Posted By
MMS
on 2019-06-25
16:49:50
 |  Re: 3D Engine
I follow George's activities and post here and on FB regarding the 3D Engine.
Originally I had questionmarks, if it can really work.
Then the limited number of floating point issue popped up.It is also solved.
Then George came up with the method to hide the hidden surfaces, and the 3D models started to look stunning even on this low resolution.
I tough it should be something super complex method, but after viewing his great Youtube training (the auto-translate of subtitles from Germna to English works GREAT) it became clear, that this tool has similar great potentials as IstvanV's GFX converter
You can freely rotate the 3D model saved from eg. Blender, a fantastic (and free!) 3D modeller, frequently used together with Unreal3 engine. So can create your own 3D model, or just download any free one, and modify/simplify it.
It is great, that the 3D Engine is made in BASIC. Even I can understand, how it works. 
Certainly drawing speed is limited then. (and cetainyl much smaller than the MC code of Elite, Mercenary, Castle Maseer, Driller, etc)
But hey, it is an 8 bit machine just little above 1MHz speed and runs in BASIC !
(and we know due to continuous RAM/ROM switches our machine works slower in BASIC, than C64, despite higher clock speed)
Even the compiled code's speed is limted (I made a test with Austrospeed), as the DRAW and other GFX commands not supported (so again: RAM/ROM switching is required), so it is only 2-3x faster, and at the same time will limit the size of the3D objects (cutting a lot of free RAM)
I really find fascinating, that on our beloved 8 bit machine you can easily show a 3D model just made with the latest 3D modeller on a 64bit PC.
Final words: George's 3D Engine seems to be the best 3D engine on our machine !
(I tried now all the other ones, and meh (error codes, crashes or hardly useable))
Congratulations, George!
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