Actually, you can, and NASA does, throttle the SRB's. Actually, throttling isn't really the correct word, but by changing the shape of the solid fuel, SRB thrust is reduced by about 33% 50 seconds into the burn. After MAX Q, it is returned to maximum thrust.
This is only true if you were unfortunate enough to write your game using Direct3D. OpenGL games will be able to take advantage of geometry acceleration without even recompiling. You reap what you sow when you use a Microsoft API. Whether or not hardware T&L is of any benefit to current or future games is yet to be seen though. Games lately have been getting more and more fillrate bound and less geometry bound, as game creators take advantage of higher resolutions and larger textures.
This is only true if the software is using OGL's transformation pipeline. IIRC, a lot of the current OGL games set the MV matrix to identity. Also, almost all of today's games use lightmaps, not OpenGL lights. So no speed up there.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, you can, and NASA does, throttle the SRB's. Actually, throttling isn't really the correct word, but by changing the shape of the solid fuel, SRB thrust is reduced by about 33% 50 seconds into the burn. After MAX Q, it is returned to maximum thrust.
_ Shuttle.html
See the section on SRB's here http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/S/Space
Divorce rates in the US have never been, and are never likely to be, as high as 50%.
http://www.divorcereform.org/nyt05.html
This is only true if you were unfortunate enough to write your game using Direct3D. OpenGL games will be able to take advantage of geometry acceleration without even recompiling. You reap what you sow when you use a Microsoft API.
Whether or not hardware T&L is of any benefit to current or future games is yet to be seen though. Games lately have been getting more and more fillrate bound and less geometry bound, as game creators take advantage of higher resolutions and larger textures.
This is only true if the software is using OGL's transformation pipeline. IIRC, a lot of the current OGL games set the MV matrix to identity. Also, almost all of today's games use lightmaps, not OpenGL lights. So no speed up there.