Re: Object Graphics slow??

[davidf(at)dfanning.com (David Fanning)]

Mark Hadfield (m.hadfield@niwa.cri.nz) writes:

> In recent discussion about object graphics vs direct graphics it has been
> generally accepted that the object graphics system is slower. In an idle
> moment (ha!) I was inspired to run a couple of quick tests to see just how
> much slower. Here are the results:
> 
> * Plot a line graph with 1000000 (that's 1 million) points:
> 
> Object graphics (create and draw an IDLgrplot object): 1.45 s
> Direct graphics (call 'plot'): 2.90 s
> 
> * Draw 100 byte arrays, each [256, 256], in succession as gray-scale images:
> 
> Object graphics (create, draw and destroy 100 IDLgrImage objects): 2.9 s
> Direct graphics (call 'tv' 100 times): 6.2 s
> 
> These examples (and I accept that they're limited) don't bear out the
> general opinion.
> 
> Tests done on Windows NT, IDL 5.3, Compaq machine with Pentium II 400 MHz
> CPU, 256 MB RAM.

I've been coming to this conclusion over time, too.
In fact, I'm beginning to think slow object graphics
programs, like slow IDL programs in general, are due
more to lousy programming than to lousy tools. :-)

Cheers,

David

-- 
David Fanning, Ph.D.
Fanning Software Consulting
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