Original Post
Me (OpenGL newbie) tried to display 128*128*128 cubes in OpenGL and it went so slow that it brought me to the idea to make a challenge.
I made a raytracer that can display 128*128*128 = 2097152 textured cubes, or in other words this are 25165824 textured triangles for a 3D API. It can display these in real time (dunno how fast exactly, but it's more than 20 FPS) on an Athlon XP 1700+, at a resolution of 160*120 pixels.
Download the raytracer here: CubeChallenge.zip
Then I did something with 128*128*128 cubes in OpenGL (as OpenGL newbie so unoptimized) and not only it took a huge time to load, but also it was less than 1 frame per second on the same computer, even if I resized the window to something smaller than 160*120 pixels.
SO here is my challenge: beat the raytracer with a 3D API! (probably an easy task for real programmers but still..)
Your program must pass the following demands:
*) It must be made with OpenGL or Direct3D and of course use it's 3D functions.
*) There must be a scene of at least 128*128*128 cubes.
*) All cubes that are in camera view and not blocked by another cube must be visible.
*) The cubes must have a 256*256 RGB texture on each side (doesn't have to be smoothed... because my raytracer also doesn't smooth them).
*) There must be 3 different textures: for the X, Y and Z sides of the cubes.
*) The scene must be somewhat the same as the raytracer. That means all cubes together form a big cube and if a cube has a side of 1, there also must be an open space of 1 between two cubes.
*) It must run faster than my raytracer on a computer that is more than one gigahertz, in a resolution of 160*120 pixels.
*) It must run in a window, in M$ Windows.
*) The camera must have 6DOF and be able to move through the whole scene by user control. Note: 6DOF means also that the camera can look backwards after you looked completely up (as in the raytracer).
*) It must have collision detection, I simply mean the camera must be blocked by the cubes.
*) I must be able to run the program on my computer = WinXP box, 512MB, GF3, AthlonXP1700+.
REMARKS:
I. In the raytracer a random 10% of the cubes are white instead of textured... for 2 reasons:
1) Nothing but the textured cubes looked boring.
2) That way you can check that the world really has 128*128*128 cubes and there are no cheating tricks.
Also note that all the white cubes have a different color: in the X direction of the scene they become more redish, Y direction greenish and in the Z direction blueish. But you don't have to do that in the challenge if you don't want to.
II. In the raytracer you can place additional cubes with the b key and remove them with the n key incase you got yourself stuck.
III. In the raytracer use arrows & mouse to move, + and - to change your speed and escape to quit. Oh and with the numpad 4 and 6 keys you can roll the camera, and with the 5 key reset it's direction.
IV. The raytracer may have a long loading time and... more important... it may crash if you close it: check your task manager if it was really closed and end process if it wasn't! Sorry I dunno why it's doing that.
V. The raytracer eats 70MB of RAM so beware. Also don't try to run the raytracer on something that's less than a GHz, it'll be slow on.
VI. I just made this to see how much the cube thing I made in OpenGL will be optimizable.
VII. I could've done 256*256*256 cubes, but that used to much memory.
GOOD LUCK.
[edited by - Lode on July 28, 2002 6:09:42 PM]
