Torque 3D vs TGE comparison

#1 T3D is several revisions past TGE (TGE is an ancestor), and shares much code. You can use TGE assets, as I loaded up a DTS made for TGE (pre 1.5.2) and had it run around in T3D a few months ago. Networking is the same, and instead of coding directly to OpenGL, you use GFX, which is an abstraction layer (how well it works with OGL, I honestly don't know, since I work with DX on my machines). Some areas of the engine are very different (rendering is extensively changed), and some areas haven't been touched very much. Torquescript is still used, though there were (very) minor changes, and the folder structure I believe went through some changes.

#2 How does T3D deal with shaders, as TGE did not have shaders.

Does it fall back to no shaders seemlessly, etc. ?

#3 Thank you for the info. So basically, it sounds like the rendering engine (graphics pipeline) has changed from OpenGL to DX with some minor changes in other areas.

Does the new Maya exporter for Torque 3D (I assume Max is similar) support shader export, normal (bump), and specular output for the new rendering pipeline?

#4

Quote:How does T3D deal with shaders, as TGE did not have shaders.

I haven't done much shader stuff, so I'll have to refer you to the docs. I don't know how well the fallbacks work, or what you need to set up to make them work.

#5

Quote:Does the new Maya exporter for Torque 3D (I assume Max is similar) support shader export, normal (bump), and specular output for the new rendering pipeline?

Check the art docs, it will show you most of your options. Mainly, COLLADA is the thing they like people to use for exporting, though I'm pretty sure that the exporters don't export shaders (I'm not an artist), and COLLADA isn't good for everything.

BTW, this should be moved to General Discussion, if any mod sees this.

#6 Again, thank you for your input. I feel comfortable purchasing this since the underlying engine is still the original TGE with enhancements to the rendering engine. Not much of learning curve except for the Collada converter to DTS, and to top it off, there is documentation!

#7 TGE: Old and busted. T3D: New hotness.

Any questions? :-)

#8

Quote:
How does T3D deal with shaders, as TGE did not have shaders.

Does it fall back to no shaders seemlessly, etc. ?

performance does suffer due to the usage of shaders. fixed function rendering will always be faster.

and no T3D does NOT fallback gracefully to no shaders. i see code in there to support fixed function rendering but setting $pref::Video::forcedPixVersion = 0 results in an error: Could not set a lighting manager. this is followed up by an engine crash.

please fix this GG. some people would actually like the option to use fixed function rendering in torque.

#9 @Sherman: Screenshot or it didn't happen ;)

#10 Performance also is factored into the age of the video card/machine. Fixed Function is rarely faster on newer machines considering everything you lose by going that route. It is always nice to have the option for those older machines, but in most cases I found TGE runs slower than TGEA and T3D if TGEA/T3D had a scene fairly equivalent to the lack of everything in TGE on more modern hardware.

#11 I've only tried a T3D demo, but I noticed a considerable drop in fps compared to TGEA 1.8.2 in a similiar mission. Is this still true?

#12 If careful consideration of all the ways T3D is totally NOT like TGEA 1.8.2, then not so much, considerable drop in fps. T3D is doing much more 'work' then TGEA, and if you strip the extra 'work' away T3D is quite a bit the same.

#13 I started with TGEA as a rank beginner and spent an enormous amount of time facing serious bugs, particularly dealing with terrain and megaterrain.

The most serious of these was later found and rectified (by Rene Damm, I think), and I still had fun, mind you, but I have found T3D's terrain editor and terrain painter are far, far superior in terms of both stability and capability to those of TGEA.

The deferred lighting in T3D gives it an enormous advantage if you plan on building night scenes that will require many point light sources for illumination. Point lights (it seemed to me) used to bog TGEA fairly rapidly.

There is a built-in day/night cycle in T3D. I had a lot of trouble implementing this functionality (using resources on the forums) myself, and it works really, really well in T3D (although there is some hit to performance depending on the length of the terrain shadows at certain times of day). I believe the static sky object also obviates the need for a traditional skybox, but haven't used it myself.

T3D has flaws, many owing to its beta status, absolutely. But I would not, personally, consider going back to using TGEA as my codebase after working with T3D and seeing what I consider massive improvements in capability--including up-to-date documentation, which TGEA never had.