Unreal Tournament 2K3 Gets Software Renderer

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing out that the official Unreal Technology page has been updated with a software renderer for Unreal Tournament 2K3. This is an interesting step for those gamers with fast CPUs but inadequate 3D cards. The Pixomatic technology powering it was co-developed by Michael Abrash, John Carmack's right-hand man during the development of Quake, and a famous programmer and writer (at Microsoft and elsewhere) way before then.

Comments

Huh?

[RaboKrabekian]

Who has a fast enough CPU to run this game, but *doesn't* have any kind of 3d accelerated video card. That kind of userbase must be incredibly small. I'm struggling to come up with any kind of user who would want to play this that wouldn't have at LEAST a TNT2 or GeForce. And a GeForce2 can be had for what, $20? Less than the price of the game. Please tell me who this is for.

Of course maybe there's a more important reason for the software renderer, but I'm not going to read the article for fear of being proven wrong.

Re:Huh?

[questionlp]

Where this could come into play are corporate desktops that have 2+ GHz P4 or Celeron's using Intel's Extreme Graphics integrated video (which is a wee bit better than the poor i740/i81x stuff).

Also, look at some of the eMachines and el cheapo systems that have decent processors (1.6+ GHz is fast in most cases) but use integrated graphic too.

Re:Huh?

[TimeTrip]

Maybe for people with pretty powerful laptops, but with a horrible graphics chip. Obviously they're not going to be able to get even basic 640x480 OpenGL quality.. but they at least be able to play it.... hopefully?

Re:Huh?

[darkov]

UT2k3 is not a game for the 'casual' game.

Well that's how I play it. You don't have too play it like you're a sad geek with no life but practising your UT. For some people (like me) who get lousy pings, there isn't much choice. It doesn't matter how quick you are with a 300ms delay before your shot is registered. You can play defensive or with a bit of strategy to make up for it. It's actually lots of fun frustrating dextrous kiddies who know where all the powerups are (and who cheat) with a bit of stategy. The BR patterns are best for this.

Re:Huh?

[Gadzinka]

And a GeForce2 can be had for what, $20? Less than the price of the game. Please tell me who this is for.

For anyone who has video card, not the game card.

My matrox g450 has perfect picture quality in 1600x1200@70Hz, very good Backend Scaller for video and very poor performance in 3D. While it can't compete in 3d speed even with TNT2 it's got better picture quality than several times more expensive GF cards.

If you spend 10+ hrs a day in front of the monitor you do care more about picture quality than 3D speed.

Robert

PS. ATI has much better picture quality than nvidia, but still loses with Matrox.

pixomatic?

[joFFeman]

buzzwords are fun. does it also have BLAST PROCESSING?

Useful for conservation

[WolfWithoutAClause]

In 15 years time, who will have a GeForce card of the right vintage anyway?

A software renderer means that the software will still run, whereas the hardware we have right now will be gone.

Good for my laptop

[Smack]

Despite the claims this has no use, my work laptop has a nice fast Pentium 3 in it, and a crap vidcard. I'm sure I'm not alone.

Good for benchmarks...

[Joseph Wharton]

I'd really like to see an Athlon XP 3200+ go up against a Pentium 4 3.06GHz in software rendering. Usually, when a new proc comes out, everyone benchmarks it combined with a top-of-the-line video card. I've never seen the point of that. Why not use a software renderer to see how truly fast the CPU is?

What's far more exciting to me

[rhakka]

is that the UTV client will be done in a couple of weeks allowing virtually unlimited spectation of matches with only one "cameraman" in the server.

also Epic has said the next patch will break network compatibility with older servers/clients, but will also reduce client bandwidth requirements by 40% and server CPU utilization by as much as 50%... pretty crazy if true. Interesting they would break network compatability given that they are releasing the next iteration (UT2004) this fall, but if we get those kinds of benefits it would be well worth it. Good servers are in short supply unfortunately, in part because of their high requirements.

The Epic boys have been quite busy. I have to say I was extremely dissapointed with the buggy nature of UT2003 at release, but they have truly gone above and beyond the call of duty with these mega beefy patches and free content and extras like software rendering for example. Hopefully the 2004 release (backwards compatible with 2003 servers) will reinvigorate the online community for this franchise...

Why not Mesa?

[SeanAhern]

Considering that ID likes using OpenGL, I'm a bit surprised they aren't using Mesa, a free implementation of the OpenGL pipeline in software. Everyone who has XFree86 has it on their machine. It's reasonably fast, and gives you flexibility on platforms that either have no 3D accelerator, or have a much faster CPU.

The only reasons I could think of that they'd want to write their own would be:

• They wanted to optimize for the only the operations they use. Their renderer performs no lighting calculations, for instance.
• They can optimize for a specific operating system and processor. They use MMX instructions, for instance.

But that's about all I can come up with. And the compiler should optimize things for a given processor.

Anyone have any other ideas why they decided not to go with Mesa?

Re:Why not Mesa?

[netfunk]

Mesa is not anywhere near "reasonably fast" without hardware support. Software Mesa renders a frame every few seconds. Pixomatic can get 70 to 100 fps in many scenes. Then again, Mesa is meant to be a correct OpenGL implementation, whereas Pixomatic is concerned with speed over quality (and isn't an OpenGL API at all).

--ryan.

Re:Why not Mesa?

[idries]

They didn't write their own. Pixomatic is a commercial product from RAD (the makers of BINK and MILES) http://www.radgametools.com/pixomain.htm.

The reasons for going with a commercial product aimed specifically at games, rather than an open source (or whatever Mesa is licensed as - I think it's MIT or similar) more generic software renderer should be obvious.

>And the compiler should optimize things for a given processor.

1. Certain compilers (Intel for example) will allow you to use MMX, SSE and SSE2 compiler intrinsics without going to asm.
   
2. Doing it by hand will still beat the compiler (although the gap is always closing). If you get the Quake source from id, you can see Mr. Abrash's real-life demonstration of this. The hand-optimised asm runs faster (only a couple of frames, but still noticeable) than the compiled optimised C version even today (on processors that didn't exist when the asm was written with very different performance profiles). I didn't know that he was involved in the pixomatic thing, it's nice to see that he's still putting all those asm skills to good use :)
   

Re:this is retarded =/

[Mikey-San]

50 FPS is bad somehow? You're a liar if you say that 50 FPS is either unplayable or noticeably flicker- or stutter-ridden. This is terrible FPS? (Five, yeah, but anything over 30 or 40 isn't unplayable, and 50 is definitely playable.)

Go back to your bridge, troll.

PCs without AGP slots

[vogel]

Most cheap PCs available at Dell or BestBuy come without an AGP slot and with Intel integrated graphics though have extremely powerful CPUs. The software renderer is aimed for folks with those machines.

-- Daniel, Epic Games Inc.