Polygonal Modeling - Advantages and Disadvantages

Advantages and Disadvantages

There are many disadvantages to representing an object using polygons. Polygons are incapable of accurately representing curved surfaces, so a large number of them must be used to approximate curves in a visually appealing manner. The use of complex models has a cost in lowered speed. In scanline conversion, each polygon must be converted and displayed, regardless of size, and there are frequently a large number of models on the screen at any given time. Often, programmers must use multiple models at varying levels of detail to represent the same object in order to cut down on the number of polygons being rendered.

The main advantage of polygons is that they are faster than other representations. While a modern graphics card can show a highly detailed scene at a frame rate of 60 frames per second or higher, raytracers, the main way of displaying non-polygonal models, are incapable of achieving an interactive frame rate (10 frame/s or higher) with a similar amount of detail.