I was doing some profiling and research on the performance for Project Explore. While it was no surprise, it was still slightly shocking to see that the fake 3D system I was using required about 2.5x the resources that a simple sprite required.
[img=http://i.imgur.com/lpGRyjY.gif]
I'll bet from the image above you can't tell the old 3D from the new 3D.
Well here is the difference in speed!
[img=http://i.imgur.com/Hvdz3GS.png]
As you can see above the amount of time to draw these two objects for each frame differs drastically. W3D was the old system and was the cube on the right hand side of the .gif. We are looking at a rather massive difference for a slighty different 3D appearance.
Other Useful Advantages
We can actually control the texture of each face of our cube with the new 3D system. Before I could only control the top texture and use a single texture for every other face.
How Much Will This Affect Framerate?
I so far have only implemented the new 3D system for the trees in game. We are talking about (at least in my case) an approximate 150 fps boost. Which means those of you who are squeezing by at 50 or 40 will finally be able to pull a smooth 60.