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Re: [pygame] Python - Pygame - PyOpenGL performance



I saw saw tests for performance between the old C PyOpenGL and the new ctypes one...
The older one was significantly faster from what I saw - but that is how it will always be - direct usage of a C lib is just like calling C functions and such - whereas ctypes you have to call a python function (which may call others) which will execute the C lib code...

I'll see if I can't find the page somewhere...

On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 3:44 PM, Brian Fisher <brian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
That's what PyOpenGL 2.0 was - a C extension instead of ctypes. (made with SWIG)

I actually still use PyOpenGL 2.0 for reasons other than performance (py2exe packaging) - I had to build it myself on windows for Python 2.5, you can get at an installer for it here:
http://thorbrian.com/pyopengl/builds.php

I've never performance tested the difference between it and 3.0 though - is somebody else could do that, I'd love to see the results

On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 10:49 AM, Zack Schilling <zack.schilling@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
If someone did this and I could drop it in to my code, that would be very nice. But for right now, PyOpenGL is serving my needs just fine. I can use about 600 independently textured and animated sprites onscreen, scaled and rotated, without stressing a low-end system more than 40%.

On Mar 16, 2009, at 1:00 PM, Forrest Voight wrote:

Would writing a replacement for PyOpenGL in C instead of in Python
with ctypes help? I think it really would ... PyOpenGL is internally
pretty complex, sometimes when I get tracebacks the error is 5 or 6
levels into PyOpenGL. Even a C library that only implemented the
common functions and relied on PyOpenGL for the constants and
functions that do complex things like handling strings would probably
help a lot.


Another way to increase speed is to write an opengl rendering engine
in C and call and make it available as a Python extension. This is
a major speed boost, in particular for a large number of iterations.
Iirc PyOpenGL bindings are generated, many times this is suboptimal
code for what you're trying to do, writing the Python extension in C
manually have been faster for me many times. This is indeed true
if you put your iterations inside a C loop instead of calling the
C function from Python many times.