Son of Papervision! (VectorVision vs. FIVe3D)
ASIDE: So, the original theme of this article was a head to head between PV3D/VectorVision and FIVe3D, but then I realized that an offspring metaphor was really more apt, as explained below. Nonetheless, the following picture is too awesome not to use.
An awesome picture.
If you’ve been following this site for any amount of time, you’ve probably noticed that I’ve been spending quite a bit of time with Mathieu Badimon’s excellent FIVe3D engine. Probably too much time, in fact. I’ve talked about the features in other posts, so I won’t go into it here. If this is the first you’ve heard of it, go take a look at Mathieu’s examples, or click ‘FIVe3D’ in the tag cloud to the right to see what it is and some of the things it’s capable of.
It seems that the first thing people do when they see this engine is compare it with Papervision3D. I’ve resisted this for a long time; in my opinion, bitmap-based and vector-based 3D engines seem to be pretty close to the proverbial apples and oranges. However! As of sometime last week, Papervision and FIVe3D have been combined into some sort of (proverbial?) fruit punch, which means that inter-species comparisons make a lot more sense. It’s called VectorVision, and the men responsible for this unholy union are Barcinski & Jean-Jean, two mad scientists from Amsterdam.
Based on my earlier experiments, I’ve been kicking around the idea of a 3D tag cloud for this blog. FIVe3D, of course, seemed like the obvious man for the job due to its simplicity and the fact that Papervision hasn’t had anything in the way of quality text rendering. However, the experiments of the aforementioned Dutchmen made me wonder how Papervision would handle the task. So, I created a similar application using each library. You can see the results below; each image is a separate SWF- just click one to activate it.
| FIVe3D | Papervision3D |
|---|---|
| SWF size: 32k | SWF size: 60k |
Findings
As you can see, there are some differences; and of course, this is as basic as either engine gets. But in terms of pure capability, it looks like the offspring of PV3D and FIVe3D is indeed greater than either. Post your machine/browser and frame rates; I’d like to see what everyone else is getting.
Tags: Actionscript, FIVe3D, Papervision3D, VectorVision
June 1st, 2008 at 12:07 am
coool experiment, zack.
Mac OSX 10.5 / 2.4 Dual / 2 GB RAM / Safari 3:
PV3D: avg fps 48
Five3D: avg fps 47
the PV3D version seems much more fluid and natural for some reason even though the FPS are very similar.
June 1st, 2008 at 12:58 am
I’ve played with VectorVision.
I think it’s a great integration, as I’ve been waiting for the time FIVe3D has a CAMERA.
June 1st, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Very cool man.
DELL XPS M1330
Intel Core 2 Duo 1.8GHz
3GB RAM
W/Vista
FireFox
PV3D Avg. 33 fps
FIVe3D Avg. 20fps
June 1st, 2008 at 5:22 pm
Same for me - Pv3D average 36, FIVe3D around 20.
Would be also great to compare with Flash 10 built-in 3d.
June 1st, 2008 at 7:24 pm
That’s interesting that they are so close for you, Jonathan; I forgot to post mine, but I’m getting a dramatic difference:
C2D 2.2GHz 4GB
Leopard/Firefox 3
PV3D: 48fps
FIVe3D: 31fps
@Bartek: That’s not a bad idea. I think I’ll do it.
June 2nd, 2008 at 2:27 am
Hi,
here is my test
quad core q6600 - 4G ram
plugin flash 10 beta
firefox - vista
PV3D: 61 fps
FIVe3D: 37 fps
June 2nd, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Coool comparison.
(e4600+2gig ram, winxp, ie7).
five3d: avg 38,5fps
pv3d: avg 36,5fps
not a real difference
great job,
Flaim
June 2nd, 2008 at 4:35 pm
@Flaim:
So FIVe3D beat out PV3D, eh? That’s interesting…
June 3rd, 2008 at 12:48 am
Macbook Pro/2.33 core 2 duo/2 gb 667 mhz ram/leopard, firefox 3
pv3d: 49
five3d: 34
June 3rd, 2008 at 4:08 am
@Zack:
I’ve tested in just now on a different machine (e4500+2gig ram - so not a real difference- win xp also - flash player version the same - ie7 again):
pv3d: 37.3
five3d: 38.2
Both the machines are mine so they are configured and used more or less in the same manner..
