Quake III Arena, which uses the OpenGL transformation pipeline, automatically takes advantage of hardware T & L. To increase the polygon count per frame of Quake3 for testing, three console commands were added:
"r_lodBias -2" : Not to use low detail models.
"r_subdivisions 1" : Procedurally generate more triangles in curves.
"r_lodCurveError 10000" : Not to drop curves for a long time.
Below are a few images to illustrate the differences between high and low polygon count models.
Thumbnail of screenshot at 1600x1200x32
Boxed region is shown actual size below
High Polygon Setting
The left half indicates the triangles making up the arch.
The arch is made up of 28 triangles.
Default Setting
The left half shows the triangles making up the arch.
The arch is made up of 10 triangles.