Please advise me on what's the minimum amount of triangles to create reasonably good looking 3d air plane models (F-14,F-22, etc.). Low polygon is essential on portable devices. Even better if there are examples/pictures so I can back my claims. Thanks.

14!

Well, let's count the minimums. We can get away with one poly for each of the wing-like surfaces, which is 5 (two wings, tail, and the rear wings on either side of the tail). Then we need the fuselage, which is basically going to be a number of rectangles. We can get away with three sided, but let's go for a reasonable number and say that we have a 6 sided fuselage. That's another 12 polys. We'll need to taper at either end, so let's say that number triples to 36, plus we need to cap the ends, which will be 3 polys for each cap. That leaves us with a grand total of 47 triangles, not counting missiles hanging off or any of that jazz. (With a there sided fuselage, we can get that down to 25 tris.)

Of course, this will look like it was modeled for a first generation SGI workstation.

I m hoping for perhaps 100-200. I wish there is a good model online to show it can be done.

Wonder how many polys are the models from the various F-zero series

Quote:

Original post by parasolstars I m hoping for perhaps 100-200.

Why? How many planes are you planning on rendering?

I'd say that 100-200 is about the bare minimum these days for an airplane.

Anyone got an idea how many triangles modern flightsims have? I'd geuss several hundred thousand, at least.

I meant 100-200 triangles per plane. Perhaps you can get away with it with small screens of portable devices. No more than 3 or 4 such models should appear on screen per frame; farther ones can be replaced by sprite.

Sci-fi ones like those from F-Zero is fine too. This approach is probably even easier to achieve low poly, but coming up with a cool design is non-trivial.

The F-zero GX vehicles look great and are still low poly:
http://salon.p-nintendo.com/medias/M-693.html

I m guessing they can be made with no more than 200 triangles. Perhaps 100 even.