[Bf-committers] Re:Hard vert and face limit.

[Douglas Toltzman]

On Wed, 3 Sep 2003, Robert Wenzlaff wrote:
-- snip --
> to  RE_findOrAddVert (and similar to RE_findOrAddVlak and possibly halo and 
> lamps as well).  #define INITSIZE  to something like 1024 and remove the 
> [now] aritficial constraints in other files.  Should rblovelen be a global 
> and reset by RE_init_render_data() from do_render()?  If not, if you load a 
> large scene, then load a small scene, you'll still have all the extra 
> pointers allocated.  Not a big memory leak in the big picture (a one time 40k 
> leak for my test scene), but it's there.
-- snip --

>From what I can tell, you aren't really talking about a "memory leak", but
rather a pointer array that may be larger than required.  A large pointer
array is probably acceptable, but a true memory leak is not.  Those of us
doing renders that run for 3 days would take a serious performance hit, at
best, with even a small leak.  However, I don't think you are talking
about a leak, here.

I know I don't speak for everyone, but most of my rendering hardware now
has 1GB or more of RAM, so expanding buffers to avoid reallocation and
improve capability is acceptable.

Regarding your question of adding INITSIZE vs. doubling the buffer size, I
think you'll find that doubling the buffer size will yield better
performance.  Especially if INITSIZE is not a very large number.

Thank you for your efforts.

Best regards,
Douglas Toltzman