RE: [Algorithms] High-quality textured spheres (pool game)

[Alain S. <sa...@pt...>]

I got to play the game Virtual Pool 3 today. And I can tell you it sure
looks good. It's a software renderer for the balls, as far as I can see.
If you disable hardware support (yes, it has a real software mode!!!)
everything changes except for the balls. They remain antialiased, even
the numbers and stripes. And the framerates are pretty good (I tried
1024x768). And yes, you can shoot the balls off the table (it's almost
too easy to do so, I constantly thought I was playing a real game :).

What would be the best strategy for such software rendering techniques?
Render each ball in sysmem, copy to texture, render? Or create one
screen-sized texture on which to render all balls at the same time and
then use this one in one copy operation? You'd have to deal with all the
different formats to avoid conversion, or is the conversion pretty
cheap?

Thanks so far,
Alain