I tried both and the second starts much slower and runs much slower. I changed it to use an array for the sphere objects and it still started slow but ran much faster than it does using the TList.
Noticed that I forgot to change the shadowed() function to use the array. Once I changed this the start up time was the same as the fast one. So it looks like traversing TList (with a for loop, at least) is extreemly slow.
Noticed that I forgot to change the shadowed() function to use the array. Once I changed this the start up time was the same as the fast one. So it looks like traversing TList (with a for loop, at least) is extreemly slow.