The issue here is not at all about what matters perceptually for playing Quake.
The issue is that Quake is commonly used to benchmark a 3D card's performance, and this benchmarking is often done at different quality settings to see how each card's performance scales as quality settings change.
By forcing a reduced texture quality in the driver, results of this kind of benchmark become meaningless. The cards are performing different tasks, and thus their performance is not comparable.
However, ATI did not advertise this fact (for obvious reasons) and thus any benchmarks that compare Radeon 8500 performance to another card at Quake 3's high settings are not indicative of the relative performance.
Optimizing your card/drivers for the popular drawing method is the natural thing to do. Even optimizing for the way a specific benchmark draws is fine.
The problem here is that it appears ATI has gained performance by reducing the image quality -- forcing a reduced texture resolution specifically in Quake 3. Compare the screenshots shown on the site. This means comparing their benchmark scores on Quake 3 with other cards is meaningless -- their card isn't performing the same task. This was a bad decision on ATI's part.
The point is, there are lots of tools out there for development and it's wisest to use those that work best for you/your project.
Maybe you really like CLIs, so you prefer and are more productive with those kinds of tools. On the other hand, you may prefer GUIs and be more productive that way. I (and I think many people) prefer a mix.
I do most of my development (C code) in Visual Studio (even for platforms other than Windows), because I am more productive in that environment than the other things I've tried, like traditional UNIX dev environments.
However, a significant portion of my build process is perl script, because it makes some things easier. I also use command-line CVS for source control because I like it.
Just use what is best for you. Arguments about whether CLIs are better than GUIs and whatnot are juvenile and miss the point.
... First, a "get started quick" thing. Download this into your quake directory, unzip it, and run nprquake.exe. When the game comes up, bring down the console and type: "r_load sketch" without the quotes. Also try "r_load bprint" and "r_load brush". To go back to the default, do "r_load dr_default"....
Check out the stuff I did following NPRQuake here. This stuff allows you to stylize OpenGL programs non-invasively. At the conference, I did a live demo of a (much improved) sketchy renderer on the Q3A Demo.
NPRQuake was done a year ago by Chris Herrman, Andy Gardner, Steve Dutcher, Erik Bakke, and me.
We aren't working on it any more -- we've all pretty much moved on. Although it did lead to some research presented at I3D this year. You can see some of that here.
Sorry for it being Windows only, but since we only had like two weeks to do the project, it was pretty much just hack hack hack. And since my Linux box doesn't have a 3D accelerator...
It wouldn't be too hard to port -- mostly just exchanging the DLL code for shared library stuff. Although the code is rather unsightly.
There are a lot of things that could be vastly improved. Silhouette edges, for instance--even a naive method would be fast enough. Also, transforming geometry to screen space and drawing there would help various things.
I think it would be great if someone wanted to pick it up and apply it to some real mod with a rendering style focused on that mod. For example, do a comic-book style for some comic-based mod, or a traditional toon-style for some "cartoony" mod.
Well, I've done painting, drawing, theater, played several intstruments, sung, written songs, written poetry and prose, but I've never found an art more beautiful (or expressive) than computer programming. That's why I love to do it every day, and most of it I do (the non-homework stuff) is simply for the love of it.
To me, art is working within a set of constraints (the medium) to express a thought, idea, or emotion, or to solve a problem. With painting, the constraints are your paint, brushes, and canvas. With drawing, it's your pencils and paper. With haiku, it's words and the 5-7-5 pattern (truly one of the most constrained, yet expressive art forms). With computer programming, it's the machine's instruction set, and the capabilities of the peripherals (yes, OS constraints, memory constraints, and other things too..). It's constraining, yes, but also quite liberating. It's the most interactive medium I've found.
Many people who are programmers don't take programming this way, but I really think it can be thought about in this manner, and makes sense to.
Slashdot Mirror
The issue here is not at all about what matters perceptually for playing Quake.
The issue is that Quake is commonly used to benchmark a 3D card's performance, and this benchmarking is often done at different quality settings to see how each card's performance scales as quality settings change.
