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A demonstration showing the differences between the MD2 and IQM model formats. From this video you should be able to see how the IQM does not have vertex swim and distortion that the MD2 has, and how the lighting vectors are more accurate(not to mention they are stored in the model format).
The things you should be looking for are:
1 - The md2 looks swimmy, and jittery. The iqm is solid.
2 - Look closely at the Martian's brain and you can see how much nicer the lighting is due to the more accurate normals and tangents that are passed to the shader.
Yeah, the martian's brain is different on both, I prefer the IQM.
whats up with the hands?
They are just positioned for holding a weapon, and being kind of long, spindly fingers, they don't show well in the video. Also in the MD2 version, the vertex distortion just ruins them, much like the teeth as well.
wow i didn't notice it before but the md2 model really does jitter, it's like it's pulsating constantly.
Yeah, MD2 is probably the worst of the model formats out there. Not only is it jittery, but any type of complex geometry just gets completely mangled. Also, in the game, the animation is much more fluid and smooth with the IQM. The best advantage is though, the tricks that can be done with skeletal models for issues like frame blending, or looking up and down.
Why not just implement MD5 models?, the format is easy to parse but the rendering part is harder.
Why would we bother with .md5 when we already have .iqm working? The work is done, no need to switch to an older model format now.
Is .iqm better then md5?, seems like you just improved on top of the .md2 format :s.
Yes .iqm is better than .md5, and .iqm has no correlation whatsoever to .md2 at all. Read about .iqm here - Lee.fov120.com