Render mode function in video mode menu? (Not in the wiki)

[invictius]

For some reason setting it to software renderer, when "preferred rendering api" is set to opengl or vulkan, gives me a huge fps boost (i7 870 and gt 710). It seems to clearly be different to setting preferred rendering api to software mode, as that tanks the fps even more compared to opengl or vulkan. What is the function of this? I can find column render mode in the wiki but this is clearly not the same thing.

[Rachael]

OpenGL/Vulkan/SoftPoly are the backends. This is the rendering interface that sits directly between the hwrenderer and the system, itself.

SoftPoly happens to use a mix of hardware rendering to actually present its work, and its own brand of CPU rendering to draw it, instead of letting the GPU do it. It tries to minimally emulate OpenGL.

The "software renderer" as we call it, is simply a frontend to that. When enabled, it replaces the polygonal "hwrenderer" (which used to be called the "OpenGL renderer") which, instead of drawing triangles on the screen, draws the screen the classic way, using the CPU.

SoftPoly sits between the hwrenderer and the system, whereas the Software Renderer sits atop any of the backends. Yes, the Software Renderer can be set to render to SoftPoly (and it was the main reason SoftPoly was created), and that should provide a significant speed boost for it.

[Graf Zahl]

Using SoftPoly to render 3D is actually not really useful - it is slow even on very performant systems. Its only use really is for presenting the software renderer's output on systems not capable of running OpenGL 3.3 or having too buggy drivers.

But that also implies that it's not really a feature that will live until eternity. Eventually the time will come when the hardware requirements of relevant operating systems exceed those of GZDoom's hardware renderer - and then having this pure software solution will essentially become a liability instead of an asset.