Posted by
Hemos
on from the rolling-out-the-pretty-stuff dept.
Jonas writes, "I spotted that ATI has announced their next generation intentions where the 3D industry is concerned with their "Charisma Engine" and "Pixel Tapestry" technologies at this year's GDC. There's also an interesting article discussing the technology involved on their next gen 3D part. "
Totally not answering the question....
by
luckykaa
·
· Score: 4
The 3d card market seems to have an alternative version of Moore's law:
Every 18 months, the number of people making 3D graphics cards halves. There's only about 6 companies making 3D chips now.
More features for no one to support
by
Junks+Jerzey
·
· Score: 5
Speaking as a game programmer, these advances are coming so fast that there's no time to concentrate on (1) pushing the limits of what a current generation of cards can do, and (2) dealing with card-specific features.
On the first point, there's not enough time to sit down and focus on where all the rendering time is going in a complex game. Well, more like there are so many card and driver combos out there that the best we can do is try to write generic code and have it work across the board. If we could focus on one card, say a Voodoo 2, then we could push the limits of that chipset out beyond what people only expect from a GeForce. But there's no time for that, so we plow ahead using about 50% of each card's capabilities for the three month window until the next card comes along.
On the second point, 3dfx, Nvidia, Matrox and ATI (and S3, and...) are all branching out into odd and card specific feature sets. 3dfx has their T-buffer. Nvidia has "8 lights per triangle hardware lighting." Matrox has a certain kind of hardware bump-mapping. ATI has all sorts of wacky stuff. The bottom line becomes "Do we want to just focus on writing a great game, or do we want to spend an extra six months of development so we can support special features of all these cards that were considered hot eight months ago when we were still pre-beta?" And tacking in special Matrox-only support, for example, is hell on QA. It makes a lot of sense to ignore such features, unless we're getting a bundle from the card company to cover us for the trouble.
Where next for high-end graphic cards?
by
tjwhaynes
·
· Score: 5
It seems that while the push for ever increasing image quality is going on, we are getting much closer to realistic, real time rendering of scenes. I wonder just what else is needed to really be able to push the envelope of visualization and realism further. Here's my current wish list.
Proper curved surface rendering - not just pushing the polygon count ever higher but actually rendering, for example, bezier patches with multi-pass textures.
Depth of field - most graphic cards today blur the insides of polygons when they are close (tri-linear mapping) but do nothing to blur the edges of the polygon, breaking the realism. And everything in the far field is in clean focus. Having real depth of field, so that there is some defined focal distance would help.
Integrated collision detection - we pass the cards all these vertex coordinates, fans and strips. It must be possible to pass some of the collision detection from the CPU to the graphics card. Using something like Orientated-bounding boxes at various detail levels and then passing the final collision detection to the card for some arbitration at the polygon level might help.
Integrated physics engine - gravity, flexion, distortion both plastic and elastic, hinges, rotation and friction. And anything else:-)
Volume rendering - either voxels per se or some iso-surface rendering based on potential fields.
There must be others - it looks like ATI is going to finally give us proper bump mapping and range-based fogging. Do we also need a proper chromatic model so that we can get rainbows through glass objects? Should there be real-time ray-casting or radiosity support so that real lighting effects (say carrying a flaming torch down a corridor and having proper soft-edged shadows) can be achieved?
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
-- Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't
necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
Slashdot Mirror
The 3d card market seems to have an alternative version of Moore's law:
Every 18 months, the number of people making 3D graphics cards halves. There's only about 6 companies making 3D chips now.
Speaking as a game programmer, these advances are coming so fast that there's no time to concentrate on (1) pushing the limits of what a current generation of cards can do, and (2) dealing with card-specific features.
On the first point, there's not enough time to sit down and focus on where all the rendering time is going in a complex game. Well, more like there are so many card and driver combos out there that the best we can do is try to write generic code and have it work across the board. If we could focus on one card, say a Voodoo 2, then we could push the limits of that chipset out beyond what people only expect from a GeForce. But there's no time for that, so we plow ahead using about 50% of each card's capabilities for the three month window until the next card comes along.
On the second point, 3dfx, Nvidia, Matrox and ATI (and S3, and...) are all branching out into odd and card specific feature sets. 3dfx has their T-buffer. Nvidia has "8 lights per triangle hardware lighting." Matrox has a certain kind of hardware bump-mapping. ATI has all sorts of wacky stuff. The bottom line becomes "Do we want to just focus on writing a great game, or do we want to spend an extra six months of development so we can support special features of all these cards that were considered hot eight months ago when we were still pre-beta?" And tacking in special Matrox-only support, for example, is hell on QA. It makes a lot of sense to ignore such features, unless we're getting a bundle from the card company to cover us for the trouble.
It seems that while the push for ever increasing image quality is going on, we are getting much closer to realistic, real time rendering of scenes. I wonder just what else is needed to really be able to push the envelope of visualization and realism further. Here's my current wish list.
There must be others - it looks like ATI is going to finally give us proper bump mapping and range-based fogging. Do we also need a proper chromatic model so that we can get rainbows through glass objects? Should there be real-time ray-casting or radiosity support so that real lighting effects (say carrying a flaming torch down a corridor and having proper soft-edged shadows) can be achieved?
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.