By forcing a reduced texture quality in the driver, results of this kind of benchmark become meaningless. The cards are performing different tasks, and thus their performance is not comparable.
However, ATI did not advertise this fact (for obvious reasons) and thus any benchmarks that compare Radeon 8500 performance to another card at Quake 3's high settings are not indicative of the relative performance.
Alex Mohr
Optimizing your card/drivers for the popular drawing method is the natural thing to do. Even optimizing for the way a specific benchmark draws is fine.
The problem here is that it appears ATI has gained performance by reducing the image quality -- forcing a reduced texture resolution specifically in Quake 3. Compare the screenshots shown on the site. This means comparing their benchmark scores on Quake 3 with other cards is meaningless -- their card isn't performing the same task. This was a bad decision on ATI's part.
Alex Mohr
The point is, there are lots of tools out there for development and it's wisest to use those that work best for you/your project.
Maybe you really like CLIs, so you prefer and are more productive with those kinds of tools. On the other hand, you may prefer GUIs and be more productive that way. I (and I think many people) prefer a mix.
I do most of my development (C code) in Visual Studio (even for platforms other than Windows), because I am more productive in that environment than the other things I've tried, like traditional UNIX dev environments.
However, a significant portion of my build process is perl script, because it makes some things easier. I also use command-line CVS for source control because I like it.
Just use what is best for you. Arguments about whether CLIs are better than GUIs and whatnot are juvenile and miss the point.
From http://www.cs.wisc.edu/graphics/Gallery/NPRQuake/
...
... First, a "get started quick" thing. Download this into your quake directory, unzip it, and run nprquake.exe. When the game comes up, bring down the console and type: "r_load sketch" without the quotes. Also try "r_load bprint" and "r_load brush". To go back to the default, do "r_load dr_default".
Alex Mohr
Actually, you can. :)
Check out the stuff I did following NPRQuake here. This stuff allows you to stylize OpenGL programs non-invasively. At the conference, I did a live demo of a (much improved) sketchy renderer on the Q3A Demo.
Alex Mohr
...seems to be broken. Here is the real thing on GameSpyDaily:
= 1795
http://www.gamespydaily.com/news/fullstory.asp?id
Alex Mohr
NPRQuake was done a year ago by Chris Herrman, Andy Gardner, Steve Dutcher, Erik Bakke, and me.
We aren't working on it any more -- we've all pretty much moved on. Although it did lead to some research presented at I3D this year. You can see some of that here.
Sorry for it being Windows only, but since we only had like two weeks to do the project, it was pretty much just hack hack hack. And since my Linux box doesn't have a 3D accelerator...
It wouldn't be too hard to port -- mostly just exchanging the DLL code for shared library stuff. Although the code is rather unsightly.
There are a lot of things that could be vastly improved. Silhouette edges, for instance--even a naive method would be fast enough. Also, transforming geometry to screen space and drawing there would help various things.
I think it would be great if someone wanted to pick it up and apply it to some real mod with a rendering style focused on that mod. For example, do a comic-book style for some comic-based mod, or a traditional toon-style for some "cartoony" mod.
Alex Mohr
Well, I've done painting, drawing, theater, played several intstruments, sung, written songs, written poetry and prose, but I've never found an art more beautiful (or expressive) than computer programming. That's why I love to do it every day, and most of it I do (the non-homework stuff) is simply for the love of it.
To me, art is working within a set of constraints (the medium) to express a thought, idea, or emotion, or to solve a problem. With painting, the constraints are your paint, brushes, and canvas. With drawing, it's your pencils and paper. With haiku, it's words and the 5-7-5 pattern (truly one of the most constrained, yet expressive art forms). With computer programming, it's the machine's instruction set, and the capabilities of the peripherals (yes, OS constraints, memory constraints, and other things too..). It's constraining, yes, but also quite liberating. It's the most interactive medium I've found.
Many people who are programmers don't take programming this way, but I really think it can be thought about in this manner, and makes sense to.
-Alex