FLAIM
June 3rd, 2008 at 4:11 am
I’ve checked under Firefox2 now on the same rig:
pv3d=fv3d= 40fps…..
that is really confusing … the test under firefox is not convincing me at all because the framerates look like glued to each other
June 3rd, 2008 at 9:11 am
Nice one!
five3d : 49 fps
pv3d : 58 fps
June 3rd, 2008 at 1:34 pm
Mine is a P4 2.8 Ghz using Firefox 2.0.14
Five3D=29 FPS
PV3D=36 FPS
June 3rd, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Wow that is realy impressive. super nice effect.
I will save this page to favorites.
Andrew /
http://www.eminentgames.com
June 4th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Zack:
Another interesting test:
the same machine as in the beginning but os is now Windows Vista 32 + new flash player (newest 9.x):
pv3d: 35
fv3d: 36,4
I can’t get even near to beating fv3d ! Did u get anything similar ?
Flaim
June 6th, 2008 at 12:25 am
Flaim:
I have yet to get a FIVe3D result that’s better than PV3D. I wonder if Windows has something to do with it.
I also noticed that FP10 gave both of them a few extra FPS.
June 6th, 2008 at 3:35 am
Zack:
I’m testing under fp9 - that may be the difference.
Flaim
June 17th, 2008 at 11:30 am
iMac 2.16 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo
3 Go DDR2
Five3D: about 39
VV3D: about 52
I had some averages for PV3D at about 11 FPS, can’t explain why.
June 17th, 2008 at 11:47 am
That’s a little weird. Maybe there’s something odd in my FPS meter.
June 18th, 2008 at 10:21 am
vista
five 31.6
pv 37.7
June 24th, 2008 at 4:20 am
windows machine, intel hamsterinawheelium duo, and a longer memory than mine.
pv3d: 56fps
five3d: 34fps
pv3d wins.
June 28th, 2008 at 9:07 pm
os x 10.5
2.33GHz Intel Core 2
Safari 3
pv3d: 50fps
five3d: 38fps
but you didn’t mention how many lines of code for each example…
July 7th, 2008 at 11:17 pm
FIVe3D: Average of 48.7
Papervision3D: Average of 34.2
windows vista
Q6600 Qyuad Core Processor
3 Gigs Ram
512mb Geforce 8400GS
July 17th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
FIVe3D: 60fps
pv3d: 60fps
Windows XP SP3
Intel Q6700 Quad Core
2GB RAM
Firefox 3 + Flash Player 10
July 17th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
@spinnach:
That’s pretty impressive. I wonder what the ceiling for that rig would be.
July 25th, 2008 at 6:37 am
FIVe3D: 50fps
PV3D: 56,5fps
Athlon 3200+
2GB RAM
XP SP3
Firefox 3 + Flash Player 9
July 29th, 2008 at 11:55 pm
The PV3D one looks better because it has bigger letters which seen closer from each other in the z-axis…
2.4 GHz, 2GB RAM, Firefox 3
Five3D: 40 FPS
PV3D: 50 FPS
August 1st, 2008 at 11:09 am
AMD athlon 4400+ 2GB RAM
FIVe3D: 51fps
PV3D: 56fps
FX3 FL9
August 2nd, 2008 at 1:15 pm
MBP 2.4 c2d, 4GB, Firefox3, fp9
PV3D: 32 fps
FIVe3D: 15 fps.
BTW. flash performance on my mac i very low, I can.t figure out why.
@Matt Przybyslki
It seems I’ve got almost the same configuration You have, but mine fps’ are half yours. Any idea what can make this differences?
August 4th, 2008 at 6:12 am
@sema
That’s really strange. What does it do in Safari?
August 9th, 2008 at 9:41 am
P4 2.4GHz, 512MB RAM,
Radeon9600SE 64-bit 128MB
Five3D av 21.9
Papervision3D av 20.8
August 11th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
Has anyone had any success using vector vision with large text fields containing line breaks?
It seems a custom class would need to be built that can do this, and I really hope someone can so we can use more than just the odd vector word in pv3d.
August 11th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Unfortunately, I don’t think that would be practical. If you want a paragraph of text, I think a high-quality Plane with a bitmap of your text would be your only option. FIVe3D and Vectorvision look great, but they’re just not built to handle that much rendering.
On the other hand, it might be feasible if you rendered the scene once and left it at that. That has its own downsides, of course.
August 13th, 2008 at 5:20 am
nice comparison.
