My vision was to make the most aesthetically pleasing train ever created in the BVE world that one would be dazzled by the perfect combination of pixels ever created on their monitor.
Well this vision came true but came with a price and that is performance hit. At the start of developing my R46 exterior I knew little about polygons vs performance ratio. I knew that if you increase polygons, you will be decreasing the frames per second count and that is pretty much it.
So what I did was use my laptop as a test bench since it is relatively modern (2010-2011 era). Meaning if it is unplayable on my PC no way will it be playable on everyone else's. It turned out to be unplayable at first but I reduced quite a few polygons and it became playable.
Now I know what you're thinking. "If his PC, being relatively modern and all, can play it but what about us with older PC's?" Well your computer might suffer more but please go back to my vision. It wouldn't be possible in achieving my vision without sacrifices - and that is performance hit.
If you look at it my way is this. If I were to release something that is capable of a 2008 PC we would be stuck in the past. But I strive for the future.