NVidia announces Cg: "C" for Graphics

mr_sheel writes: "Thresh's FiringSquad has an article about Cg, a new language developed by NVidia in collaboration with Microsoft. 'Up until now,' Brandon Bell writes, 'game developers have had to use complex assembly language to create the lifelike graphics gamers experience in today's latest games.' Cg eases the process of bringing graphics to the screen and compiles for DirectX 8,9 and OpenGL 1.4. Many companies, including 3D Studio Max, Blizzard, and over 100 game developers, have already jumped onto the Cg bandwagon. Will this replace assembly graphics coding once and for all?"

Comments

Isn't this

[mcspock]

the same as this? http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/06/13/147213 &mode=nested&tid=126

Yes and No

[systemapex]

This is the news release that Slashdot actually gets paid for by Nvidia.

Hey Timothy!

[cp4]

Hey Timothy.... go to your preference page and UNBLOCK all CmdrTaco stories.... this way you can see what he posted and not post it yourself.
I know some of his stories suck but it's for the good of all of us.

You can keep Katz stuff blocked.

Another article

[purepower]

Extreme Tech also has an article about Cg.

Re:No news good news.

[JPriest]

The girl next door?

User Bio:
Active Open Source bi-geek girl who loves boys with ear-rings and enjoys reading Playboy in the train. I play bass in an all girls band and work in the porn movie industry as an amateur actress to pay for my scholarship. Drop me a line sometime...

Next door to whom exactly?

MS Mistrust

[feldsteins]

"...in collaboration with Microsoft..."

I just hope that phrase doesn't mean non-DirectX operating systems (Linux, Mac OS X) aren't about to get the short end of the grahics stick. I can visualize features not being implimented for OpenGL, or worse, support for OpenGL discontinued at some strategic point in the future "because our customers strongly prefer DirectX" [says Microsoft].

Ok maybe I'm paranoid. Maybe this is basically nVidia's baby and MS is only involved a little bit. Let's all hope. Can someone reasure me?

Re:MS Mistrust

[fferreres]

Nvidia = Microsoft since the begining. I can say that because I know them since the NV1 (1995 i think), which I own.

They where virtually killed by 3Dfx many times yet someone kept pumping money from "somewhere" for them. The only change in focus after their failure this: target for Direct3D.

They kept pumping money and money and selling at a loss until they bough 3Dfx. Most other players where dead already (rendition and many others) dead by then. Now they control the market with Microsoft by their side. Microsoft was always against 3Dfx, they direct3D was never "friendly" with 3Dfx cards (though it worked fine, features where really targeted for Nvidia cards).

It's like Nvidia and Microsoft developed direct3D. It's not a coincidence. Microsoft would never enjoy a monopolistic provider in a key market unless they own/control it somehow (and no, you don't need Microsoft puting money directly to own it. There are a thouthand ways to own something in an unnoticed fashion).

Remark: i know Nvidia cards are the best and excelent ones! This has nothing to do with it :) The 3D market history is full of "black holes" which you just can't understand well without some conspiracy.

See what some game developers think

[magic]

At flipcode.com

-m

What Are You Talking About?

[Lethyos]

Will this replace assembly graphics coding once and for all?

What on earth are you talking about? This will be a requirement... ALWAYS. You know why? Because nVidia is only one company. Not everyone conforms to their "standards". This is good especially because they are in bed with Microsoft. They are a conduit for MS to control the graphics market as nVidia are up for sale to the highest bidder.

So, what do you do when you want to strengthen control on a market? You introduce a new language that makes it easier for developers to take advantage of one piece of hardware on your platform!

No, this will NOT replace ASM for driver/graphics engine development. It should be disregarded because there's nothing standard about it. Hopefully, the leaders in the industry will always support chipsets other than nVidia's.

Re:What Are You Talking About?

[liquidsin]

Since Cg is designed specifically for vertex and pixel shader programs, DirectX versions 8 and 9 are supported as well as OpenGL 1.4. The compiler itself is cross platform; in particular programs written for Windows, Linux, Macintosh, and Xbox are supported. And if all that isn't enough, the compiler can create code for all GPUs that support DirectX 8 (or above) and/or OpenGL 1.4, making it very universal. In keeping with Linux tradition, NVIDIA has open-sourced certain components of the compiler, allowing content developers to add their own customizations as well.

