Hi again…
i read about ligth on FAQ questions.
just to understand.
is better remove my two directional lights
and use Self Iliminator/Specular for each object ?
thanks !
Lights aren’t a too good idea.
There are thought differences between lights in their cost. Also the more polygons you have, the higher the impact
But on the materials, there are as well various materials that won’t work on the iphone due to hardware restrictions
I highly recommend that you check out the FAQ thread listing at the top, performance section. there are some lengthy threads with a lot of important and interesting information on how to squeeze out performance.
Most of that should be base knowledge to any iphone dev but it seems like many skipped reading the apple documentations so those threads are a must know if you want to get your game onto a playable level
Dreamora, umm… I am using a Directional Light and I am getting a solid 20-25 FPS on my gen 1 iphone. However my geometry is simple and shaders are optimized.
Whether to use a light depends on many factors. imaumac perhaps you can remove lighting in your flying game, if you can get the same effect with textures and shaders.
thanks both… but
i am new on this…
just for a record and to help people reding this…
my draw decalls get down from 226 to 121 when remove my 2 directional lights
but all my game are little dark .
I insist on my question… (sorry)
can Use better self ilumination on each material ?
thanks one more time for your valuable information to us !
My directional light doesn’t effect my draw calls. Strange! Must have something to do with the shader being used.
Yeah try one of the self-illuminated shaders instead. You or your artist can also bake the lighting into the textures of your models using 3d program.
you don’t need self-illumination. just set the ambient light to white in the render-settings and use a vertex-lit material.
Age of Curling was done that way…
The game I’m currently working on mostly uses Lightmapped/VertexLit, again with no light-source in the scene…
ok thanks you !
i will try !
confirming… I have 2 lights like this with diferent dieccionts.
is very rare… but
YES affect my draws decalss if not remove !
As Mindlube sez: It really depends on your total setup.
I have 2 directional light: A high key, and a layered fill. I get good fps and I have a very high tri/vert count.
That being said, I also have very little else. This is where I’ve spent my resource budget.
Put it this way…
If you can get the game you want without using lights, and use self illumination, baked lighting and other tricks AND it gives you better performance, do it.
If not, use some light.
–
Now I know that’s not what you want to hear.
What you want to hear is from someone who’s already done this and can give you some practical real world “on the ground” advice as to which way to start before you waste too much time reinventing the wheel.
You know, I’d like to hear as well, so I’ll shut up and get out of the way.
Yeah, use col000r’s technique!
I am using directional lights simply because in my dominos game I want the edges and rounded corners of the pieces to have highlights (and the texture for each is UV offset) and I don’t think I could figure out how to lightmap it correctly. 
thanks You all of you. !
now my drws decalls are from 216 to 107, and the fly is VERY VERY fluid.
and I am not touching yet the poligons… but I will to make lees drawdecalls.
I am very grateful people !
thanks !
Arent’s 107 draw calls way to much for the iphone? I think 30 is the limit to get good fps
In one of the Unite videos, UT said they sometimes use 50-60 draw calls, but the disclaimer is that the CPU and GPU share memory bandwidth, and vertex data gets copied every frame, so it’s kind of a balancing act. My draw calls max out at 42 but I still get 20+ FPS on old iphone.
now I have 44, draws calls,
how can I know my FPS please ?
In Xcode
Run | Start With Performance Tool | OpenGL ES
thansk you !
lights + doubled drawcalls → you forgot to set the light to vertex lighting (you have it on auto)
In this case the geometry will be dublicated