RV,
Okay, I hope this makes some sense.
A portal engine only draws those sections of a level which can be seen by the camera.
Imagine a model of a house broken into rooms, with doorways between each room.
Each room is a place you can see by being in it or looking into it through a doorway.
Each doorway is set up as a 'portal' into those places or rooms.
Room One, perhaps, has a portal into room two, so the camera can see room 2 when you look through the portal. The engine only ever draws room 2 when you can see through the portal.
The benefits can be huge in terms of level design because you are only drawing small portions of those levels, this keeps the frame rate bouncing along very nicely, rarely putting a strain on the machine.
This means you can do more in each smaller section of the level.
However, the negeative side may be that if you want a large expansive outdoor section, you may find it difficult to design with portals in mind. The frame rate may show some strain if similar detail is required.
Think of games such a Metroid Prime and Jak and Daxter (if you know them at all), think of where the scenery changes are and how many times in Prime for example there is a short delay at a doorway. I think this is a complex portal system with lots of detail, loading each section very quickly.
Jak and Daxter has some large exterior scenes and often rockfaces, trees, houses will obscure views around corners, where presumably there is some portal magic working its stuff.
Quill 3D has a portal demo for B3D which shows the fps benefits quite nicely.
Hope that explains a bit of it anyways...
Ipete2.
Okay, I hope this makes some sense.
A portal engine only draws those sections of a level which can be seen by the camera.
Imagine a model of a house broken into rooms, with doorways between each room.
Each room is a place you can see by being in it or looking into it through a doorway.
Each doorway is set up as a 'portal' into those places or rooms.
Room One, perhaps, has a portal into room two, so the camera can see room 2 when you look through the portal. The engine only ever draws room 2 when you can see through the portal.
The benefits can be huge in terms of level design because you are only drawing small portions of those levels, this keeps the frame rate bouncing along very nicely, rarely putting a strain on the machine.
This means you can do more in each smaller section of the level.
However, the negeative side may be that if you want a large expansive outdoor section, you may find it difficult to design with portals in mind. The frame rate may show some strain if similar detail is required.
Think of games such a Metroid Prime and Jak and Daxter (if you know them at all), think of where the scenery changes are and how many times in Prime for example there is a short delay at a doorway. I think this is a complex portal system with lots of detail, loading each section very quickly.
Jak and Daxter has some large exterior scenes and often rockfaces, trees, houses will obscure views around corners, where presumably there is some portal magic working its stuff.
Quill 3D has a portal demo for B3D which shows the fps benefits quite nicely.
Hope that explains a bit of it anyways...
Ipete2.