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NVIDIA's Pixel & Vertex Shading Language
Barkhausen Criterion writes "NVIDIA have announced a high-level Pixel and Vertex Shading language developed in conjunction with Microsoft. According to this initial look, the "Cg Compiler" compiles high level Pixel and Vertex Shader language into low-level DirectX and OpenGL code. While the press releases are going amok, CG Channel (Computer Graphics Channel) has the most comprehensive look at the technology. The article writes, "Putting on my speculative hat, the motivation is to drive hardware sales by increasing the prevalence of Pixel and Vertex Shader-enabled applications and gaming titles. This would be accomplished by creating a forward-compatible tool for developers to fully utilize the advanced features of current GPUs, and future GPUs/VPUs." "
Hopefully NVidia will be able to avoid the proprietary pitfall that ultimately doomed 3dfx and Glide.
From the story it sounds like NVidia will allow other cards to support Cg so maybe they can. However I wonder if ATI will be willing to support a standard which NVidia controls. It's like wrestling with a crocodile if you ask me!~
News.com had this story for awhile.
My biggest question - from reading this, this would actually work correctly on other competing VCards... why did nVidia create it?
--- Ãther SPOON!
Remember 3dfx's GLIDE libraries? This could end up like those... an "industry standard" supported only by one manufacturer's chipsets, used by all major games. At least 3dfx made good, cheap cards before they died, though.
If it doesn't work with my RADEON, it must be evil!
Every cloud has a silver lining (except for the mushroom shaped ones, which have a lining of Iridium & Strontium 90)
If we wanted cutting edge Pixels, we'd go back and play Wolfenstein. Man, I remember those days, the people with sharp features and a whole four frames of animation. And we were glad to have it, too.
You've got to wonder, is this yet another load of Nvidia corporate hype (a la "HW TnL will revolutionise gaming"), or is this useful technology? I wouldn't trust any of the current articles on answering that, judging by the previous Nvidia hypes, it takes a few months till anyone really knows if this is good or bad.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
While I this is a great move by NVIDIA to increase the use of Pixel and Vertex Shader in games, is this wholly proprietary? I mean wouldn't it be better for ATI to have a hand in it as well, to work out a standard to make it easier for game developers? I just hope this doesn't turn out like 3dfx..
The real test will be how well the crosscompiler outputs OpenGL 2 & DX 9 shaders in practic, not theory.
But let's be serious: cel shading is the only shading anyone really needs. ^^
[o]_O
I'm buying one right away, and praying that they become industry standard. The next "Amy men" game will be all the sweeter, along with Pac-man 3D!
What are you talking about?? Nvidia makes great linux drivers - and from looking through the pages it looks to me like Cg just outputs regular OpenGL (Well - Nvidia-OpenGL anyway) so I would venture a guess that any of these will run just fine on the nvidia linux drivers.
:-(
My only problem is that the toolkit itself is only for windows
Anyone try it with Wine/Winex yet?? I might when I get home.
Derek
According to the web site, they are working to implement this on top of both OpenGL and DirectX. On linux and Mac as well.
Basically this is a wrapper for the assembly that you would have to write if you were going to write a shader program. It compiles a C-like (as in look a like ) language into either the DirectX shader program or the OpenGL shader program. So you'll need a compiler for each and every API that you want to support. Which means that you'll need a different compiler for OpenGL/Nvidia and OpenGL/ATI until they standardize it.
On a more technical note, the lack of branching in vertex/pixel shaders really needs to be fixed, it's really the only feature that they need to add to them. Which is why the Cg code looks so strange, it's C, but there's no loops.
That's like asking which of the following would I rather do...
a) have a 3-way with two hot chicks
b) clean the floor behind my refrigerator
I wonder.
I just bought my GeForce 4 TI4600. *sigh* Looks like Ill have to give my other ARM and LEG to pay for the upcoming GeForce 5.
In college, really poor, need a flatscreen.
One has to wonder if this allience is from the current relationship Nvidia and MS has with the Xbox.
It seems to me that this is probably an attempt to kill OpenGL 2.0, and secure Direct X as the dominant 3D API. OpenGL 2.0 has as far as I can tell been well thought out, and most of the feedback to it has been very positive. The frontend to its shader language is Free Software, and the work done seems to have been done with the best of intentions. I am very cynical about an offering from NVIDIA, especially when you consider their behavoir towards the rest of the 3D card market, and the fact that Microsoft are involved.
From Nvidia's Homepage you can check out the press releases and find this:
"NVIDIA's Cg Compiler is also cross platform, supporting programs written for Windows®, OS X, Linux, Mac and Xbox®."
So maybe even though the tools aren't cross platform - the compiler is. I think this is a Great step forward towards OpenGL 2.0 - this is showing that Windows doesn't have to be the only platform to write graphically intensive applications for.
Derek
this is good because now it will be easier to create cross platform games. which means more games for linux/mac. that is assuming i read it correctly.
I want 2D games back.
There will be a linux compiler.
I write code.
There's directX and there's directX 8.1 oh and DirectX 8.1a.
Remember when the Radeon first came out? Well they had to release a special directX just to support it's pixel shaders as opposed to just nvidias.
So as a game developer you'll probably have to compile your Cg code with the Nvidia one and the ATI one just to make it work (better).
This tool will really help those XBox developers.
Same thing with OpenGL, since the spec isn't nailed down yet and with Nvidia 'leading the pack' of development. It wouldn't surprise me if they decided to not support any other cards with the OpenGL compiler (which they haven't even released yet).
So hopefully this will NOT turn into a Glide type issue. Since this is actually a level above glide. Glide was very low level, all the Glide functions mostly mapped directly onto the 3dfx hardware, while this is a little bit more abstract.
Microsoft have never done anything without a hidden agenda (microsoft bob not included).
