Gouraud Shading & Texture Mapping vs Flat Shading

In creating a 3D environment it is very important to add light sourcing to enhance the 3D effect. Light sourcing is the technique that creates highlights and shadowing on objects to enhance the 3D experience.

3D products like Virtual Fighter have typically used flat shading because it is faster than Gouraud (goo-row') or Phong (fong) shading. FX Fighter uses Gouraud shading, but this can be changed to flat shading while playing the game to improve performance on slower machines. This is very important on FX Fighter because the main system CPU (386, 486, 586, ...) is not capable of rendering and drawing polygons as fast as the dedicated system used in arcades which cost thousands of dollars.

Because fighting games need to be as fast as possible, we have kept the number of polygons as low as possible. In fact the player can even adjust the number of polygons to improve performance on slower machines. In addition to Gouraud shading, FX Fighter can also use texture mapping to improve detail on the fighters and the backgrounds or arenas. Tattoos, facial expressions, chest hair, muscle striations, and tiger stripes are all added to various characters to improve their detail level. Texture mapping can also be turned off on slower machines to improve performance.

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