This is a real pity - if someone could get these apps working in Opera, there would be one seriously killer use for them... mobile computing. Opera and Minimo should boast full support for the protocols used in the very near future.
Yes, mobile internet connections are somewhat sucky at the moment, but we have wi-fi in a lot of palmtops, and even at dialup speeds, some of these applications could work very well.
I wholeheartedly agree with a lot of other posters that we have hugely powerful PCs for a reason. Handhelds and mobile phones, however, aren't nearly as robust, and the idea of an entirely web-based handheld whose applications all run elsewhere is tempting, especially for those in industries such as retail. Perhaps this is where these applications will really find a home?
Doom 3 does to an extent. One of the various quotes I've seen bandied about on the web is that the sound engine (which is entirely software-based) runs in a separate thread... The specific quote I've seen was related to the difficulty id had with thread-synchronisation for the sound and main threads.
So, yeah, it supports SMP. But as the sound engine takes a few percent of the overall CPU time, it's not going to do a whole lot.
To my knowledge, all you'd have to do in order to use a longer shader is to break it down into separate passes. What the nVIDIA card does well, is extremely long pixel-shaders in once pass (1024 vs. 255 instructions, I think?), and also insanely long vertex shaders in one pass (1024x64 loops vs. 255x1 loop).
If you do more passes, as I understand it you have to upload all the scene geometry again, which is stressful on bus bandwidth and wasteful of processing resources.
Of course, it's entirely possible I'm misinterpreting everything, and I apologise in advance if that's the case.
The problem is, the funky lighting needs DOT3 bump-mapping, which was introduced with the GeForce line of cards. This is the same reason that Doom3 will need a GeForce or better... Hope that helps!
Slashdot Mirror
Great. Here comes another Sims expansion pack. Can't you stop giving these people ideas?
This is a real pity - if someone could get these apps working in Opera, there would be one seriously killer use for them... mobile computing. Opera and Minimo should boast full support for the protocols used in the very near future.
Yes, mobile internet connections are somewhat sucky at the moment, but we have wi-fi in a lot of palmtops, and even at dialup speeds, some of these applications could work very well.
I wholeheartedly agree with a lot of other posters that we have hugely powerful PCs for a reason. Handhelds and mobile phones, however, aren't nearly as robust, and the idea of an entirely web-based handheld whose applications all run elsewhere is tempting, especially for those in industries such as retail. Perhaps this is where these applications will really find a home?
Doom 3 does to an extent. One of the various quotes I've seen bandied about on the web is that the sound engine (which is entirely software-based) runs in a separate thread... The specific quote I've seen was related to the difficulty id had with thread-synchronisation for the sound and main threads.
So, yeah, it supports SMP. But as the sound engine takes a few percent of the overall CPU time, it's not going to do a whole lot.
To my knowledge, all you'd have to do in order to use a longer shader is to break it down into separate passes. What the nVIDIA card does well, is extremely long pixel-shaders in once pass (1024 vs. 255 instructions, I think?), and also insanely long vertex shaders in one pass (1024x64 loops vs. 255x1 loop).
If you do more passes, as I understand it you have to upload all the scene geometry again, which is stressful on bus bandwidth and wasteful of processing resources.
Of course, it's entirely possible I'm misinterpreting everything, and I apologise in advance if that's the case.
The problem is, the funky lighting needs DOT3 bump-mapping, which was introduced with the GeForce line of cards. This is the same reason that Doom3 will need a GeForce or better... Hope that helps!