HTTP/1.1 400
[BEGIN]L END_REFLECTIONE ("WALL")
L END_REFLECTIONB LUE)
SET_PIXELFORMAT(SHINY)
ADD_BUMP_MAPS
B
SET_TRANSPARENCY(0.5)
SET_TEXTUR
[END]
[BEGIN]
SET_PIXELFORMAT(WET)
ADD_BUMP_MAPS
B
SET_TRANSPARENCY(0.3)
SET_COLOR(
ADD_FISHIES(YELLOW)
[END]
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
Since NVidia sits on the OpenGL 3.0 steering commitee and was the first to offer pixel shader extensions to their 2.0 drivers I think you are being a little reactionary to M$'s presence. For one thing the high end of Nvidia's line where they make about 8X the margins is in CAD and the like which will likely never be ruled by D3D. BTW, the interface to NVidia's pixel shader pipline exposed by the OpenGL extensions is much cleaner and better thoughtout then DX8's. See the recent John Carmack .plan update where he ranted about this fact.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
One of these days, nVidia will ship a GPU whose functionality is a proper superset of that of a traditional CPU and then we can ditch the CPU entirely. Just like MMX, but backwards. This is a a recognized law of engineering. At that point, Cg will have to become a "real" compiler. Let's hope nVidia is up to the task...
Did everybody read the comparison between writing in CG and writing hand-optimized assembly code?
Thank GOD they wrote CG, because now I won't have to write all of my programs in assembly anymore.
What is this "compiler" technology that they keep talking about? This might revolutionize computer science!
Cg is to OpenGL 2.0
as DirectX is to OpenGL
It's a closed ("partially open") standard, for a subset of hardware, which is not as forward looking as a proposed competing standard.
Support OpenGL 2.0!
Education is the silver bullet.
There are some issues that I think nobody seems to be addressing, as in:
* Realistic fog/smoke -- not that 2-D fog which looks like a giant translucent grey pancake. Microsoft comes closer with Flight Sim 2002, but it's not quite there yet.
* Fire/flame -- again, nobody has created more realistic acceleration for this kind of effect. It's very important for many games.
Furthermore I would like to see fractal acceleration techniques for organic-looking trees, shrubs, and other scenery. Right now they look like something from a Lego box. In fact, fractals could probably help with fire/smoke effects as well, to add thicker & thinner areas which take on a "semi-random", but not an obvious pattern, effect.
Perhaps I'm just too picky...
-- We live in a world where lemonade is artificial and soap has real lemon.
Does this mean they'll finally be able to make a decent nose-picking routine for Counter-Strike hostage models?
Who the hell cares if the toolkit works in Linux? All I need is a compiler, which I'm sure will be released for Linux.
Mad Software: Rantings on Developing So
- opengl shader.
- a great paper on the hardware shading problem, and a very generic approach.
- stanford's rtsl.
- the proposed opengl2 also has a hardware shading abstraction language.
of course, the progenitor of all these, conceptually, is renderman's shading language.hopefully, opengl2's shading will become standard, and mitigate the cross-platform differences. it's seemingly a much better option than this new thing by nvidia, but we'll have to wait and see what does well in the marketplace, and with developers.
If this makes it easier to create high end video games maybe it could boost the Duke Nukem release schedule. I did say maybe
http://www.kubuntu.org/
Cg compiler can generate shaders for OpenGL 1.4. Not 2.0. BIG difference.
It would be easier to read the damned article.
OpenGL 1.4 is a completely different beast than OpenGL 2.0. Cg is a direct competitor (and attempt to kill) OpenGL 2.0, and secure NVidia as the dominant provider of 3D APIs.
Tell me, Anonymous Coward, why you think that NVidia made Cg instead of supporting OpenGL 2.0 on their hardware? Try not to use words like "monopoly", "closed standard", and "platform specific."
Education is the silver bullet.
They are letting other vendors build their own backend. Think gcc for GPUs...
All Your Memory Are Belong To Java
I would appreciate it if you would stop spewing your nonsensical dribble on the board. Go and read the article. To all you that have asked the question: Is it cross platform? read the first paragraph of the article at cg channel Graphics giant NVIDIA today announced Cg, an initiative with participation from Microsoft to create a cross-platform, hardware-independent, high-level Pixel and Vertex Shader programming language. can i emphasize CROSS PLATFORM and HARDWARE INDEPENDANT. It ports to DX and (nvidia's) open GL. I really wouldn't worry about its cross compatibilty. All (relevant) cards have drivers for Open GL and Direct X.
"Martha Stewart can lick my Scrotum......do i have a scrotum?" -- Sharon Osbourne
Did you see the screenshots of the toolkit??? They were previewing effects IN REAL-TIME! That would save anyone a load of time.
What you said is basically like saying - "I don't need a C++ debugger for linux as long as I have my trusty compiler!"
That may be correct for small/medium projects - but we all know that debuggers (like gdb) save us loads of time.
Derek
I don't code games for a living but I thought I would check out thier toolset and documentation. While reading through the documentation there is a big note that for and while loops are not supported yet. They are eventually planned to be supported they just aren't yet. You'd think when deciding which functions to include in a programming language the ability to do a loop would be essential but I guess not maybe coding games is mostly event driven so you don't need loops very often. I just thought this was strange.
If your not cheating your not trying. If your not trying your not winning and if your not winning why play?
3dlabs's cards of opengl 1.2 implemented on silicon in case you were wondering.
Segue to someone playing a video game at a high frame rate...
Gee, the more I play this game, the less bad I feel about buying proprietary technology and the angrier I get at those 9 states for disagreeing with the DoJ Settlement. Oh, and I'd like to buy all of Britney Spears CD's and eat every meal at McD's... I'm sure I didn't feel this way yesterday... What's odd, too is that every so many frames seems to flicker something I can't quite make out...
Screen breifly flickers something else
Hmm... I can't remember what I was just thinking about, but I do have the strangest desire to email all of my personal information and credit card numbers to mlm5767848@hotmail.com...
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Here's my understanding:
Cg is to vertex shader assembly as C++ is to x86 assembly.
It's a proprietary high-level language, sure, but the assembly code it emits is 100% standard and will run on any GPU that supports DirectX 8.x and up.
It isn't about converting to standard OpenGL and D3D operations. It's an extension to support increasing programmability of the graphics cards. You'll still need to use the standard API to set up the basic geometry, and send all the data.
The vertex shader simply executes a series of instructions on a vertex when it is sent to the card, and the pixel shader simply executes a series of operations on each pixel.
Existing shader designs are essentially scripting languages (although you could also argue that the same is true of assembly language). The idea of Cg is to make it a little less directly related to the hardware, and a little easier to follow than an assembly language based concept. Essentially it involves using variable names, and standard mathematical notation.
So you use cc for normal CPU code, and gcc for Graphics (GPU) code. Makes sense. I'd been wondering about that...
