Pointsprite support.

IIRC pointsprites are one of the few things that the D3D runtime (in non-PURE mode) *WILL* emulate so the answer could be "all of them". On new hardware, with true acceleration, most of them.

--
Simon O''Connor
Creative Asylum Ltd
www.creative-asylum.com

Yes, Point Sprite support is guaranteed, if the hardware should not provide it, DX will emulate it(using 4 vertices), which _should_ be as fast as your own billboard implementation.
So you should always use Point Sprites except if you want to rotate the sprites because you can''t rotate Point Sprites AFAIK.


AngelForce

--
If you find any mistakes, you''re allowed to keep ''em!

''When I look back I am lost.''

Thanks,

I asked the question because I'm not sure wether to give an option for software of hardware vertex processing. If I give the HWVP option, it may drop support for pointsprites, and i'll have to write billboard routines for everything.

However, I have read somewhere that SWVP is the way to go nowadays (something about the GF4 not supporting HWVP).

My engine goes about the same speed either way on a Duron 700 w/ GF2.

Am I safe to just go with SWVP??


Also...

quote:

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DX will emulate it(using 4 vertices),

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Does this mean that billboards are sometimes used with only 3 verts?
I'm not sure if this would be faster as the saved vertex would be offset by the extra texture transparancy that would be required?

Thanks again,
R


EDIT: syntax


[edited by - reaction on December 20, 2002 2:19:46 PM]

Just remember that point sprites are limited in size. For me (Radeon 8500), that size is 256. While this sounds great, in practice it''s not that big. For instances where the sprite needs to be very large, it just sucks. Also, whenever I use point sprites in software processing mode, they (the sprites) flicker badly when drawn using large sizes (>5).