One thing you didn't mention is that the PowerVR2 chip in Dreamcast (CLX) can do the translucency sorting on a per pixel basis for you, simply because it is a tile based rendering system. I don't think there are any other systems (at least in mass production) that can.
This feature was not included in the Kyro/Series3 simply because the market it competes in is full of systems that can't possibly do this sorting, and so all the PC games have to fall back on Painter's algorithm (aka Newell, Newell and Sancha's algorithm) for the transluncy sorting anyway.
As for the translucency- it's not that much of an issue because the majority of the image is made up of opaque objects. Besides, a tile based renderer still gets an advantage for the visible translucent polygons because all the blending is performed "on chip", which saves a considerable amount of framebuffer bandwidth. (Hidden translucent objects are clearly free).
Slashdot Mirror
Correct:
Sega's Naomi 2 system uses 2 rendering chips (PowerVR CLXs) along with a T&L unit (Elan) that offloads a lot of work from the SH4 CPU. Simon
One thing you didn't mention is that the PowerVR2 chip in Dreamcast (CLX) can do the translucency sorting on a per pixel basis for you, simply because it is a tile based rendering system. I don't think there are any other systems (at least in mass production) that can.
This feature was not included in the Kyro/Series3 simply because the market it competes in is full of systems that can't possibly do this sorting, and so all the PC games have to fall back on Painter's algorithm (aka Newell, Newell and Sancha's algorithm) for the transluncy sorting anyway.
As for the translucency- it's not that much of an issue because the majority of the image is made up of opaque objects. Besides, a tile based renderer still gets an advantage for the visible translucent polygons because all the blending is performed "on chip", which saves a considerable amount of framebuffer bandwidth. (Hidden translucent objects are clearly free).
Simon Fenney
Gosh, and I thought OASIS was some software for re-issuing the Beatles music as "new" tracks.
But the price is not 2 grand. It is considerably higher.
Simon
How the hell is this going to work?
a) Most users probably don't even know that they have a browser cache.
b) Since disabling the cache would be a complete PITA, how does the browser distinguish between copyright and freely distributable information?
Ridiculous.
Simon