Gadgetory

you may have noticed a toggle in few games and benchmarks that looks like this or this labelled tessellation what does it mean and will it crush your framerate this is minute signs so you can think of tessellation as the literal division of polygons that comprise objects that we see in games and other special effects the more divided the surface is the more detailed and accurate quote-unquote the surface will be depicted in game if an object is graphically depicted via several triangles then cutting each triangle in half essentially doubles the tessellation factor but this alone I should clarify really changes nothing just because you add more polygons to an object that does not mean that it's going to look any more dynamic in fact if you don't do anything but tessellate an object you're just adding more work for the GPU doubling the number of shapes changes nothing if half the shapes are physically unaltered from the original ones this 2d representation explains it a bit better just picture it on a 3d scale so the backdoor process often paired with tessellation called displacement mapping shifts and angles these newly created shapes NVIDIA describes it as a texture that stores height information an image that would otherwise look either blocky without tessellation or unrealistically smooth with tessellation but without displacement mapping now looks well accurate typically a tessellation toggle includes a degree of this displacement built-in you see back in the day traditional texture mapping involved a degree of occlusion explained in this video right here also women in science video in a nutshell certain pixels are shaded in an attempt to fool the viewer into thinking that the shape is more dynamic than it actually is it adds a degree of artificial depth if you will this middle image of shape is consistent with the original one on the left but incorporated shadows foster the illusion of depth so it looks like it's rough but it's actually just as smooth as the one to the left now the image on the right utilizes displacement mapping which obviously yields an accurate shape regardless of the viewing angle simply put tessellation without displacement mapping would not change anything about the object and displacement mapping without tessellation would make the object look extremely blocky so both are needed to a degree three four games to look real in some cases like GTA 5 polygons are already incorporating large degrees of detail so increasing tessellation changes next to nothing in fact you'd be hard-pressed in this comparison to tell which is which this is what tessellation maxed out and this is what it turned off the framerate delta is also relatively minuscule other scenarios however including the heaven benchmark from Unigine offers stark tessellation contrast between maxed and off presets check out these stairs I think they're just smooth ramps now not even stairs anymore the dragon also looks completely different so depending on how the game is developed tessellation may be one of the things you can manipulate to drastically impact its look and feel most of the time maxing it out won't hurt much but running a framerate comparison like either of these might shed a bit more insight into GPU utilization I'd like to thank one of our patrons for suggesting the topic in today's minutes science video if you'd like to be a patron contribute in any way shape or form more active get personal contacts with me and others who work with me on discord servers on whatsapp chats all kinds of stuff you want to play games with me patriotic okcousin matter how much or little you donate if you do donate a bit more you get access to a few additional features even our upcoming science studio t-shirts all that stuff is available will be available if it's not already on the patreon link so check it out in the description below also get active on other stuff from social media I appreciate y'all watching this video give a thumbs up he thought it was cool thumbs down for the obstacles described but if you have our news stay tuned for more content like this this is science studio thanks for learning with us you