:)
j/k
"why you think that NVidia made Cg instead of supporting OpenGL 2.0 on their hardware?" Maybe because OpenGL 2.0 is vaporware? If it wasn't, Doom 3 would be using it :)
All Your Memory Are Belong To Java
Seems like a decent number of people have absolutely no clue what Cg is all about, so I'll see if I can clear up some of the confusion:
Modern NVidia(and ATI) GPU's can execute decently complex instruction sets on the polygons they're set to render, as well as the actual pixels rendered either direct to screen or on the texture placed on a particular poly. The idea is to run your code as close to the actual rendering as possible -- you've got massive logic being deployed to quickly convert your datasets into some lit scene from a given perspective; might as well run a few custom instructions while we're in there.
There's a shit-ton of flexibility lost -- you can't throw a P4 into the middle of a rendering pipeline -- but in return, you get to stream the massive amounts of data that the GPU has computed in hardware through your own custom-designed "software" filter, all within the video card.
For practical applications, some of the best work I've seen with realtime hair uses vertex shaders to smoothly deform straight lines into flowing, flexible segments. From pixel shaders, we're starting to see volume rendering of actual MRI data that used to take quite some time to calculate instead happening *in realtime*.
It's a bit creepy to see a person's head, hit C, and immediately a clip plane slices the top of guy's scalp off and you're lookin' at a brain.
Now, these shaders are powerful, but by nature of where they're deployed, they're quite limited. You've got maybe a couple dozen assembly instructions that implement "useful" features -- dot products, reciprocal square roots, adds, multiplies, all in the register domain. It's not a general purpose instruction set, and you can't use it all you like: There's a fixed limit as to how many instructions you may use within a given shader, and though it varies between the two types, you've only got space for a couple dozen.
If you know anything about compilers, you know that they're not particularly well known for packing the most power per instruction. Though there's been some support for a while for dynamically adjusting shaders according to required features, they've been more assembly-packing toolkits than true compilers.
Cg appears different. If you didn't notice, Cg bears more than a passing resemblance to Renderman, the industry standard language for expressing how a material should react to being hit with a light source. (I'm oversimplifying horrifically, but heh.) Renderman surfaces are historically done in software *very, very* slowly -- this is a language optimized for the transformation of useful mathematical algorithms into something you can texture your polys with...speed isn't the concern, quality above all else is.
Last year, NVidia demonstrated rendering the Final Fantasy movie, in realtime, on their highest end card at the time. They hadn't just taken the scene data, reduced the density by an order of magnitude, and spit the polys on screen. They actually managed to compile a number of the Renderman shaders into the assembly language their cards could understand, and ran them for the realtime render.
To be honest, it was a bit underwhelming -- they really overhyped it; it did not look like the movie by any stretch of the imagination. But clearly they learned alot, and Cg is the fruits of that project. Whereas a hell of alot more has been written in Renderman than in strange shader assembly languages (yes, I've been trying to learn these lately, for *really* strange reasons), Cg could have a pretty interesting impact in what we see out of games.
A couple people have talked about Cg on non-nVidia cards. Don't worry. DirectX shaders are a standard; game authors don't need to worry about what card they're using, they simply declare the shader version they're operating against and the card can implement the rest using the open spec. So something compiled to shader language from Cg will work on all compliant cards.
Hopefully this helps?
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
I'd be interested to see which implementation is faster, OGL, or DX. Seems like they're awfully in bed with MS on this... Does this make anyone else nervious?
Go here for teh [sic] funny.
Well, it flat out says that they would have to write their own compiler.
But you're right about the framework being open enough, though I think it's more a matter of it being worth it to put in their own secret sauce, and not if they can.
I guess time will tell.
Dark Nexus
"Sanity is calming, but madness is more interesting."
"No matter how good the compiler is, it will never be as efficient as a person writing in solid OpenGL and DirectX."
I'd agree with you if GPUs weren't changing every 6 months. By the time you've tweaked your hand-made GPU ASM, another GPU is out and it with its Cg compiler will outperform your hand-written code!
"it seems that this new "language" is little more than some scripting."
Exactly what makes a language a "little more than some scripting"? This isn't a troll...
All Your Memory Are Belong To Java
If I remember correctly, one of the major features of OpenGL 2.0 was going to be a high level language and compiler that would compile down to low level pixel and vertex shader assembly. And, if I'm not mistaken, nVidia was one of the biggest contributers to this language. Has nVidia decided to just screw OpenGL altogether? Or is this a temporary equivalent for the time being while we're still using OpenGl 1.2?
An amusing tidbit from the News.com (http://news.com.com/2100-1040-935595.html) coverage:
"The programming language, called Cg, was developed in collaboration with Microsoft and is similar to the software giant's series of C languages for writing Windows code, said Chris Seitz, Nvidia's manager of development tools."
I didn't know that Kerrigan, Ritchie and Stroustrup were all Microsoft employees. Embrace and extend is one thing -- but embrace, extend, and then pretend that you owned it in the first place? Impressive!
(Score:-1, Wrong)
>>However I wonder if ATI will be willing to support a standard which NVidia controls
That never stopped IBM from using and developing Java!
FUNK!
Okay - a basic OpenGL or D3d command will send a set of vertices to the card. The vertex will contain position, colour information, a normal vector, and other bits and pieces. The card will transform these vertices, convert to triangles, apply colour and several textures, and output to screen.
A vertex shader will take the vertices before they are transformed, and apply a series of operations on the data inside these vertices. This allows certain clever lighting effects, and nice ripple patterns to be described algorithmically.
The vertices are then converted to triangles as before.
Then the pixel shader is used. Modern applications use several layers of textures. Often, we'll see a texture for the colour, another one giving a bumpmap, andother giving a reflection map. These can be combined in a number of different ways. A pixel shader determines how these textures are applied and combined. A good pixel shader will allow a texture to be defined algorithmically. This looks better than a normal texture map at very large zoom levels. Ken Perlin has done a lot of work on this. Look at his site to see what results you can get. Pixel shaders are getting there, but haven't quite made it.
In practice, all vertex shader operations can be done by the CPU, but this tends to be a bit slower. Pixel shader operations are still at an early stage on current graphics chips, but are getting better. The early Nvidia pixel shaders were no better than the normal texture combiners, but pixel shaders in general are getting more flexible.
I love comments like this one: "It's not OPEN, it must be a load of CRAP!!!" Raving lunacy, if you ask me (but then again, you didn't).
Aside from the fact that if it WAS open (Mesa's OpenGL 2.0 implementation?), we wouldn't have a stable, well-supported, ubiquitous, working product until 2010.
