins easily, I was just curious about the other more established engines.
[quote=rumblesushi;2342333]Thanks for the replies guys.
I’ve messed very briefly with PV. It seems easy to use, for someone with no experience of 3D at all, like me.
I must say I’m surprised with that result. I thought away3D would win in the performance stakes.
Some of the more complex demos I’ve seen from both engines, away3D’s seemed to have significantly higher framerates. This is the official dev demos I’m talking about too.[/quote]
Well again, keep in mind that those benchmarks were done a year ago, and a LOT has changed in both engines since then. It’s also important to remember that these aren’t “official” benchmarks. That much is made clear in Mrdoob’s followup post, where a PV3D coder rewrote the test for PV3D and got a 40% boost in performance.
And that’s really the sticky bit of it - performance is going to depend much more on how you utilize the engine and manage your assets.
Still, a Flash-equivalent of 3DMark would be pretty nifty…
Have you ever seen anything other than an environment out of Alternativa? I’d be curious to see how it handles the sort of interactive stuff that PV3D has been used for.
Looking through Alternativa’s API, I can’t find anything on how to add interactive events.
[quote=Anogar;2342340]Have you ever seen anything other than an environment out of Alternativa? I’d be curious to see how it handles the sort of interactive stuff that PV3D has been used for.
Looking through Alternativa’s API, I can’t find anything on how to add interactive events.[/quote]
It actually doesn’t support it yet. 
It’s going to be included in their 5.1 release.
Alternativa is very much a baby (I’m wondering who is doing the versioning), but shows a great deal of promise. IMHO, it’s not ready for prime time, but could very well be when 5.1 comes out.
I don’t know Ano, I’d say it’s as interactive as most of the Papervision examples you see. Most Papervision things I’ve seen involve the camera moving with your mouse, then zooming into an object when you click it.
And with Alternativa, you can move around with gravity and collision detection.
Plus, the bunker for example, I’d say has a similar poly count to the great white demo, maybe slightly less textures when you consider all the fish, but incorporates collision detection rather than just a pivotal or tracking camera, and runs at 100 fps.
I would say the great white demo runs at about 20.
With an extra bit of interactivity, I can’t see Alternativa’s performance suddenly being crippled.
[quote=rumblesushi;2342353]I don’t know Ano, I’d say it’s as interactive as most of the Papervision examples you see. Most Papervision things I’ve seen involve the camera moving with your mouse, then zooming into an object when you click it.
And with Alternativa, you can move around with gravity and collision detection.
Plus, the bunker for example, I’d say has a similar poly count to the great white demo, maybe slightly less textures when you consider all the fish, but incorporates collision detection rather than just a pivotal or tracking camera, and runs at 100 fps.
I would say the great white demo runs at about 20.
With an extra bit of interactivity, I can’t see Alternativa’s performance suddenly being crippled.[/quote]
I do rather like that bunker demo. A couple of things worth pointing out about it, though:
Part of the reason it runs as well as it does is that it degrades the quality of the textures when you’re in motion, giving it less to process as you scurry about the bunker. It also redraws the geometry of the objects in the scene so they use fewer faces while you’re walking. There’s nothing wrong at all with this (in fact it’s my fav feature in Alternativa), but it’s important to understand that those high framerates you’re seeing are thanks to using less geometry and smaller textures when you’re in motion. It’s adaptive degradation, basically.
You can notice this even more in their isometric example (the power plant thingy). Zoom in on it and then start to rotate around. Notice how the textures revert to poorer quality bitmaps. You’ll also see that the redrawing of the geometry causes some issues (particularly on the roof of the larger building), creating clipping and screwing up normals. So there are pros and cons, as there will be with any of the available engines.
[quote=rumblesushi;2342353]I don’t know Ano, I’d say it’s as interactive as most of the Papervision examples you see. Most Papervision things I’ve seen involve the camera moving with your mouse, then zooming into an object when you click it.
And with Alternativa, you can move around with gravity and collision detection.
Plus, the bunker for example, I’d say has a similar poly count to the great white demo, maybe slightly less textures when you consider all the fish, but incorporates collision detection rather than just a pivotal or tracking camera, and runs at 100 fps.
I would say the great white demo runs at about 20.
With an extra bit of interactivity, I can’t see Alternativa’s performance suddenly being crippled.[/quote]
I’m not questioning the performance, I’m just saying without proper mouse events and such, it’s almost useless for building an actual interactive site.
Check this site out:
[quote=skineh;2342368]I do rather like that bunker demo. A couple of things worth pointing out about it, though:
Part of the reason it runs as well as it does is that it degrades the quality of the textures when you’re in motion, giving it less to process as you scurry about the bunker. It also redraws the geometry of the objects in the scene so they use fewer faces while you’re walking. There’s nothing wrong at all with this (in fact it’s my fav feature in Alternativa), but it’s important to understand that those high framerates you’re seeing are thanks to using less geometry and smaller textures when you’re in motion. It’s adaptive degradation, basically.
You can notice this even more in their isometric example (the power plant thingy). Zoom in on it and then start to rotate around. Notice how the textures revert to poorer quality bitmaps. You’ll also see that the redrawing of the geometry causes some issues (particularly on the roof of the larger building), creating clipping and screwing up normals. So there are pros and cons, as there will be with any of the available engines.[/quote]
I noticed that too. In fact, when in motion it just sets the quality to low
Personally I don’t mind it all, I’m a bit of a framerate junkie.
[quote=Anogar;2342375]I’m not questioning the performance, I’m just saying without proper mouse events and such, it’s almost useless for building an actual interactive site.
Check this site out:
http://www.whitevoid.com/application.html[/quote]
Oh yeah, fair enough. I didn’t realise that actually, I’ve only just started playing around with Alternativa.
Slick site by the way, one of the better examples I’ve seen of Papervision. Runs fairly smooth too, fullscreen at 1680 by 1050.
By the way Skineh and Ano - I’d like to see some of your 3D work if you have any online to view
I’m launching a new 3D site in the next few weeks, I’ll be sure to tell ya.
None online for me, I’m afraid. I have a good number of experimental stuff that was done just to get comfortable w/ some of the engines, but nothing polished. I was a programmer for several years (C++ and OpenGL mostly), then turned around and got a BFA doing 3D modelling (Max and a lil’ ZBrush). Now I’m back coding once again, only this time in AS3. Never lost the interest in 3D, though, which is why I’m now starting a 3D project for Flash on the side.
I’m a total newbie in terms of 3d, and I have to say Away3d made more sense to me. Not saying it’s a better engine, only that it was easier for me to get my first experiment running in just a few hours. In part because the documentation was better on that moment, but also because it seemed more logical the way it worked from my newbie perspective.
My first try with papervision was a failure… but now thanks to Anogar we have the Great White documentation and maybe I’ll give it a try, again.
I haven’t followed 3D in Flash too closely, but with Adobe’s plans to add 3D in Flash 10 (CS4?), how is this going to affect the existing 3D projects for Flash?
Of course it may be like the Tween class, where other make far more efficient classes that do similar things
