Games' speed vs Revit Speed

[rudolfesterhuyse]

I'll start by admiting that I know nothing about how these things function behind the scenes but perhaps someone can explain: Why is it that computer games can render scenes through which a player can run and shoot other players (moving closer or further away) over the internet or a local network, with 3D buildings and places around which characters can move while one has to wait for something which at least seems comparatively simple in Revit such as changing a view or placing a viewport?

[Angelos Kontopoulos]

i have the same question

[sfaust]

While I don't know all the details, the models in video games are much much lighter than the Revit models because they are for a different purpose. They are generally low-polygon models with image maps on them. So for example the face of a building might be a single rectangle face with a detailed image map on it. In Revit you are dealing with solids which allows you to do clash detection, join walls, cut holes in things, etc. This is also why Max, Sketchup, etc. are so light on their feet.

That being said, 2010 picked up performace quite a bit on my system, but would display performance could still use some extra kick...

[sbrown]

The answer is "low polygon count" Games create very simple representations of buildings and then map images to them to give them realism. Its like faux painting a parking structure with bricks.

The simpler your model (the less hidden line removal it has to compute) the faster. Games also don't have stuff outside the view, have you ever seen in a game where you drive you car off the coarse and see the back side of the surface and there is nothing. In a building we have all this interiors information that revit needs to hide. You can speed up your performance by making sure all your interior lighting, ceilings, doors, etc are on a workset that is off when you are exterior views.

[patricks]

You can speed up your performance by making sure all your interior lighting, ceilings, doors, etc are on a workset that is off when you are exterior views.

I often do this for all exterior views, including elevations and roof plans.

[rudolfesterhuyse]

Ok, thanks I think that makes sense.

What I am also wondering is this: lets say someone has to rebuild Revit from scratch today (and they have the resources), not worrying about compatibility with older versions, will it be possible to use, I don't know, a different starting point which would make the pogramme a lot more efficient for example. Does this make any sense?

[sbrown]

yes and I know they are working on it. When revit was first created multi threading was not available. It is now and so is 64bit so they are working on re-writing parts of the code each release to improve performance.

[patricks]

case in-point: Revit 2008 had a x64 version released mid-year, while 2009 and 2010 and were made to have 64-bit versions from the start. I heard of problems with people trying to use 2008 x64 that were not present in later versions.

[rudolfesterhuyse]

Aha! Good to hear.

We had so much problems with Revit 2008 64x that we abandoned hardware upgrades to 64 bit. Even now we buy new machines as 32 bit. Does 64 bit offer significant advantages and should we reconnsidder? And are the bugs resolved?

[Scott Womack]

Yes 2010x64 does offer significant benefits over the 2009 and 2008x64 versions. Yes, reconsider. All of the machines for Revit at this firm have been x64 for over a year now, no bugs because of x64 (besides the bugs that Autodesk introduced in the 2010 release)

Revit 2010x64 is the first x64 release to see more than 4 gig of ram. Thus more model can be loaded into Ram before it begins paging to disk.