Path: chuka.playstation.co.uk!scea!greg_labrec@interactive.sony.com
From: Ed Federmeyer <fedeedw@charlie.cns.iit.edu>
Newsgroups: scea.yaroze.programming.3d_graphics
Subject: Re: How fast is fast?
Date: Sun, 06 Jul 1997 11:39:09 -0500
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Gil Jaysmith wrote:
> While we're on the subject of performance limits:
> - the PlayStation doesn't have a hardware FPU, so you can assume the
> floating-point libraries are real slow; if you were thinking of
> manipulating floating-point numbers, consider implementing your own
> fixed-point stuff

Oh my God, you are not kidding.  I wrote a couple of routines to build
sine/cosine lookup tables at runtime, and it took about 7-8 seconds to
generate 360 sin() and 360 cos() values!  Sheesh!  Needless to say, that
routine was scrapped in a hurry!  :-) 

/* Don't try this at home, kids!!!  :-) */
for ( angle=0 ; angle<360 ; angle++ ) {
	sin_table[i] = sin( (angle * PI) / 180 );
	cos_table[i] = cos( (angle * PI) / 180 );
}