BTW, game companies need to make money. It's hard to make money selling support services for an open game. Just like its hard to make a quality game without funding of some sort. Just like its hard to live in America without a paying job.
All Your Memory Are Belong To Java
Their website is at www.cgshaders.com. Their is a coding contest, some articles, and forums to ask questions.
This piqued my curiosity.
Assumptions:
Capacity of 1 CD - 650,000,000 bytes
# of CDs that will fit into 1 cu ft comfortably - 400
Cargo space on a 747 - 6,190 cu ft
plus - you'll have enough CD-ROM drives available on either end to write 2.5 million CDs in 1 hour, and read 2.5 million CDs in 1/2 hour (about 125,000 drives - not an impossible number)
plus - the CDs on the shipping end are packed as they are burned, adding little or no time to the process of loading - same goes for receiving end. This assumes you have about 25,000 hard workers.
The flight time from Paris to New York is 6 1/2 hours. Writing/packing is 1 hour. Reading/unloading is 1/2 hour. Total time 8 hours. Total bits transfered is 12,875,200,000,000,000 bits, or 12,875 terabits (1,609 terabytes). Total time for transfer, 8 hours.
Resulting bandwidth: 447 Gb/sec, or 56 GB/sec.
New York to Miami would be 894 Gb/sec, or 112 GB/sec.
Sounds impressive, but you might want to reconsider laying fiber considering the impossible costs and logistics...
This seems to be just a pre-compiler to call all of the glVertex() funtions needed to perform accurate shading. It seems to be a tool from the programmers end, not the card's end.
"So you call this your free contry, tell me why it costs so much to live?" - Three Doors Down
IMHO, OpenGL 2.0 is more portable, less NVidia-specific and backed by more manufacturers. Cg is a ripoff of OpenGL 2.0's design, in a cheap attempt to turn it into a NVidia/Microsoft controlled standard.
Remember, NVidia may be good now, but they got where they were by being competitive and overturning old-guard 3D guys (like 3DFX who were themselves trying to lock the industry in to APIs they controlled).
Competition=good.
Single-vendor-controlled APIs=bad.
OpenGL2.0=good.
Now, Ilike my NVidia hardware as much as the next guy, but I fear lock-in. Seems like most of us have already experienced the downsides of lock-in.
Yes, NVidia is talking up the buzzwords "portable" and "vendor-neutral" but if that's what they were after, the wouldn't have created Cg at all, they would have gone with the already-available open standard, OpenGL2.0. This is embrace, extend and extinguish.
-- There is no truth. There is only Perception. To Percieve is to Exist.
Why did they make it like C? You'd think they'd base it on a more object-oriented language like Java. I'm guessing when you are designing 3d worlds (or objects) being able to create objects with their own private methods and properties would be a lot better. Until I actually see the language syntax, I'll pass judgement, but for now... C? Come on... I've used C, Perl, Java, VB, C++ and a few others, and C is the last one I'd choose to base a new language's syntax on, if I had a chance.
today is spelling optional day.
Cg does because that's the next feature they are planning on adding to the hardware.
Basically, after they do that programming a PC game will be similar to programming for the PS2. You'll have to write multiple programs that are all executing concurrently to use all the power you've got at your disposal.
Inferior products did. How could supporting a third API doom the company? How could the parent be modded up as insightful?
of bandwidth that the average graphics card has then it would.
Also don't forget that a GPU has more transistors then the average cpu these days.
The VGA -> CPU interface was SLOWWWWW. In fact it's still slow, that's why AGP (X8) was invented and that's even slow. The graphics cards have larger buses, and are designed to push data to the DAC.
All you need is more bandwith for the CPU and you're set.
I believe the operations implemented in the Cg compiler are architecturally similar to the hardware found in an NVidia GPU.
What this means is that while you may be able to implement Cg on an ATI or 3DLabs card, it will not run as efficiently as on an NVidia card, even if they are cards of equivalent performance.
Additionally, Cg may not (efficiently) support operations and capabilites that are not implemented by NVidia GPUs.
This is the method by which NVidia plans to freeze out other graphics hardware manufacturers, while appearing to support them.
OpenGL2.0 is designed to be adaptable to all architectures.
-- There is no truth. There is only Perception. To Percieve is to Exist.
It's not vaporware.
How do you know Doom 3 isn't going to OpenGL 2.0? Carmak has repeatedly said that he's under NDA's, and can only talk about what hardware is currently available.
You'll notice that Carmak's name is not listed as an endorser of Cg.
Education is the silver bullet.
Did -you- read the article?
Did you miss the point about it having cross-platform support, and being hardware independant?
AKA OTHER video card manufacturers can write there own compilers..!
Can you tell me how this locks anyone into Nvidia?
Is it because they didn't do ATI's job for them? Or because they want there technology (vertex and pixel shaders) used now, instead of whenever opengl 2.0 comes along?
And can you also tell me why this compiler language will be unable to compile Opengl 2.0 compliant code? This may be a good forward-looking tool/initiative.
How the #U&^ do you come up with this stuff?
Saying Cg is a competitor to OpenGL 2.0 is like saying that a muffler is a competitor to a BMW M3. Cg IS ONLY FOR SHADERS. It's offers a high level language which translates to shader assembly. When OpenGL 2.0 comes out, all that is required is a new back end for the compiler, and you can REUSE your existing Cg shader code on OpenGL 2.0. Heck, you can reuse your Cg shader code on DirectX if you want. Does that mean that it's a competitor to DirectX? Geez.
And why aren't they supporting OpenGL 2.0 on their hardware? Because OpenGL 2.0 DOESN'T EXIST. It is a PROPOSAL at the current time - it is not a STANDARD yet. You can't make hardware support a standard until a standard exists. Get a clue, dude.
"Good people drink good beer"
Yes, I have read the article.
It does not have cross-platform support. It is not hardware independant. They say that other vendors will be able to support it, they don't say that it's a free or open standard.
Think about the compiler part of it, for a second. So what if the compiler supports multiple targets? Each compiled program will only be able to run on that one platform! Does that sound like OpenGL to you? Even if they allow a mechanism where the code can be targeted to multiple platforms in one executable, they're still making that decision at compile time. As opposed to at runtime, like OpenGL 2.0. That means that an executable today will be able to run on future hardware. Not true with Cg. Also, the compiler they talk about in Cg is an NVidia product. They're giving it away like free beer, not like free speach. In order for any given company to have Cg targeted to their platform, they'll need to go through NVidia to make it happen. Doesn't this scare you?
