Quote Originally Posted by damha View Post
I guess that sort of answers my question, but it really doesn't.

In order for us to determine the true benefit of tessellation over standard polygon rendering is give me a scenario with similar complexity one done in tessellation the other using old school methods. Otherwise you aren't really making a point.

That's like saying "look how slow this car goes without turbo vs this other similar, but a 1000 pound lighter, car with a turbo!". The inverse of that analogy might make more sense but I think both apply the same meaning: not a fair comparison.
its alot more than just comparing how the GPU handles alot of polygons, vs tessellated polys, the designers apply a single map for the tessellation on top of the old model, which gives the game the ability to do unique things. theres a nice crab movie where it starts off basic, then they move a slider and it gets a whole bunch of spikes that just grow, all in real time. its not easy to do that with a simple model since the polys which are only part of the displacement map cannot be individually identified.

but in a nutshell, the polygons from tessellation are added later in the rendering process which can help reduce resource requirements. and a bunch of other bonuses only game developers really give a whoot about