You're right, no consumer level cards can pump 60MPolys, which was part of my point. However, 6MPolys is well within reach. The Voodoo2 can render 8MPolys, I believe, and the new generation including the TNT2 can push around 12.
Nope. I just glanced over Apple's site, found quite a few expo talks and white papers. AltiVec, like MMX, 3DNow!, and SSE, is an instruction set extension and needs to be programmed/optimized for.
Really now, why would they have given a uber-FPU a special name? It would have been far more straightforward and effective to say, "our FPU is really f***ing fast all by itself! you don't need to code in some obscure ISA extension!" Like I said, seeing through the hype is an art. Things with names and campaigns behind them are rarely simple.
(posting from lynx, text field length limit) ...pointless. True, 3DNow! did allow the K6-2 to *match* the gaming performance of the PII in many cases, but so would have designing that chip with a pipelined FPU (a move that would have improved more than just gaming performance). Note the K7, sporting a 3 fully pipelined FPUs (more than the PPro/2/3), that, when code is properly compiled for it, surges out 30%+ ahead of the P6 core *at the same MHz*. Assuming Intel follows their lead and redesigns their FPU, then 3DNow! and SSE will go to the marketing graveyard along with MMX: used, but never really appreciated. It's not too hard to see that AltiVec will suffer the same fate, unless perhaps Apple's uber-marketroids pull out all the stops...
But anyway, I've rambled on far too long about multimedia processor extensions, only to show that the author was your average everyday idiot who believes all the marketing. In fact, after reading 2.5 years of Computer Shopper, I'd be inclined to say the same about EVERY Ziff Davis author. There was one CShopper columnist, I believe his name was Eric Grevstadt, who "got it". He wrote about how we don't really need $3,000 desktops and $5,000 laptops to run Word and Excel, how "upgradability" is a phantom feature, since most users never upgrade and upgrading is usually less economical than buying a new PC (for mainstream users, anyway). Knowing that, it's not too hard to understand why Computer Shopper, a publication that thrives on advertisements from vendors selling overpriced, overpowered PCs, didn't like him and gave him the axe. Ziff Davis is in bed with MS, Intel, Dell (et al.), plus any number of other big players in the Wintel PC industry, and they have a vested interest in keeping computing expensive, de-empowering, and deceptive to the unwitting user. Despite the fact that they compete with the Wintel complex, Apple is guilty of this too. Their blatantly false adverts about how the original 233MHz iMac was "faster than Intel's fastest PII" (at the time, 400MHz), et cetera are just as bad as any of Intel's P2/3 commercials, which claim everything from "our CPUs let you do all these neat things that the other guy can't" to "the PIII makes the 'net go faster". As a friend of mine adamantly maintains, Disney is one of the 4 horsemen of the Apocalypse (MS is another, I forget the other 2), and them gaining another foothold into our lives by acquiring Apple would be a Bad Thing.
But hey, that's just the great whirlwind that is modern computing. If I said "I wouldn't have it any other way", I'd be lying, but I have come to half-accept it. But the important thing is to understand it, to see through the hype, FUD, and half-truths is more and art than a skill.
Yeah, we've all heard this before. Apple is going to die/be purchased by [company]/whatever. Much as I hate to admit it, Apple is probably going to be around in its current guise for quite some time. Maybe once MacOS X becomes standard, I can stop thinking of the iMacs and new G3s et al. as an unmitigated plague upon the face of computing.
But more importantly, whatever foo at ZD wrote this thing is just that, a total fool. He slings buzzwords like "digital video" and "MP3 audio" in an attempt to bolster his bogus speculation. He reveals himself to be under total control of the marketroids as well, with statements such as "how does 60 million polygons a second hit you?". 60Mpolys *is* fast. But I'd wager that if he'd said 6Mpolys instead, his readers would have been just as impressed, despite the fact that every commodity 3D card can push that many polygons. He also seems convinced that AltiVec is somehow relevant. What was that big new thing that Intel was hyping that was supposed to change the way we computed, bringing multimedia pizzaz into everyday tasks and accelerating gaming into the next century? Oh yeah, MMX. And we all know how MMX played out: some games use it, mostly to speed up sound playing and some other mundane tasks, but it had none of the big impact Intel predicted. Moving on, 3DNow! from AMD and Intel's analogous extensions, SSE, are and will continue to be nearly...
At the moment, you cannot benefit from 3Dfx acceleration in Blender or any other app that uses in-window OpenGL rendering.
Reasons for this: 1. 3Dfx Voodoo and Voodoo2 chips cannot render into a window. This is a *hardware limitation* and cannot be circumvented. There is the "mesa window hack" which copies the 3Dfx frame buffer into the X frame buffer, which is slower than pure hardware but faster than pure software. However, myself and others have been 100% UNsucessful in getting this to work with Blender.
2. 3Dfx hardware, including the upcoming Voodoo3, use 16-bit Z buffers. Blender needs 24 bits. It remains to be seen if this problem can be worked around, due to #1 above.
We probably will be using jpeg and gif for quite a while. I remember the first time I heard about png, it was supposed to be this revolutionary format that would be used on the web and everywhere. And now where is png? Well, it's gnome's preferred gfx format, if that counts for anything:)
the first is a snippet from the printed manual that has just enought info to get you started, the second is the Blender news server, where you can ask for little bits of help while your manual ships:)
those two together should give you enough of a taste of Blender to allow to to decide whether the ~$60 manual is worth it (it is!)
Slashdot Mirror
You're right, no consumer level cards can pump 60MPolys, which was part of my point. However, 6MPolys is well within reach. The Voodoo2 can render 8MPolys, I believe, and the new generation including the TNT2 can push around 12.
