Looks like it will be generally in the range of a 2x to 3x drawing speedup (depends on different aspects of the model) with the multi-core use!

I was hoping for maybe a straight 4x speedup on a quad-core but it looks like that won't happen because of too much waiting for the graphics driver to just process all the incoming requests. So probably more cores beyond 4 or so cores won't give much boost. But despite that a 3x speed-up is nothing to sneeze at! :)

I need to test it a bit more and also see if I can wring a little bit more yet out before releasing it, so a few more days yet...

- Michael

"Looks like it will be generally in the range of a 2x to 3x drawing speedup (depends on different aspects of the model) with the multi-core use!"

That is awesome news.

Thanks for the update.

What are the aspects of the model that get a boost and get left out?

That's really amazing !!! , I've never seen a 3d software using multi-core cpu power to speed up the display ...

That's a promising prospect considering more complex models that bog down Moi even with mesh angles made more coarse.

So we take a modeler with already phenomenal display quality and boost its speed 2x+?

Wow!

Hi Burr,

> What are the aspects of the model that get a boost and get left out?

Well, both shaded surface drawing as well as curve/edge drawing get boosted, but surface drawing was not as CPU intensive so it's more down in the 2x range, edge/curve drawing is more towards the 3x range.

How much any one particular model gets boosted will vary depending on a lot of different factors, like which particular thing was actually taking the most time and some other things like whether there are a whole lot of little separate simple entities or somewhat larger more complex entities (each face or edge curve being more complex).

And probably how fast your video card can process stuff will factor in as well...

So some things will vary from model to model and from machine to machine, it will be interesting to see what variation there will be.

- Michael

Hi PaQ,

> That's really amazing !!! , I've never seen a 3d software using multi-core cpu
> power to speed up the display ...

It's mostly tested with some of the more complex models that you've sent me... This should help make it easier to not have to turn edges and hidden-line edges off quite as much as before.

- Michael

The display is a great strategic place to get some benefit from multi-core processing too, since it's something that gets heavy continuous use.

- Michael

This is great news Michael, you always have something to offer that excites MoI and CAD users alike.

Maybe a marketing stratagy along the lines of 'MoI now with Quick Draw' :)

""""""""""Well, both shaded surface drawing as well as curve/edge drawing get boosted, but surface drawing was not as CPU intensive so it's more down in the 2x range, edge/curve drawing is more towards the 3x range."""""""

Ah yes, Thanks. I really only ever had an issue when I had a bazillion little "edge" pieces to deal with. This should be great.

@Danny. Shleb and mildred in the draw contest too? :) (Aussies will take the first beta download again? 10 paces brother.......:)

:)

> > It's mostly tested with some of the more complex models that you've sent me... This should help make it easier to not have to turn edges and hidden-line edges off quite as much as before.

Hehe that's great, glad it helps ! (do you want some others ones ?)

but wondering ... if you give me 4*times more speed, I'll push MoI even further ... so this time the limit would be probably the memory ?
I have a spaceship model here that is still 'manageable' (I mean I can turn around with a usable framerate), but MoI is allready using 750Mb of memory ... well that's what windows task manager is reporting, not sure if it's really accurate. Looks like it would be easy to break the 3gb limit from the 32bits MoI version ?

In other words, we need a 64bits version of MoI sir !!! :)

(I have build a new computer last month, and I was amazed that 32gb of ram was cheaper than the motherboard ... )

Anyway, I cant wait to test it ! ... and spread the news :)

Hi PaQ, yeah as various pieces speed up probably memory consumption will be a bigger barrier for you. MoI as a 32-bit program can get up to around 4GB (well in the neighborhood - maybe more like 3.6GB) on a 64-bit OS though, not just 3GB... Also I think that probably implementing an instancing mechanism may actually help out more than 64-bit-ness for a lot of cases.

I certainly understand that you'd like a 64-bit version of MoI, but in order to do it would require a major churn in my development environment needing to switch to a new compiler and updating all support libraries and dealing with various compatibility issues from that. That's going to be very disruptive for me and so I don't think it's going to be likely to happen anytime too soon.

Some previous discussion here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=5172.5

- Michael

""""""""I certainly understand that you'd like a 64-bit version of MoI, but in order to do it would require a major churn in my development environment needing to switch to a new compiler and updating all support libraries and dealing with various compatibility issues from that. """"""""""""""""

Was this an initial concious decision, or is it just a bi-product of starting the dev cycle before the proliferation of 64 bit?

Hi Burr,

> Was this an initial concious decision, or is it just a bi-product of starting the dev
> cycle before the proliferation of 64 bit?

Pretty much the byproduct part...

But it also doesn't help that each new version of Visual Studio has kind of gotten worse in various ways and that's another thing that's kept me from going to new versions for a while.

- Michael

Thanks Michael, I understand.

Hey Danny, how about Phineas J. Whoopee's 3D BB (Black Board)!

Hi Michael T.

Not that familiar with Tennessee Tuxedo might of been a little before my time, plus I don't think we got all the US toons here down under.
Amazing that Don Adams did Tuxedo's voice though! I still catch an episode or two of 'Get Smart' :)

Cheers

Ok, new v3 beta is out, you can get it here: http://moi3d.com/beta.htm?rev=x

It may take me a day or two to gather up more info and make the official announcement.

But briefly the new stuff is:


Multiple cpu cores used in the draw engine - should speed up the display of complex models on multi-core machines. Please let me know how it benchmarks on your system, you can get a numeric benchmark by turning on the viewport display time which will put up a number in the upper-left corner of the viewport for how long it took to render a frame. You can toggle that on and off by setting up a shortcut key with the following script on it:
script: /* Toggle redraw time display */ moi.ui.showViewportDisplayTime = !moi.ui.showViewportDisplayTime;

You can compare numbers with that turned on in the previous v3 beta or v2 to the new multi-core enabled release.


PDF import has been totally overhauled, it should be a lot more robust and some kinds of PDFs that would previously get garbled should come through ok now.

New Extrude to point and Extrude tapered options for the Extrude command (2 new buttons on the Extrude options panel).

New Isocurve command under Construct > Curve > Iso, and a new "Isoparm" option for the Trim command when trimming a single surface.


I'll try to gather up some more details and make a proper announcement within the next couple of days.

- Michael

Cool
We can go to the camping with the new release!
Bravo!