Analysis the efficiency of programming tools for 3D rendering in video game development

Abstract

Today, with the availability of many rendering APIs, modern developers have much more freedom in choosing the perfect rendering tool for their needs. However, this task is not so simple without knowing the benefits and drawbacks of the mentioned tools. This study provides a detailed analysis and comparison of the performance of popular APIs for three-dimensional rendering. A flexible comparison tool in the form of a simple game engine based on the ECS (Entity-Component-System) architecture was developed for the mentioned purpose. The engine supports configuration through JSON files. Rendering using the following three popular APIs was selected for evaluation: DirectX 11, OpenGL, and Vulkan. For a fair comparison, this research conducts the experiment on two computer configurations with integrated (Intel HD Graphics 520) and discrete (Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060) GPUs. The experimental scenarios included rendering static and dynamic scenes using three types of models of different sizes in amounts up to 120 for integrated GPU and up to 2000 for discrete GPU. For each of the tested scenarios, a set of performance metrics was measured, including the number of rendered frames per second, a load of GPU, GPU memory usage, RAM usage, and others. The results revealed that OpenGL is faster than DirectX and Vulkan when executing experimental scenarios on an integrated graphics processor for all models. At the same time, for a discrete GPU, the outcome unveiled the advantage of Vulkan over the other two APIs for complex models and the superiority of DirectX for simple ones. The mentioned conclusions were confirmed with the application of statistical tests. Moreover, this research has discovered that DirectX is the most efficient in terms of the usage of computer resources. This research may be helpful for developers of video games or other high-performance applications in the field of 3D rendering. Furthermore, the developed game engine allows for the further extension of the list of evaluated APIs in the future.

Keywords

• computer graphics
• game engine
• real-time rendering
• performance measurement
• static experimental scenario