Intel Core 2 Duo 1.8GHz, 2GB RAM,
Win XP,
Flash Player 10,
five3d 43,
vv 58
August 29th, 2008 at 10:33 am
pv3d: 58.2
five3d: 55.3
(xp/t9500/4Gb/quadrofx3600m)
August 31st, 2008 at 12:54 pm
Macbook, OSX 10.5, Firefox 3.0.1
53D: 36.2
PV3D: 49.8
I am getting hitching in both versions. I have talked to other OSX owners and we are getting hitching in nearly all tests of 3D on Macs vs. essentially no hitching on Windows computers.
Has anybody else had this problem? Any ideas of the cause?
October 7th, 2008 at 10:49 am
Five3D:
40 FPS
PV:
60 FPS
Vista Home Premium
4GB RAM
1.83 Core2Duo
what is your opinion on Flash Player 10 and its new 3D features? do you think it would make Five3D obsolete?
October 21st, 2008 at 7:10 am
No, I don’t think so. My guess is that all the 3D engine guys (PV3D, Away3D, Five3D, etc.) will just use the new native stuff as the core of their engines. It’s pretty basic 3D, after all, and doesn’t offer all the features of the most basic open-source 3D engine.
November 6th, 2008 at 10:05 am
Would you mind posting the source code for the two demo files?
November 6th, 2008 at 10:09 am
I’ll have to look it up. I did these a long time ago and I’m not sure what I did with it.
November 7th, 2008 at 8:47 am
I’m mostly interested in the Papervision version. I’m trying to get my head around how the vector tags are created spatially. So if I have values for the tags coming from an xml list, I am interested in seeing how those xml name values are created using vectorvision.
Thanks.
January 13th, 2009 at 9:13 am
Intel Quad Q9400
64 bit Vista
Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT
8 GB RAM
flash player 10
firefox 3
PV3D Avg. 60.0 fps
FIVe3D Avg. 60.0 fps
So, when compairing file sizes, I prefer Five3D.
But… It seems it’s been pretty quite here, even the last update of FIVe3D -site was a looong time ago. nothing has happened…
I wonder if it means no more FIVe3D..?
February 17th, 2009 at 4:38 am
nice =)
Intel Pentium 4© 3Ghz
2 GB Ram
GeForce mx440 agp8x
FIVe3D set:60 actual:25 averege:30
Papervision3D set:60 actual:40 averege:45
papervision looks faster
April 1st, 2009 at 5:55 am
seems like FIVe3D is also processor intensive than PV3D…
April 1st, 2009 at 2:55 pm
I have 60fps for both files, on XP Pro, Intel 2.4GHz, Core2, 3GB
Also, check out my website; for the home page I used Five3D. The swf size for the whole thing, except the flv-s is 59KB!!! And look at the text quality. By the way, if you take a look, please let me know if the playback gets jagged. Thanks a lot!
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:51 am
I might be a little bit late to the party.
average of 60fps on both.
Firefox : 3.0.8
flash player : 10,0,12,36 Debug
system:
XP
quad core 2.4 (6400)
2 gig ram (800mhz)
April 5th, 2009 at 11:18 pm
Ehem, actually on linux (native flash 10 player) five3d sucks badly. Both have same fps (~50) but five3d freezes. I’ll prefer five3d anyways. it works quite well on other platforms.
August 28th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
IBM T43 M740@1.46G 2GB
xp sp3
opera 9.6
FIVe3D averege:30.3
Papervision3D averege:41.5
September 17th, 2009 at 11:16 am
Core 2 Duo 2.4
2 GB DDr2
Vista
nvidia 9600 GT
Mozilla FireFox 3.5.x
Five3D Fps: 48.xx Avg
PaperV3D Fps: 60.xx Avg
I think Five3D best for Size Optimized Websites and Five3D best for Speed Optimized websites.
October 3rd, 2009 at 9:06 am
Power PC G4
768 Mo ram
Mac Os 10.4.11
PV : 25,8 avg
F3D : 15,0 avg
October 29th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
Core 2 Duo 6600
2 GB DDR2
Windows 7
GeForce 8800 GTX
Mozzila FireFox 3.5.4
Five3D Fps: 60.00 Avg
PaperV3D Fps: 60.20 Avg
May 25th, 2010 at 10:31 am
Great job, Great comparisson
August 20th, 2010 at 9:20 pm
Windows 7
Intel Core 2 Quad CPU Q6600
4 Gb memory
ATI 128Mb
Google Chrome 6.0.472.36 beta with 42 tabs openend!!
both libs vary from 60-66fps
FIVe3D jitters a bit more…