After conducting several test with various single-surface particles systems, etc, I'm not convinced there is an advantage in using less surfaces. In fact, some single-surface systems will barely run on my hardware (could be due to implementation).
The Blitz3D Manual implies a greater number of surfaces to be more useful. I'm having difficulty finding facts that contests this or explains the disadvantage of using more surfaces, although I have found some reasonable speculations: "I believe it's to do with modern 3D cards rendering pipelines, whereby meshes are loaded into the pipeline surface by surface, therefore the more surfaces a mesh has the more iterative the rendering pipeline becomes for that mesh. Not sure though ;)" -Sunteam.
However, if surface counts impact performance I would like to reduce them. Any assistance would be greatfully appreciated.
The Blitz3D Manual implies a greater number of surfaces to be more useful. I'm having difficulty finding facts that contests this or explains the disadvantage of using more surfaces, although I have found some reasonable speculations: "I believe it's to do with modern 3D cards rendering pipelines, whereby meshes are loaded into the pipeline surface by surface, therefore the more surfaces a mesh has the more iterative the rendering pipeline becomes for that mesh. Not sure though ;)" -Sunteam.
However, if surface counts impact performance I would like to reduce them. Any assistance would be greatfully appreciated.