Other video card manufacturers can not write their own compilers. The intended method is for other manufacturers to provide new "profiles" (eg fp20, vp20, dx8vs, dx8ps) which will be integrated into the one and only Cg compiler, which NVidia controls.
That's how it locks people in to NVidia.
I'm not talking about ATI. I'm talking about 3dlabs, the people who created the OpenGL 2.0 standard.
I agree that it's to NVidia's advantage to release their hardware sooner rather than later, and that the OpenGL 2.0 standard won't be a standard for some time to come. But NVidia could put their weight behind it, or they could write their own thing. They chose to abandon OpenGL 2.0. Entirely. And they're hoping everyone else will, too.
The Cg language is different from the OpenGL 2.0 shader and vertex language. They're different, but they do the same thing, essentially. To rephrase your question, perhaps someone will be able to provide a translator from Cg to OpenGL 2.0 and vice-versa. Just as people have created a layer that makes DirectX work on top of OpenGL.
Is there really a question in your mind about whether OpenGL is a better standard that we can all live with than DirectX?
The possible objections are the fact that DirectX has more features than OpenGL. Well, that's why OpenGL 2.0 is a good thing.
Throwing Cg into the mix doesn't make OpenGL 2.0 any less of a good thing.
I'm pissed at NVidia for deciding to go with a closed standard, rather than an open standard. What else is new?
Education is the silver bullet.
"Cg is only for shaders." What do you think OpenGL 2.0 is? Have you read the OpenGL 2.0 specs? It provides an exact competitor to the language that NVidia has proposed. Vertex and fragment shaders. It's the same thing, in two different ways - one open and free, one propietary.
I agree it might be possible to write code for the NVidia platform which can be redirected to the proposed standard of OpenGL 2.0. But in a year from now, I hope everyone's using OpenGL 2.0 instead of Cg.
Yes, you can make hardware support a proposed standard. How do you think hardware gets designed in the first place?
By the way - that's a silly argument - "don't make hardware until the standard exists," and "don't make the standard until hardware exists." I'm hearing both of those arguments at the same time in here, which is pretty amazing.
Don't be rude, dude.
Education is the silver bullet.
OK, so 3DLabs is on the ball. But what ball is that? A ball of an as-of-yet "unapproved" specification (see an approved spec here?). How many hardware vendors are going to support OpenGL 2.0 with 110% effort when the spec is still being reviewed? Does that mean hardware vendors aren't allowed to try to gain market/mind share in the meantime?
I did note that Carmack hasn't seemed to say anything about Cg yet. As I'm sure most of us are, I am very interested in what he has to say. I suspect that he will be highly unimpressed.
All Your Memory Are Belong To Java
Hm.
A few small things:
I can see why you would be weary of it, but I think you're jumping to conclusions too quickly.
Anyway, with that said:
Cg itself not being crossplatform is a completely different topic then the OUTPUT. The compiled shaders should work on any platform that has Opengl with nvidia extensions (linux, windows, etc). I see nothing wrong with that. It's a development issue, not a runtime issue. Cg is used at the design development stage, not on the end-users' machine.
Again, I see nothing wrong with NVidia controling the compiler. I can't seem to see any information on licensing fees for other vendors to make the profiles for Cg. It may be cheap, it may not be. The market will decide. Just because there a company does not mean they have evil intentions for everything.
Either way, this is NOT a lockin solution (like Glide was). Developers can still write shaders by hand for whichever card they choose - this tool just makes it easier to make them for nvidia chipsets, or directx in general. Again, I see nothing wrong with that.
As far as the directx vs opengl debate goes.. opengl moves way too slow to keep up with the hardware. 2.0 will be nice, if it ever happens. Until then, as long as OpenGL extensions (Nvidia's, or ATI's) are available, I see no problem. It may add a little more to development cost, but it's not all that complicated really. A game can quite easilly support shaders for Nvidia or ATI, or whatever. Most already have tools for handling the conversion using a generic subset.
I don't fault NVidia's marketing department, and I don't fault their technology guys. As far as NVidia is concerned, this is the best way to sell products in the best manner, right now.
It doesn't help the rest of the industry, though. I wish OpenGL 2.0 were already ratified. That's the problem with standards like that, though - they don't like to ratify them until the hardware exists to test out the theories on. Well, no hardware that's shipping today can support OpenGL 2.0. Chicken and the egg.
I just with NVidia were being more supportive of OpenGL 2.0. Because it's the better of the two standards, in respect to its effects on the industry as a whole.
Same way that I wish Microsoft had never developed DirectX. Sure, it has more features today, but in the long run OpenGL is a better alternative.
Education is the silver bullet.
If only you read befor you excreted onto your keyboard. Then you'd understand that this isn't pre-empting OpenGL or promoting DirectX in ANY way. Cg is above that, and outputs to both. Hardware independantly.
:)
:)
:(
Of course, nVidia's compiler is optimised for their cards, but the whole thing is open; everything is specified, so it won't take long for ATI to make their own ATI-optimised compiler.
All this means is that j.random.software company could have to compile their shaders twice, once for ATI, once for nVidia. Hell, some hacker might even make a combined compiler, which includes both optimisations(?).
But the whole thing about Cg is that it's about 12 times more compact than assembly (at least, in the examples I saw). This means:
-it takes less time to write a shader
-because it's simpler (and hardware independant, and C-like) you can get tech-savvy artists to write them, instead of having your valuable programmers do it! And there are not that many manhours available to waste for those who can write assembly shaders
-there's an industry standard for real-time shaders!
However, it seems to me that id software have already got their own kind of shader language going. Carmack just didn't hype it like this.
Oh, and on a final note, Cg will even work on gforce 3's, although it doesn't show on their slides (that only mentions geforce 4's). But there's an interview on hothardware.com where nVidia's technical director does say it does
Me, I'll have to upgrade though
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
OpenGL 2.0 covers a *LOT* more ground than shaders. The OpenGL 2.0 proposal has not been ratified, and there is no time estimate as to when it will be come a standard. And as to when we'll have robust, compliant implementations, that's anyone's guess.
Cg is available *today*, as a TOOL for developers. If you'd prefer to write different assembly code for every card that supports shader functionality right now, hey, go for it. If you'd rather sit around and stare at the opengl.org website until GL2.0 is released instead of writing code, that's another option.
