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CalcNormals is one one the few items in the Aquarium that links performance with CPU speed. Nearly everything else is handled by the graphics card, but the per-frame calculation of vertex normals is done by the CPU.
On very fast machines, turning this feature on or off makes little difference, but on my P2 233 it cuts the frame rate in half.
In this game, it's all about eliminating customer-service email. Virtually no one writes to complain about the lack of CalcNormals, but low frame-rate generates a lot of complaints. Having CalcNormals default to OFF was the simplest solution.
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