What is the expected performance for a 3D scene run on a mobile device?

Questions
#1

Hi guys,
I know it is an old conversation, but, here I am… ;D
I am an old man, but still a newbie in this subject.
I am making a 3D (low poly) game, and I’ve seen that “developer.android.com” suggests that a scene with 210 000 triangles, can run smoothly on 30 fps on android devices.
My questions :
Does it apply to Defold on mobile devices?
Is it a good idea to limit each level or proxy-collection to this polygon count ? (in mobile games, of course)
Do you have a “magical” number for the total amount of textures that I can use for each level or proxy-collection?
If I spawn various instances of the same non-proxy-collection, in a 3D like maze, will it not impact very much in memory usage?

Many many thanks,
Marcos

1 Like
Player persistence between worlds
#2

There are surely no strict limits on polygons count for perfromance - you will need to do tests, but generally, from what I see other developers achieve in Defold - it is possible! Defold Scene 3D by @aglitchman is running on mobile on HMTL5 smoothly for me - you can use the project for testing as it’s open source :wink:

Also today I have seen amazing screenshots in this tread on Frustum Culling which as a feature is currently only available for sprites in Defold, but if it will be available for models and meshes - Imagine what you can do!

(I don’t know if those are screenshots from Defold for sure - are they @morgerion ?)

image
image1912×1010 627 KB

image
image1850×913 469 KB

P.S. Aboslutely amazing! :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

11 Likes
#3

Wow, 1.7 M polygons is a lot of polygons!
I think 210 k is suggested to run also in older and less powerful smartphones.
But it opens a whole new world of possibilities and for sure testing is needed, but at least I have an idea on where to start…
Thanks a lot ! Thank you also for presenting me the Defold Scene 3D.
Cheers!

7 Likes
#4

Thank you for your attention!
Yes, these are screenshots from my projects for Defold.
In fact, we forget that mobile devices have come a long way of evolution and have now become quite powerful.
I tested 17M polygons on a 2019 mobile phone and it was even playable (about 15 FPS).
I think we are ready to break the limits! :slight_smile:

UPD:
It is important to bear in mind that the main limiting factor is still the fillrate. And here the problem is no longer the number of polygons, but the volume of textures and the presence of complex render passes with float render targets. Yes, all the same problems that conventional 3D engines had 10 years ago.
Plus (or rather minus) Defold still doesn’t have MRT. :(((

9 Likes
MRT in Defold
Player persistence between worlds
#5

My model has just about 160 k triangles but also 270 pngs at 1024 * 1024 pixels. All of this is loaded at once. This projects runs on a mid-range tablet dating from 2014 without any probs, all nice and smooth.

2 Likes
#6

It was an unanswered question, thanks a lot for the feedback.

1 Like
#7

I don’t see any ‘magic’ numbers here.
Most likely, the actual limit will be dictated by the device.
However, i can assume that the fewer textures the better.
Don’t forget about the fillrate.

As for my experience, I have observed a difference between 2D and 3D. For example, 12x 4x4K textures had no effect on performance in a 2D game. However, even 4x such textures in 3D (with complex shaders, of course) were already making a difference.

2 Likes
#8

This is an interesting observation. Do you know what happens if there are no such complex shaders, is there still such a difference between 2d and 3d in you experience?

1 Like
#9

Unlike 2D projects that have already been completed and published, my 3D projects are still in the development stage. So i don’t know where this will lead - what the limitations will be in the end.

The obvious difference between 2D and 3D is the total number of vertices processed per frame.
For 2D, this number is very small, even with spine-models, we can talk about thousands at most.
For 3D it is in the millions (in my case).

3 Likes
#10

Ah, yes, this explains it of course. Thank you!

1 Like
#11

@morgerion , I am trying to keep the polygon count and the textures sizes as low as possible anyway…
Thanks a lot for the answers.

2 Likes