And why do you have to throw around words like "monopoly", "closed standard", etc.? NVIDIA provides excellent drivers for Linux, Mac and Windows. They don't dominate the graphics card industry because of dirty business practices, they dominate because they are leading the industry in feature implementation. They are taking an extremely active role in the development of OpenGL 2.0, and you can bet that a lot of what they learned from writing Cg will make it into the final standard. Honestly, who do you think has more experience with programmable pipelines, 3DLabs or NVIDIA?
And as for the "silly argument" - I never said "don't make hardware until the standard exists", what I said was that you can't support OpenGL 2.0 implementations until the standard exists. Duh. Whether the hardware is *capable* of supporting the standard is irrelevent. You can't ship a standard until it's a standard.
Direct3D 9 has a high level shader language. So maybe they're out to kill Direct3D 9 as well! Just think about it for a sec before coming up with absurd conspiracy theories. Do you really think Microsoft is happy that Cg supports OpenGL at all? Come on.
"Good people drink good beer"
If OpenGL 2.0 covers a lot more ground than shaders, and if you agree that some of that is good - then you think that companies will need to reinvent a lot of OpenGL 2.0 if they want to support Cg at the same time. See what I mean? In essence, nVidia is re-inventing the wheel, just so that they can control exactly what's on their GPU. And you know what, I'd probably do the same thing in their position - if, as you assert, they can't ship OpenGL 2.0 until it's fully ratified.
I'm not arguing that people shouldn't use shading languages. They're fantastic. They're the best thing ever to hit the PC graphics marketplace. It's unfortunate that a closed-source, non-free implementation is available before the open-source, free implementation. Companies can move faster than comittees. (Especially when the companies are on the comittees, too.) It's almost as though a bi-law of the OpenGL review board should be that memebers can not publish competing standards. (It's like a conflict of interests.) That would encourage them to play nice with eachother. I don't know, I'm just venting steam.
I have to throw words like "closed standard" around because this is a closed standard. As to throwing around "monopoly", the reason I do it is because nVidia could either play with the proposed open standard, or invent their own closed standard. I'm not saying that they're abusing their monopoly. I'm just saying that they're trying to establish one. There's nothing illegal about having a monopoly - it's illegal to abuse it. Everyone in their right mind wants their company to have a monopoly.
I disagree strongly with your assesment that they are taking "an extremely active role in the development of OpenGL 2.0." Based on that disagreement, you can imagine why I'm frustrated at their behavior. If you are correct, then I agree, they can potentially dramatically improve the OpenGL 2.0 standard. (And I hope they do!) When 2.0 is ratified, we'll see how quickly they come out with an implementation. I hope for everyone's sakes that they do it quickly, and that it's good.
You can ship a proposed standard. People do it all the time. C++ compilers come to mind.
If they're out to "kill Direct3D 9", I'm happy. Granted, they'd only be trying to "kill" the shader language part - but that's fine by me. I just hope, hope, hope, hope, hope that they don't kill OpenGL 2.0 before it's born.
I don't think I'm saying there are conspiracies. And I don't think my standpoint is "absurd." Maybe you disagree with my conclusions, and some of my assumptions - but do you honestly think I'm acting in an "absurd" manner? You think that I'm "manifesting the view that there is no order or value in human life or in the universe"? =)
Yes, I think Microsoft is happy that Cg supports OpenGL. Because I think you'll find that Cg works much better on DirectX than it does on OpenGL 1.4 (which, by the way, has not yet been ratified - which proves my side of the argument, not yours). That's just my guess, but it's what I think will happen. And I think that developers will tend to chose the platform that supports it better. (Other than Carmack, who always seems to chose the standard he thinks is better in the long run.) It's embrace and extend all over again.
Honestly, I wish there was only one shading language : RenderMan Shading Language. Not that it couldn't use some improving, but wouldn't it be cool if you could literally use the exact same code on every platform? Offline renderers, included?
Education is the silver bullet.
For those coders and artists out there who may want to learn more about Cg, these web articles are also worth reading:
Maybe I'm a bit paranoid (I probably fit right in on /.) but when I read news subheadlines like "Nvidia, the dominant PC graphics chip maker, has teamed up with Microsoft and developed a new cross-platform graphic language called Cg that it hopes becomes an industry standard" I don't really feel all warm & fuzzy inside. CG Channel states "NVIDIA's compiler toolkit would be more optimized for their own hardware owing to greater understanding of their own technology. ATI would have the option of writing their own backend compiler to support their hardware more optimally, but the exisiting NVIDIA toolkit should generate working code on ATI's part. [...] NVIDIA are hoping that Cg will be the industry's defacto standard simply due to its time on the market [...]" If NVIDIA can't be reasonably criticized for supporting their own chipset more with optimized code (and leaving it open to others with competing chipsets), can co-developer Microsoft be criticized for favouring their own software in this? Couldn't MS solutions (DirectX, XBox-specific tools, etc) be favoured under Cg merely by them investing more in Cg development and (as one of the two developers controlling the standard) updating compilers and shader functions for their software sooner or more completely than for others? If this was the case, Cg could just end up being another "embrace, extend, etc" scenario, this time in the graphics market to push MS & Nvidia techologies.
Nvidia has been fair to good in their cross-platform support so far, but of course MS has not been. To the relief of many CG Channel reports that "Interestingly, key components of NVIDIA's Cg compiler will be open-sourced and will work on Linux, Mac OS X and Xbox platforms. [...] Compiled code for Direct3D will be cross-platform (well, as cross platform as Microsoft might expect). OpenGL code should work much the same as long as the OpenGL extensions are supported on the target. NVIDIA says it will provide compiler binaries for all of the major platforms." The real proof will be in how Nvidia supports Cg on other platforms and OpenGL over the long term. Will these binaries be released at the same time and with the same feature sets? And will this continue to be the case or will full cross-platform support only exist in the beginning until Cg becomes a de facto standard?
