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NVIDIA's Lead Scientist Interviewed

Posted by Zonk on from the he-makes-shiny-things dept.

rtt writes "bit-tech.net has up an interview with NVIDIA's chief scientist, David Kirk, about the PlayStation 3, next-generation architectures and what to expect in PC gaming. From the article: 'We're going to see the next generation of shader-based games. At the first generation, we saw people using a shader to emulate the hardware pipeline, and finding "Hey - this really is programmable". After that, they tried to do a few things with more lights, using perhaps eight instead of ten. Then they started to write material shaders, and they made great cloth and metal effects that we saw. People are now starting to change the lighting model, and are exploring the things that they can do with that.'"

9 of 222 comments (clear)

  1. Ha ha, lights. by robyannetta · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Who cares how many lights the chipsets can emulate when the games themselves still suck?

    --
    - Just my $0.02, take with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
    1. Re:Ha ha, lights. by paulsgre · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The worst part is that rendering 10 lights instead of two means five programmers instead of one. Rising costs of development and demand for more glorified tech demos is demeaning the art form, and preventing widespread recognition as such. The potential creative geniuses of our time will be turned off games as a medium, or the next Stravinsky may end up coding 5 more shaders for the reflection in a visor instead of writing the algorithm that rocks the interactive world like the next "Rite of Spring"

    2. Re:Ha ha, lights. by Hythlodaeus · · Score: 4, Funny

      There are FOUR lights!

      --
      For great justice.
  2. holy-bad-at-math-batman by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    "After that, they tried to do a few things with more lights, using perhaps eight instead of ten. "

    I wish I had more money. Like 50 bucks instead of 100 bucks.

  3. Re:opinion? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Doom3 is not a game. It's a slightly interactive lighting simulator.

  4. Something is missing. . . by Zobeid · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Here's the most important word that didn't appear anywhere in that article: OpenGL

  5. Re:Scientist? by i7dude · · Score: 4, Insightful

    among other things, designing next generation graphics cards is a serious exercise in computer architecture, vlsi design, and algorithm development; these people arent just system integrators or product engineers...next generation stuff has to come from somewhere other than a reference design...these people are absolutely scientists.

    you dont need a beaker and a lab coat to be considered a scientist.

    dude.

  6. Re:The issue of power consumption by Chirs · · Score: 4, Informative

    Actually, they already are considering it. The 7800GTX has 50% more transistors than the 6800 Ultra, but runs cooler.

    Basically they're shutting off portions of the chip when not in use to cut down on power consumption.

    This is mentioned briefly at http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2005/07/07/g70_clock_ speed/
    and also at http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=Nzg0LDI=

  7. Re:So what does this mean? by Azarael · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It isn't nVidia's job to make games more entertaining or 'GOOD'. That is more the developer's job and I don't see why so many posters are ignoring this fact.