Timothy Lochner

Yes, that is the big obvious benefit of graphs, I agree. I was just saying that we do not have the full benefits of a graph in our current production system.

You bring up some good points to think about John. For my usage cases I still think it’s the way to go, but there are some speed bumps to consider.

Logically I am totally sold on a graph, but it isn't clear to me that a retained mode graph is worth the extra effort.

What do you mean by a retained mode in this context?

A rigid graph that is reused across multiple frames. As opposed to generating a fresh graph every frame.

UE 4.22 generates graph every frame. Is somebody using retained mode graph? Even AAA has less than 100 nodes. Not a big saving to prebuild it. Remember that draw calls have built-in execution dependency (ROPs). Your g-buffer renderpass is just a single node in the graph.

There is one particular case I’m thinking of where because of deep seated legacy code, it was generating 1000s of commands (past caring about nodes at this point in the frame) and generating transitions was reaching 2-digit ms.