Z-sorted polys would be faster, unless you use some really bad sorting algo, bubblesort
is amazingly slow. But ZBuffering with 3d hardware a fast, so if you use a 3d card I
would use a z-buffer, overlapping polygons doesn't look too cool.

Greets Tobias

Also, don't forget that there are cases that sorting will not deal with correctly, unless you clip and BSP sort. (Which is great for static worlds, not so cool for things that move around). In general I think combining the two is the better approach...

/Niels

in my experience, z-buffer is faster and definitely more accurate.

Which is faster in general, a z-buffer or z-sorted software polygonal renderer? I do not care about the decrease or increase in visual quality, just the speed. My thinking is that z-sorted polys would be much faster with a slight penalty in visual quality (so what if some edges are poking through).

Neither is "generally" better than the other. It depends on what you're rendering. A game like Q3 relying strictly on Z-buffer would kill itself in overdraws.

And yes, Z-buffer offers pixel accuracy which a basic sort-algo doesn't. On the other hand, clipping and sorting can offer sub-pixel accuracy. So again, neither is generally more precise than the other, it depends on the implementation.

/Niels