by Simon Price (36 Submissions)
Category: Graphics
Compatability: Visual Basic 3.0
Difficulty: Intermediate
Date Added: Wed 3rd February 2021
Rating: 
(46 Votes)
The most successful program of all time on vbcoders.com is RJSoft's textured 3D cube, it has had 176 excellent votes for it including my vote. People obviously were impressed by real time 3D texture mapping - it's the best graphics you can get. RJSoft's program produced these cool graphics using DirectX 7, it is a very well written program. But what if I were to tell you that it is possible to do this WITHOUT DIRECTX?! Yep, this is texture mapped 3D in PURE VB CODE! It doesn't use DirectX, no OpenGL, no DLL's, just label and image controls, and NO DRAWING API's - not even Windows ones. It doesn't use ANY API's in the main rendering loop!!! Yet it still has several rendering modes to choose from and runs at the following frame rates (on my 400Mhz PC).
Corners Only - 135 FPS
WireFrame - 120 FPS
Outline - 110 FPS
Flat Colour Polygons - 40 FPS
Single Texture Mapped Polygons - 20 FPS
Multiple Texture Mapped Polygons - 11 FPS
That's FAST! I don't promise the graphics to be as good as RJSoft's program, but I do promise they're done in pure VB code. You can spin the cube on the x,y and z axis and stop it too. You can change the rendering mode by pressing the spacebar. So, 176 of you voted for RJSoft's program using DirectX, I hope you think this deserves a vote too.
NOTE - for best performance run the compiled .exe (supplied) and close all other programs. This doubles the frame rates!
Download REAL TIME TEXTURE MAPPED 3D IN PURE VB CODE (122 KB)
VBcoders