MoNsTeR
Nope. I just glanced over Apple's site, found quite a few expo talks and white papers. AltiVec, like MMX, 3DNow!, and SSE, is an instruction set extension and needs to be programmed/optimized for.
Really now, why would they have given a uber-FPU a special name? It would have been far more straightforward and effective to say, "our FPU is really f***ing fast all by itself! you don't need to code in some obscure ISA extension!" Like I said, seeing through the hype is an art. Things with names and campaigns behind them are rarely simple.
MoNsTeR
(posting from lynx, text field length limit)
...pointless. True, 3DNow! did allow the K6-2 to *match* the gaming performance of the PII in many cases, but so would have designing that chip with a pipelined FPU (a move that would have improved more than just gaming performance). Note the K7, sporting a 3 fully pipelined FPUs (more than the PPro/2/3), that, when code is properly compiled for it, surges out 30%+ ahead of the P6 core *at the same MHz*. Assuming Intel follows their lead and redesigns their FPU, then 3DNow! and SSE will go to the marketing graveyard along with MMX: used, but never really appreciated. It's not too hard to see that AltiVec will suffer the same fate, unless perhaps Apple's uber-marketroids pull out all the stops...
But anyway, I've rambled on far too long about multimedia processor extensions, only to show that the author was your average everyday idiot who believes all the marketing. In fact, after reading 2.5 years of Computer Shopper, I'd be inclined to say the same about EVERY Ziff Davis author. There was one CShopper columnist, I believe his name was Eric Grevstadt, who "got it". He wrote about how we don't really need $3,000 desktops and $5,000 laptops to run Word and Excel, how "upgradability" is a phantom feature, since most users never upgrade and upgrading is usually less economical than buying a new PC (for mainstream users, anyway). Knowing that, it's not too hard to understand why Computer Shopper, a publication that thrives on advertisements from vendors selling overpriced, overpowered PCs, didn't like him and gave him the axe. Ziff Davis is in bed with MS, Intel, Dell (et al.), plus any number of other big players in the Wintel PC industry, and they have a vested interest in keeping computing
expensive, de-empowering, and deceptive to the unwitting user. Despite the fact that they compete with the Wintel complex, Apple is guilty of this too. Their blatantly false adverts about how the original 233MHz iMac was "faster than Intel's fastest PII" (at the time, 400MHz), et cetera are just as bad as any of Intel's P2/3 commercials, which claim everything from "our CPUs let you do all these neat things that the other guy can't" to "the PIII makes the 'net go faster". As a friend of mine adamantly maintains, Disney is one of the 4 horsemen of the Apocalypse (MS is another, I forget the other 2), and them gaining another foothold into our lives by acquiring Apple would be a Bad Thing.
But hey, that's just the great whirlwind that is modern computing. If I said "I wouldn't have it any other way", I'd be lying, but I have come to half-accept it. But the important thing is to understand it, to see through the hype, FUD, and half-truths is more and art than a skill.
Happy computing.
MoNsTeR
Yeah, we've all heard this before. Apple is going
to die/be purchased by [company]/whatever. Much
as I hate to admit it, Apple is probably going to
be around in its current guise for quite some time.
Maybe once MacOS X becomes standard, I can stop
thinking of the iMacs and new G3s et al. as an
unmitigated plague upon the face of computing.
But more importantly, whatever foo at ZD wrote this
thing is just that, a total fool. He slings buzzwords like "digital video" and "MP3 audio" in an attempt to bolster his bogus speculation. He reveals himself to be under total control of the marketroids as well, with statements such as "how does 60 million polygons a second hit you?". 60Mpolys *is* fast. But I'd wager that if he'd said 6Mpolys instead, his readers would have been just as impressed, despite the fact that every commodity 3D card can push that many polygons. He also seems convinced that AltiVec is somehow relevant. What was that big new thing that Intel was hyping that was supposed to change the way we computed, bringing multimedia pizzaz into everyday tasks and accelerating gaming into the next century? Oh yeah, MMX. And we all know how MMX played out: some games use it, mostly to speed up sound playing and some other mundane tasks, but it had none of the big impact Intel predicted. Moving on, 3DNow! from AMD and Intel's analogous extensions, SSE, are and will continue to be nearly...
At the moment, you cannot benefit from 3Dfx acceleration in Blender or any other app that uses in-window OpenGL rendering.
Reasons for this:
1. 3Dfx Voodoo and Voodoo2 chips cannot render into a window. This is a *hardware limitation* and cannot be circumvented. There is the "mesa window hack" which copies the 3Dfx frame buffer into the X frame buffer, which is slower than pure hardware but faster than pure software. However, myself and others have been 100% UNsucessful in getting this to work with Blender.
2. 3Dfx hardware, including the upcoming Voodoo3, use 16-bit Z buffers. Blender needs 24 bits. It remains to be seen if this problem can be worked around, due to #1 above.
MoNsTeR
We probably will be using jpeg and gif for quite a while. I remember the first time I heard about png, it was supposed to be this revolutionary format that would be used on the web and everywhere. And now where is png? Well, it's gnome's preferred gfx format, if that counts for anything :)
MoNsTeR
ftp://ftp.blender.nl/pub/manual_1.02.tar.gzl ender/index.ws
:)
http://goethe.bowtie.nl/cgi-bin/web-ssql/news-b
the first is a snippet from the printed manual that has just enought info to get you started, the second is the Blender news server, where you can ask for little bits of help while your manual ships
those two together should give you enough of a taste of Blender to allow to to decide whether the ~$60 manual is worth it (it is!)
MoNsTeR