Do you even read articles? How did you get modded insightful? Do moderators read articles?

Re:What Are You Talking About?

[fferreres]

Do you even read articles? How did you get modded insightful? Do moderators read articles?

Yes, I think they do read them. There's nothing in the article that contradicts what he says. Actually, Nvidia IS IN BED with Microsoft. 3Dfx was not and got killed. 3DLabs was not and suffered.

If it werent't for Id, i'd say OpenGL will be dead right now and you would not be able to play any 3D games but loading Windows.

Now, all this can sound unsound, but if you really followed what happened in the 3D world since 1995 you will notice it's not a crazy idea.

Microsoft needs the games to run under Windows and XBox, and to NOT run on any other plataform. This is as true as the sky is blue. So the original poster does have a valid point with I'd mod as Insightfull any day.

Why it won't work (link)

[Space Coyote]

There's an interesting editorial at The Register pointing out some of the flaws in Cg, and speculating about NVidia's intention for future development of the language as it relates to their core graphics hardware busines.

From the article:

• No break, continue, goto, switch, case, default. These are useful features that can be used without penalty on other vector processors.
• No pointers. This is Cg's most serious omission. Pointers are necessary for storing scene graphs, so this will quickly become a serious omission for vector processors that can store and process the entire scene or even sections of it.
• No integers. This may be appropriate to NVIDIA, but is not a universal design decision.
• Arrays use float indices. This is an odd design decision, relevant to DirectX 8 and Nvidia only.

It may be possible that NVidia is holding back support for such rudimentary language features until such time as they are supported in their own hardware. I don't think this is a formula for a widely-adopted language at all, and smells a little of 3dfx's efforts with Glide.

Re:Why it won't work (link)

[donglekey]

Whomever wrote that article may understand 3D, but doesn't understand where shaders fit in and the history and experience already here. Pixel and Vertex shaders have been around since the inception of commercial 3D in the form of Renderman surface and displacement shaders. They are small and very modular programs which don't need access to a large amount of information at one time. Thus because of the implied modularity, and the isolation of the calculations relative to the rest of the scene there is no need for OO (I know you didn't mention it, but someone in the FIRST story about this did, and its a good question), and no real need for pointers.

Furthermore because of the very analog nature of what is being descibed, control statements and desicion shortcuts aren't a very big deal. Of course there are if else statements, but they are not used as much as simple and very general algorithms. Hard desicions lead to aliasing, because they rule out a gradual change. Also because of the analog nature of what is being reproduced integers are used very rarely, almost exclusivly for loop counters.

Using float indices for arrays is a kick ass design descision. It allows for smooth and elegant interpolation between discreet values, and I can't stress what a cool idea that is.

In short, the register is wrong, and this IS a formula for a widespread language, because it is copying another very mature widespread language, the Renderman shading language. The only thing I am worried about is that it will be geared towards only Nvidia products, thus competing with OpenGL 2.0 (whenever the vapor settles).

Keep in mind that I am not trying to argue you, but I am trying to argue the register's stance. The designers of Nvidia are very aware of the vast history of Renderman I am sure, and this language looks just fine.

For anyone who wants to get into writing shaders, the book 'Advanced Renderman: Creating CGI for motion pictures' by Anthony Apodaca and Larry Gritz is your bible. it covers everything you need to know and more, and I highly recommend it.

I kan read artical

[Enonu]

Since Cg is designed specifically for vertex and pixel shader programs, DirectX versions 8 and 9 are supported as well as OpenGL 1.4. The compiler itself is cross platform; in particular programs written for Windows, Linux, Macintosh, and Xbox are supported. And if all that isn't enough, the compiler can create code for all GPUs that support DirectX 8 (or above) and/or OpenGL 1.4, making it very universal. In keeping with Linux tradition, NVIDIA has open-sourced certain components of the compiler, allowing content developers to add their own customizations as well.

I wonder what John Carmack thinks of this

[levik]

This looks like a very smart move on NVIDIA's part. Remember GLIDE? Everyone loved it, and it arguably contributed a lot to 3Dfx's success in late 90s. The only problem with GLIDE was that it completely didn't work on any other cards.

Which was fine while the market was 90% Voodoo, but once other players got more or less established, the benefit of easily developing stuff with GLIDE was overshadowed by the loss of a chunk of your target audience, and the developers moved away from it.

