Comment Re:Where are the facts? (Score 1) 505
"Why do you say that? It's not as if most games are doing Fourier transforms in real time."
I have no doubt you can get good performance from a Java VM. I marvelled at the Java Quake demo from a few years ago. However, you might be quite surprised by what recent game engines are actually doing under the hood. Collision detection and physics simulation can really eat those cycles. Similarly doing CPU side set-up for tangent space lighting (the current best way to do hardware bump mapping) or skinning is a real performance bottleneck.
AFAIK Java does not support MMX, SSE or AltiVec or PS2 VU0 Macromode. Given that SSE & AltiVec have cache hint instructions, some code can be speed up by an order of magnitude. It's very true that some games don't need that performance, but many do. Wizzy technology sells games to publishers and (unfortunately) reviewers. Wizzy technology typically requires lots of CPU power...
The one other thing about Java that worries me is the garbage collector. It's not directly under my control, that's dangerous especially for something like a racing game where you really want a consistent 60fps...
I have no doubt you can get good performance from a Java VM. I marvelled at the Java Quake demo from a few years ago. However, you might be quite surprised by what recent game engines are actually doing under the hood. Collision detection and physics simulation can really eat those cycles. Similarly doing CPU side set-up for tangent space lighting (the current best way to do hardware bump mapping) or skinning is a real performance bottleneck.
AFAIK Java does not support MMX, SSE or AltiVec or PS2 VU0 Macromode. Given that SSE & AltiVec have cache hint instructions, some code can be speed up by an order of magnitude. It's very true that some games don't need that performance, but many do. Wizzy technology sells games to publishers and (unfortunately) reviewers. Wizzy technology typically requires lots of CPU power...
The one other thing about Java that worries me is the garbage collector. It's not directly under my control, that's dangerous especially for something like a racing game where you really want a consistent 60fps...