I'm skeptical at this point, since we all know there's a world of difference between being merely compatible and being optimized. There's some evidence so far of how Cg is being implemented. For instance, it looks like there isn't an OpenGL fragment program profile for the Cg toolkit while there is one for Direct3D8. Nvidia says that the reason Cg has for no OpenGL ARB vertex_program extension while there are both dx8ps and dx8vs profiles is that OpenGL is dragging it's heels with the standard, perhaps valid but nonetheless the result is Cg is better implemented under DX8 than the OGL side. While it's theoretically possible to program Cg textureShaders and regcombiners in OpenGL, it's not currently supported. Much of the feature set in Cg looks like that announced so far for OpenGL2 - could nVidia just be trying to repeat OpenGL2 functions using their own identical and properitary Cg extentions instead? Finally, Nvidia announced support for Windows, MacOSX and Linux; the first and last platforms should have native Cg compilers (Linux soon apparently) but what about MacOSX?
How can they be "reinventing the wheel" when their implementation is out before OpenGL 2.0? There are already several real-time shading languages, e.g.n g/t ml
http://graphics.stanford.edu/projects/shadi
http://www.sgi.com/software/shader/overview.h
Trying to create a standard without prototype implementations is fraught with problems (witness CORBA, for example). I suspect that NVIDIA's Cg began as some employee's thesis work and has been in internal development for some time. The proposed GL 2.0 language (proposed by a competitor, I might add) only hit the streets a couple of months ago. Why should NVIDIA drop everything they've been working on simply because 3DLabs thinks they know how to write an API? In case you weren't aware, the ARB didn't come up with the proposal, it came directly from 3DLabs.
You can ship a proposed standard. People do it all the time. C++ compilers come to mind.
Heh. Yeah, and how wonderful is that? I just love putting #pragmas and #ifdefs all though my code. You don't do much cross-platform development, do you? And you can't call anything OpenGL unless you license the name from the ARB.
NVIDIA has a strong investment in OpenGL - I don't know why you believe otherwise. They stand to gain nothing by killing OpenGL 2.0 - without OpenGL, they're not going to be selling 3D cards to Linux or Apple users. AFAIK, NVIDIA was the first vendor to ship OpenGL 1.3 certified drivers. Go to any conference session on advanced OpenGL, and you'll find an NVIDIA employee giving the lecture.
Honestly, I wish there was only one shading language : RenderMan Shading Language.
As elegant as the RM Shading language is, it doesn't map well to current hardware - it would be way too slow, unfortunately. But wait - that's a proprietary API, controlled by a single company. Isn't that what you're upset about? A de facto standard is not a true standard.
I doubt Cg will last more than a few years, at the most - hardware shading is still very, very young, and people are trying out the best way to do it. Personally, I think it's excellent that NVIDIA have put forth a high profile, cross platform, cross API shading language. Glide proved that developers won't accept a solution which locks them into a specific vendor. If NVIDIA is too tight with Cg, it will fade away - and they know that.
"Good people drink good beer"
I think you misunderstand the so-called wheel of reincarnation.
Throughout the history of computing, the rule has been that special-purpose co-processing devices have inevitably been retired in favour of doing the work on the main CPU (e.g. some may remember the days when paging and so forth was handled by a separate chip.)
The thing is that vastly more effort goes into improving the general device than the special-purpose device.
More to the point, the special purpose chips are exactly that: they exist because there are currently some things it is currently cheaper to throw hardware at than to do on the main CPU. While we have seen truly stellar improvements in graphics performance, you should not confuse this with generality. The CPU and the GPU are quite different animals.
The RISC philosophy is to include instructions that do the most work for the least cost, hence MMX and friends. On the other hand, I can't see a GPU generalising into a CPU of any merit.
According to what you said (and I agree with), Cg is an alternate implementation of the shading language component of OpenGL 2.0. In which case, the OTHER components of OpenGL 2.0 will need to be re-implemented with a different API, to be viable with the Cg platform. I stand by this assertion, because I don't think that OpenGL 2.0 and Cg will play nicely with eachother. Cg proclaims to run "on top" of OpenGL 1.4, but I suspect that it will have so many platform specific hooks that the OpenGL 1.4 code it produces will only work on the nVidia platform. OpenGL 1.4 merely allows nVidia to expose the necessary API for them to make Cg work on top of it.
What makes you think there isn't a prototype implementation of OpenGL 2.0?
nVidia had the opportunity, ALL ALONG to drive the development of the next generation of OpenGL so that it could be capable of supporting the features that nVidia wants. I'm pissed off that everyone forgets this fact. They chose not to. They went off in isolation, and developed their own propietary API, which is incompatible with the OpenGL 2.0 specification (the shading language part.) It's not as though OpenGL 2.0 happened all of a sudden, without nVidia's involvement. They had every chance to steer the proposed standard to their liking. Instead, they abandoned the proposals, and they're releasing a closed solution. And you like them for this behavior? This is Microsoft and DirectX all over again.
Would you agree that SGI did a pretty good job in producing OpenGL? I think they did an amazing job. I've also read the OpenGL 2.0 specification. It's just as stunning as the original OpenGL specification. And nVidia had every opportunity to make it work the way that they wanted to, or to make it even better. Don't try to defend their actions as though this is 3dlabs forcing their closed solution on everyone. 3dlabs is playing nice with others, nVidia is not. I suppose it's pointless for us to continue discussing the matter, if you disagree on that simple point.
I do cross-platform development all of the time, thank you. And I happen to do OpenGL things all of the time, as commercial products, and I've never once licensed the name from the ARB. Oh, you meant preparing an OpenGL implementation. So, you're saying that licensing the name from the steering committee is a bad thing? I suppose you think that Microsoft's Java implementation was good, too.
I do not believe that nVidia has a strong investment in OpenGL 2.0. Why would they spend their money twice, and implement Cg? It doesn't make any sense. Why not implement the OpenGL 2.0 shading language, as defined in the proposal, and start shipping it as a provisional implementation? *shrug* I don't blame them for the behavior, and I don't think it's horrible - but I don't like it, and I don't think it's a good thing.
"A de facto standard is not a true standard." So, you don't use Ethernet? Or GIF? PostScript?
Same way as you have to license the OpenGL name, you have to license the RenderMan name. It's the same thing. And I don't disagree with either tactic. I do disagree when one company hopes to control the only implementation.
I hope you're right with your Glide prediction. Then again, DirectX is still shockingly popular. Help me kill DirectX. =)
Education is the silver bullet.
I am convinced that since we see tons of crappy games written by these "professional human coders" with a great grasp of DirectX and OpenGL, this will simply open the floodgates to more poorly implemented games that will just aggravate us even closer to the point of smashing our keyboards through our screens. If we aren't already there.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
nVidia had the opportunity, ALL ALONG to drive the development of the next generation of OpenGL so that it could be capable of supporting the features that nVidia wants.