Now imagine, if GLIDE worked on all the competitors' cards, but worked just *slightly* worse than on a Voodoo card. Not enough to be unplayable or anything, but worse nontheless. Then, there's a good chance developers would still use GLIDE, and 3Dfx could claim supperiority on all those products.

However "open" Cg will be, NVIDIA will definitely get the edge on any software written with it, if only because they will have had a head start.

I wonder though if this language is at all similar to GLIDE, which they acquired together with 3Dfx. I also wonder what someone who is very good at low-level graphics programming (like John Carmack) thinks of the idea of this language.

Let this be a lesson

[BitHive]

To all of you that complain your submissions never get accepted--just resubmit stories from a few days ago!.

"Same shit, different day."

cgshaders.org and Linux Toolkit

[Screaming Lunatic]

The official community site is at cgshaders.org. There's a Linux Toolkit out now. There's a interview with CEO David Kirk. Along with articles, a shader repository, and forums for help.

Wow!

[be-fan]

I'm impressed. This is the second time this has been posted on /., and people are STILL clueless about what Cg is! Incredible!

Cluestick: Cg is not a language like C/C++. It is not an API like OpenGL/DirectX. Instead, it is a simple, high-level replacement for the assembly language traditionally used to program pixel and vertex shader units on graphics cards. These programs are typically a few dozen instructions long and basically map a small set of inputs to a small set of outputs. So you could write a program to rotate a vertex around a point in Cg, but not something like Quake...

Re:Complex assemly language?

[Milalwi]

Please grab a clue, high performance 3d graphics aren't done in assember. Its done in C with OpenGL calls. The OGL calls are quite high level, nothing as simple as 'put a point at x,y on the screen'. Why do I know? Because I know OpenGL perhaps?

Perhaps you should look at this before you comment further?

"Writing code for existing Pixel and Vertex Shaders is akin to writing assembly code. Eventually it'll work but it's a laborious, low-level exercise with almost no comprehensibility if someone else works on the code."

Maybe you "know" OpenGL, but have you ever written a pixel or vertex shader?

Milalwi

OpenGL 2.0 Shader Language

[RoninM]

Cg looked awfully familiar to me (and not just because we had this article, before). You might want to compare it to the OpenGL 2.0 Shader Language defined here (PDF) and implemented here.

All of this leaves me a little bit confused. I'm not sure why we need two (or, perhaps, more) C-based shader languages, at least one of which (Cg) is hardware-specific, but API neutral.

Re:Float for array indices?

[WNight]

I doubt it's for interpolation. It's easy to average two numbers and pick the midpoint but proper interpolation is a *very* complex subject. To get really good interpolation you need to graph both sides of the data set and extrapolate over the area you're interested in, from both sides. Then where (if) those meet, that's the new value. The farther away you graph from, the smoother the interpolated area.

This is something it might be nice to have a function to do, but if this was done on every array access it's going to be hella-slow.

Not to mention, sometimes you store arrays of things you don't want interpolated. You could interpolate between shades in a pallette, but perhaps you're holding three colors in an array for three effects. Effect one (blood) is red, effect two (slime) is green, etc... If you use floats for integers either you round them to get ints, or you have something that's never exact. So in this case you'd have 1.000003, for instance, and it'd interpolate between the red and green, even though you didn't want that behaviour.

So, for the reason that automatic interpolation between array values is hard to do, and hard to do in a way that you'd want, I don't think they're doing it.

Most likely they're dealing in floats simply because they've got hardware that can deal with floats very quickly, and they trunc or round to get the desired value when using them in an integer context.

Re:This wouldn't happen...

[johnathan]

Full-text queries can only be done on four or more letter words.

You're just making that up, jackass. There is no limit to how short the text is that you query for.

Not so, it turns out. From that very page:

MySQL uses a very simple parser to split text into words. A ``word'' is any sequence of characters consisting of letters, numbers, `'', and `_'. Any ``word'' that is present in the stopword list or is just too short (3 characters or less) is ignored.

BSOD refresh rates

[theMightyE]

With Microsoft involved we will still get the Blue Screen of Death, only now it'll be anti-aliased, vertex shaded, and happen at 400+ fps.

Re:No news good news.

[pinkpineapple]

Geez! You got + karma out for just posting my bio and asking a quest on my sig.

That's total copyright infrigement. ;-))

PPA, the girl next door.