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> Who in their right mind spends that much for a video card? Seriously, I want to know.

Questioning is fine -- but your tone makes you look clueless instead of being inquisitive.

I'll give you 4 reasons why I buy cards like this:

1. You're assuming ONLY gamers buy this card, which is incomplete, but I'll discuss this first. I prefer to game at 120+ Hz . I settle for 60 Hz at 2560x1440 (or higher). Graphics Cards are STILL too slow to run 4Ka, aka 2160p at 120 Hz. VR is still a performance hog. You'll want at least a nVidia 980 to get a great VR experience.

2. I do CUDA programming on my nVidia cards. It sounds like you don't understand what heterogeneous programming is.

* GPU's are fast and inflexible.
* CPU's are slow and flexible.

  Offloading selective work from the CPU to the GPU dramatically reduces processing time. GPUs have THOUSANDS of "cores" compared to the piddly "8-core" of CPUs. The cost per core of a typical i7 is $300 / 8 = ~$37. The 1080 Ti is $700 / 3,584 = ~ $0.19. Obviously this is an Apples-to-Oranges comparison but depending on _what_ kind of work your doing this could be EXTREMELY cost effective.

I still have an original Titan in my Linux dev box that I paid $1,000 because it has 1:3 float64 performance compared to the butchered 1:24 float64 performance of later cards -- Translation: For 64-bit floating point the original Titan SCREAMED -- each 64-bit floating point operation was only 1/3 as fast as a 32-bit float. Later video cards butchered the performance so 64-bit floats to be only 1/24 as fast.

3. Game developers, namely programmer and artists, which overlaps with my next point.

4. Graphics programmers, graphic gurus, and "shader junkies" like me buy cards like this -- that is anyone doing real-time rendering, or "pre-viz" work in the movie industry, also has an eye on getting hold of the fastest GPU's they can get. I don't know what GPU's was used in Avatar but they used a total of ...

* 4,000 computers
* 40,000 CPUs

... just to render ONE frame that lasted 1 / 24th of a second ! I'm willing to bet they did a LOT of pre-visualization rendering work to get the scenes looking "just right"

Anytime you need the ability to preview _complex_ rendering (shading / lighting) a faster GPU will help. You then distribute it to thousands of CPU's to do the actual rendering.

You would be less myopic if you would open your eyes to what people are doing with real-time pixel shaders these day. The site ShaderToy is extremely well known amongst us graphics programmers.

* "Wet Stone"

* Mario

Modern GPUs completely S-U-C-K for non-volumetric rendering. Using ray-marching is the standard "solution" to get great looking effects.

It would behoove you to read:

* Rendering Worlds with Two Triangles with raytracing on the GPU

* Clouds

Now I'm quite happy with my Titan and 980 Ti but others will be looking to upgrade. Whenever you upgrade you want to move up at least 3 tiers.

* Desktop GPU Performance Hierarchy Table

Instead of criticizing people for buying the fastest thing they can afford it would be more productive to open your eyes for how much computers are STILL d-o-g slow for graphics.

--
"One does not fully appreciate just how complicated reality is until one starts trying to simulate it."

> What is the 3d web going to give me that 2d doesn't?

At the risk of getting down modded: your thinking is the typical two dimensional can't-think-outside-the-proverbial-box. 3D has a time and a place for certain interactive and educational applications.

To put things into perspective.
http://workshop.chromeexperiments.com/stars/

For teaching about the science of waves, caustics, etc.
http://madebyevan.com/webgl-water/

For people to explore creativity without needing an over-priced program
http://derschmale.com/demo/farbe/watercolour/FarbeWaterColour.html

For rapid prototyping and fun playing around with shaders
http://www.iquilezles.org/apps/shadertoy/

Just because _you_ can't see a need or use for it does not imply it is useless for everyone else.

I've always been quite puzzled about the use of "Visual" or "Graphical" for this kind of "mostly text with some rectangles thrown-in for good measure" IDEs. Besides being bit-mapped, there's nothing really graphical about them.

Want something visual? Try this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apy5csu0DkE. Or this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paJG7Fy5Few. Or this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4a0jcrDgK0. Or the amazing stuff on this page: http://www.iquilezles.org/live/index.htm. Now, that's visual ;-)

Why don't you start with ShaderToy ?
http://www.iquilezles.org/apps/shadertoy/

And some interesting code snippets ...
http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/losip/shader_toy/

--
Reddit is the Dig of /. -- group herd-think, circle jerking, wankers, and the rare insightful / informative comment.

In fact, if they are really good at arts, they should do only arts, with a tools like 3D Studio Max, Maya, etc. Again, arts only, no programming.

You are obviously not an expert in the field and I don't think anyone really expect you to fully understand what art is. One thing that I think you would benefit from is to consider that art can be a lot more than just an image. For example sound could be a vital part of art.
Tools like 3D Studio and Maya are very specific and if the artist want to create something that is beyond those tools it can be necessary for him/her to be able to program.
Some might even consider computer programs by itself to be an art. A program that calculates more than 50 digits of PI have very little use beyond what could be called art.

The 256 byte piece of machine code for dos that is listed in hex to the left in this image could not really be considered as anything else than art and the moving images it creates is also art. (Note that I consider the code by itself to be art but you need to disassemble it and see what it does to understand it.)

So tell us, how'd they pull it off? Specifics, please.

Well, a full-fledged engine is obviously overkill for a 4K intro. Usually you code the specific effects you want to show directly into the intro, and generate on the fly all the data you can, so you don't store triangles or sound waves, but the parameters for some formula you have coded. And you do this in the most compressor-friendly way you can :D. In4K is a wiki with useful tips and discussions for 4K intro coders.

You can find lots of information at Iñigo Quilez's (the main coder of Elevated) home page, too.

His NVscene08 presentation "Rendering worlds with two triangles" is specially relevant here :)

I'm not a top intro coder, but I've made a few ones myself, so ask if you want more details ;)

So tell us, how'd they pull it off? Specifics, please.

Well, a full-fledged engine is obviously overkill for a 4K intro. Usually you code the specific effects you want to show directly into the intro, and generate on the fly all the data you can, so you don't store triangles or sound waves, but the parameters for some formula you have coded. And you do this in the most compressor-friendly way you can :D. In4K is a wiki with useful tips and discussions for 4K intro coders.

You can find lots of information at Iñigo Quilez's (the main coder of Elevated) home page, too.

His NVscene08 presentation "Rendering worlds with two triangles" is specially relevant here :)

I'm not a top intro coder, but I've made a few ones myself, so ask if you want more details ;)

I recant my rant. It really does look possible to do what RGBA did in 4KB. This thread forced me to go learn up ...

Producing mountain-like terrains with Perlin noise.

More by the same author (Inigo Quilez.)

Truly awesome and impressive. My eyes are opened, and I'm intrigued enough to try my hand at an implementation.

I recant my rant. It really does look possible to do what RGBA did in 4KB. This thread forced me to go learn up ...

Producing mountain-like terrains with Perlin noise.

More by the same author (Inigo Quilez.)

Truly awesome and impressive. My eyes are opened, and I'm intrigued enough to try my hand at an implementation.