First of all, in engine everything is triangulated. But also because it's safe. If you use that quad, chances are the triangulation will flipped on export to the engine. You really do not want that one flipped there.
This does not apply to offline render engines such as Pixar's RenderMan: Primitives are tessellated into micropolygons. https://rmanwiki.pixar.com/display/REN24/Geometry
Don't forget to distinguish between modeling and the final result. Lots of modeling tools requires a quad topology. Edgeloops may fail at a tri topology. So model in quads, and for game needs check for correct triangulation in your engine. Which can mean to triangulate the geometry before you export. This was best practice…
The model compiler part of the engine will spit list of triangles out to the renderer - what the various editors show you is irrelevant. As mentioned in an earlier post, there's no guarantee that a quad/ngon will be subdivided in the same way by two different applications. The only way to be sure is to manually define…
A game engine would turn it into triangles anyway. At least ours do. It's just in a place like that it could be a very thin triangle so better be set manually first. Thin triangles are considered not good for game renderers. People often say triangulation is important for accurate normal map baking . It's not true…
Thanks Frank. Great examples how topology influences shading and normal mapping :) Indeed Unity can interpret quads (even ngons ?), like Blender or Maya. Though i'm not sure what the point is. The point is that most of the times you can simply export the quad mesh that you have modeled, and get away with it. It might even…
To add to what's already been said and hopefully clarify a few things: there's a number of different reasons why an artist would choose to use a triangle instead of a quad when creating an arch. The relevance of any specific answer really depends on the model's intended use and the desired outcome for the project. Looking…