A lot of key nVidia personnel came from SGI. They know this. They also know that OpenGL's openness, while useful versus other workstation vendors, didn't help them (SGI) combat Microsoft very much, given Microsoft's OS + programming tools monopoly. There's no reason that shoving their key vertex shader technology interfaces into OpenGL would substantially help them sell more units or compete more effectively versus ATI or forestall Microsoft market power. In contrast, getting their interfaces into DirectX potentially helps them sell more units (by lowering the barriers for the largest set of developers using shaders, a key upgrade-driving feature), compete more effectively versus ATI (whose vertex shaders no doubt work a bit differently from nVidia), and forestall Microsoft's market power (since, by offering such technological gems, they can get various concessions on other issues or IP licensing fees from Microsoft).
3Dlabs deserves major kudos for delivering the OpenGL spec. Given that 80+% of their CAD/workstation base predominately uses OpenGL, it makes sense that they'd push programmer interfaces to their IP through OpenGL. And for a similar reason, it makes sense for nVidia to insure interfaces to their hardware are in DirectX. IMHO.
--LP
I've been programming in Pascal for 21 years
No wonder you're bitter.
Wherever there's a will, there's a motorway.
Oh great, so now we can see the BSOD in nice vertex shading and excellent fill rates.
I can see the marketing scheme now...
"We may crash a lot, but by golly, we're working to make it the most fun you've EVER had whilst watching the smoking wreckage of your kernel burn!"
"El Pantalla azul de MUERTE"
-----
"Cogito Eggo Sum: I think, therefore, waffle."
3Dlabs has been totally open with their ideas for OpenGL 2.0 from the start. The first presentation to the ARB was the September ARB meeting last year. Right after that the white papers appeared and were publicly available. Since then they have told the ARB at every meeting what they were thinking OpenGL 2.0 should look like, and have asked for feedback from ARB members, and people like us, developers. They wrote white papers, openly discussed their ideas, took feedback from developers and others and used that to improve the quality of their white papers. They also published a prototype compiler. It is pretty clear that a lot of developers like the direction OpenGL 2.0 is going. BTW, the next ARB meeting is next week, it'll be interesting to see what will happen there. Usually the meeting notes are available on opengl.org a week later. In the mean time nvidia, who is a member of the ARB, listened to all this, and decided to put their formidable resources behind their own competing proposal for a high level shading language. That is just simply lame. Nvidia is part of the OpenGL ARB standard body, but didn't put any effort into helping OpenGL 2.0 along, just decided to do their own thing. That is not behavior that is acceptable as a member of any standard body, including the ARB. If, on the other hand, they had actively worked together with 3Dlabs and the rest of the ARB, imagine how much good that could have done for OpenGL 2.0, and resultingly in what we get to play with. (Before anyone argues that OpenGL 2.0 is more than Cg, that is correct. But let's face it, the key part of the OpenGL 2.0 proposal is the high level shading language.) Cg is exactly what nvidia wants. It compiles to either OpenGL 1.3 / 1.4, or DirectX. Well, what targets do we have for a compiled version of a Cg shader? NV_vertex_program, and hopefully soon ARB_vertex_program (which is pretty close to NV_vertex_program). Guess what, those are invented by nvidia as well. NV_vertex_program does not support loops, function calls, or if statements. So how is a high-level Cg shader that has those constructs going to run on NV_vertex_program? How is a high-level Cg shader going to be run on someone elses hardware, that does have loops or function calls? It is not, since nvidia dictates the compiler, and what target it compiles to. OpenGL 1.3 / 1.4 does not define fragment shading capabilities, other than NV_register_combiner. Yes, another nvidia extension. I hardly would call NV_register_combiner a fragment shader, but I digress. What if an OpenGL fragment shader extension surfaces and gets proposed to the ARB that nvidia doesn't like? How do I get my Cg shader compiled to that new extension? In other words, nvidia effectively dictates the pace of innovation. That is *not* an open standard. Nvidia is afraid of OpenGL 2.0, because it does not fit their hardware roadmap.
I always get annoyed whenever anyone talks about Glide like it's the best 3D API ever made. Claims like this is usually comming from people clinging to their ageing V5 pretending that it's still cutting edge.
In reality it's barely an API at all. It is a set of header files with function declarations that plugs data straight into the HW. It's like calling C64 basics poke and peek functions a machine code api. You have low level access, sure, and thus things are about as fast as they can be, but you have to do EVERYTHING yourself. Glide implementation and hardware was so tightly linked that the one stifled development of the other, holding 3DFX back in the feature department. Even 3DFX said that Glide was on it's way out when the V5 was released because of that fact.
A witty
nVidia may offer ATI the ability to get on board this Cg language, but the reality will be different. What disturbs me is that nVidia's chief scientist went on record as saying that ATI's refusal to implement nVidia's shader technology (they did their own, which some consider superior) amounted to destabilising the industry. No, that would be competing dear chap.
Who exactly will need to use Cg and what market ultimate will use it? I have no doubt that PC game developers (and Xbox) will take a look at it but let's not pretend that this is a solution which embraces other vendors. Of course I'll be glad to eat my hat if ATI and Matrox come out in support of this.
It's not an entirely bad idea but writing regular language compilers for exotic hardware is more than feasible. My company has done exactly this for the PS2's vector units with a C/C++ compiler. Those VLIW co-processors are quite similar to the sort of more generically programmable hardware that you'll see in graphics hardware down the line (combined with shaders of course).
There are some good reasons for using a custom language, better control over the implicit parallelism of multiple shaders/vertices etc. However creating a new language for people to use destroys the notion of recyclable code and introduces yet more platform specific issues. And let me tell you, there's quite enough IF/THEN statements in the graphics engines of PC games as it is. Unless your work is being used by multiple developers, in which case any decent authoring tools for specific hardware may be welcomed.
Anyhow, I'm not entirely negative about nVidia's efforts - it's an interesting stab at a problem we had kind of thought everyone (but us) was ignoring. At the very least it's destined to become a more useful shader authoring tool for PC/Xbox game engine/middle ware developers.
I wonder what ATI and Matrox's approach will be. I wonder if they'd like a regular compiler for their shaders? :)
Take a look at the pixel shader language it ain't that hard really (not if you know what your doing).
All the product seems to do is provide a few functions that would take vertex shader code to write from scratch.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.