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.. _performance-issue:-excessive-fill:

Performance Issue: Excessive Fill
=================================

Transparency
============


In general, it is better for your graphics card to render the polygons
front-to-back, because a depth test can be used to toss out the occluded
fragments before they are written to the framebuffer.

When enabling the M\_alpha or M\_dual transparency modes, however, Panda
forces the nodes with this transparency mode to be sorted back-to-front. This
is necessary for alpha blending to work correctly. If you have many occluded
polygons in view, for example thousands of blades of grass that are positioned
behind each other, this may quickly consume your fill rate.

Do not enable transparency modes unless it is necessary, and when you do,
consider using the M\_binary mode, which does not require back-to-front
sorting. However, if alpha blending is required and if large areas of the
polygons are fully transparent, using M\_dual may provide an improvement over
M\_alpha.

For a more in-depth explanation on the various transparency modes, see
:ref:`transparency-and-blending`.

Incomplete Section
==================


Note: this section is incomplete. It will be updated soon.