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7 Years of 3D Graphics

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the three-dimensional-memory-lane dept.

xtra writes "At Accelenation they are running a nice timeline about 7 years of pc 3d graphics contains much info and even talks about some of the not so well known players anyone still remember rendition? or BitBoys?" How many cards on their timeline chart have you used?

5 of 246 comments (clear)

  1. Infinity and beyond... by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Funny

    At the going rate, the board with CPU and chipset will be a daughterboard of the graphics motherboard. :]

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  2. How fast do we really need to go? by TrollMan+5000 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Can graphics technology possibly get any faster? Well the GeForce2 GTS chip ran Quake3 at 80fps in May of 2000. Just twenty-two months later a GeForce4 Ti4600 can run Quake3 over three times faster. On that reckoning the GeForce6 in two years time should be running Quake3 at over 700fps. Is that fast enough for you!

    Is there really much visual difference between 700 fps and 135 fps? I'm not really sure if the human eye can make the distinction. They're sure pretty-looking numbers, but do the results show for it?

    And how long before video cards can render essentially photo-realistic graphics? Soon games will be more like interactive movies.

    1. Re:How fast do we really need to go? by Hieronymus+Howard · · Score: 5, Informative

      Ray tracing isn't the only way to achieve high-quality graphics. Renderman (used for Toy Story, Monsters Inc. and plenty others) isn't a ray tracer, but a sub-pixel renderer (if I remember my computer graphics M.Sc. correctly).

      We've still got a very long way to go until we get Monsters Inc. quality real-time games. As you say, current cards render triangles. Curved surface rendering (e.g. NURBS) may come next. Anti-aliasing takes a lot of power. I think that current cards are still using Gourard shading, which is the most primitive shading model there is (correct me if I'm wrong here). The next step is Phong shading for highlight effects (there are hardware-optimised Phong shading algorithms, but they're still slower than Gourard). Then there's deformation mapping (Renderman again), etc. etc.

      I believe that Quake 3 etc. does use radiosity algorithms, but that doesn't need to be done in real time, just when the level is compiled.

      HH

    2. Re:How fast do we really need to go? by bribecka · · Score: 5, Informative

      Renderman (used for Toy Story, Monsters Inc. and plenty others) isn't a ray tracer, but a sub-pixel renderer (if I remember my computer graphics M.Sc. correctly).

      You're referring to PhotoRealistic Renderman (PRMan), the actual product developed by Pixar. It uses the REYES algorithm.

      RenderMan is a specification for defining 3D scenes, much as PostScript is a specification for defining 2D documents/images. There are many renderers that are RenderMan compatible, including raytracers such as BMRT.

      --

      Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?

  3. Re:Number Nine by Jeffrey+Baker · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Uh? I don't remember any #9 cards with 128MB of memory. In fact, #9 was out of business two years ago. You may remember the #9 i128 series of cards, but those are very old and do not have 128MB memory.

    You only need 16MB to handle th highest resolution computer graphics displays ever made.