However they are still RGB, and unless you allow negative values for those components there are certain colours you can not represent by adding them together. Hence this article.
Many interesting board games such as Carcassonneor Cranium cost almost that much. You generally only play those for a few hours. Taking your GF to the movies can easily be $30 ($50AUS?) for two tickets, parking, and a popcorn combo and that only lasts two hours. A night at the bar can quickly run in the hundreds. A table top game like Warhammer 40,000 will cost $50 for the rule book and single models can cost $10 a pop (people often have over $1k of miniatures!). How much does a tank of gas cost in your vehicle if you want to go on a road trip? $30? What about a hotel room? $80?
Life is expensive. If you like games then set aside enough cash to buy one a month. I wish games were cheaper so kids could give them as gifts at birthday parties or more relatives could give them at Christmas, but I don't set the pricing. If you can afford modern hardware then you can probably afford the software. If you don't think Doom3 is worth your money then contribute to a Free/Open Source game.
If I get four hours of enjoyment out of Doom3 I'll be happy. In fact I'd rather have it last 4 hours and be totally fun than have it drawn out over 40 where I'm bored of the game for the last 30 hours.
Back in the Amiga days is the first I'd heard about things like this. They'd sell a little piece of hardware you'd plug into your computer and for certain things it would go faster.
The piece of hardware was merely a dongle and the software was simply a set of drivers optimized for certain tasks (i.e. popular benchmarks). Their FAQ saying they're something like this too: "Q. What is GameZap? GameZap is a technology to accelerate games, which is based on Hare - but instead of imitating the Kernel, it improves some common DirectX or OpenGL calls in order to make the game smoother." I bet nVidia and ATI already have those optimizations...
I think there were products like this more recently for the PC that optimized your computer (defrag the HD and the registry) and set some keys in the registry to disable the pretty windows things like resizing windows and making the start menu blend in so that your PC appeared faster.
If it feels like you've got your money's worth then go for it. Personally I'm saving up for a new system.
I know this is a silly question since the rumours say 64bit windows won't be out until 1H 2005, but I recently saw a demo that claims to be 27% faster compiled as 64bit vs the 32bit version.
Have any id employees mentioned anything about an AMD64 version?
Long ago John Carmack said in Jan 2003 Doom3 was going to have a ARB1, nv1x, nv2x, R2x0, nv3x, and ARB2 path. We recently heard the nv3x path was dropped now that nvidia's driver compiler does a good enough job on optimizing a ARB_fragment_programs (Pixel Shader 2.0 in D3D terms) that the nv3x isn't needed. But is the ARB1 path still around?
The article says the min spec is: *Supported 3D Graphics chipsets: ATI: Radeon 8500, 9000, 9200, 9500, 9600, 9700, 9800 NVIDIA: GeForce 3, GeForce 4MX, GeForce 4 Titanium, GeForce FX, GeForce 6 It doesn't list other manufacturers, but I don't know if this really implies other manufacturers currently can't run it.
What about the PowerVR Kyro (no cube map support), Radeon 7x00, Intel Extreme Integrated, SiS Xabre (useless drivers), Matrox Parhelia, 3DLabs P10/P9? Without the ARB1 path they wouldn't be able to run the game. Well 3Dlabs used to support nvidia's register combiner extensions so could use the nv1x path if their drivers are up to snuff. It is one thing to be able to run the game quickly (the reson the GeForce4MX is supported when it is technically just a quicker version of the older GeForce/GeForce2/GeForce2MX) to ensure the game is enjoyable, but it is another thing to not be able to run it at all due to not supporting modern OpenGL extensions. It would be nice if older cards could run Doom3, slowly and without specular, instead of not at all.
Also what about GLSL? Even longer ago Mr. Carmack said in June 2002 (wow, they've been working a long time!) "I am now committed to supporting an OpenGL 2.0 renderer for Doom through all the spec evolutions" in refernce to the GL shading language. Will there be a Doom3 renderer which uses the high level GLSL extension instead of the fragment program extension? I get the impression there won't be, and it would be pretty pointless with the fragment program support, but 3Dlabs currently only supports the high level fragment shaders, not the low level fragment programs...
How do the sales figures of comics compare to popular novels?
"Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth" sold 100,000 in hard cover. I think Harry Potter sold a few more, even before the movie was made which I'm sure helped sales.
There are a lot of people talking about the poor performance of Java as a platform for 3d.
http://www.megacorpsonline.com/ is a Java game that more or less proves that a "high quality" FPS can be done in Java. It's beta, done by a small team, so it isn't quite going to compare to Doom3 or Half Life 2, but it does show a game 3d application running well.
They introduced the k8 on a.13micron process and it was 192mm with 1024k L2 cache. Moving to.09micron it will shrink to 114mm and a dual core version, with 1024k L2 per core, may come in at ~215mm, not much bigger than the current Athlon64!
AMD will claim the market is ready for dual core processors when they move to.09microns sometime next year. We've all read this quote from AMD chairman and CEO (Hector Ruiz), right: "One of the most powerful things next year is going to be our dual-core product. To me, that's going to really shock the hell out of everyone, because it's going to be hardware-compatible, infrastructure-compatible, pin-compatible. I mean, people that have a 2-P system can slap in a dual-core product and end up with a 4-P system for the price of a 2-P. That's been the biggest drawback, everyone tells me. What keeps them from going from a 2-P to a 4-P system? It's price."
Paul DeMone had a great article about the 64bit processors we'll see in 2005 and the k8 is looking pretty good!
>> Personally after watching the gish movies I >> think it looks the most fun:) But even the >> fake far cry screen shot, which won't happen >> until far in the future, doesn't really look >> more fun than the real far cry screen shot. > That's nice, but how bout playing the games > THEN decide which is more fun?
I said that gish LOOKS most fun to me. Not that it would BE more fun. You should read carefully before replying. I'll explain why I felt that way. The primary reason that gish looked the most fun is because it showed a movie of *game play*. Not a movie of cut scenes or engine features, but a movie about what the game is like to play. It demonstrated the game is based around a simple concept, but when applied to different situations leads to emerging game play. Looks fun. To me anyway. But I'm a bit passed the point where graphics are really important to me so for people looking for an *emmersive experience* (think about the definition of those words) instead of a simple game (again, think about the definition of the word "game") they'll have different tastes.
much. Unless you are trying to simulate reality I don't understand the continued obsession with improved graphics. With the Dreamcast hadn't we reached the golden age where any game imaginable can be created? What about using stylized graphics like Jet Set Radio instead of realistic graphics? Would The Simpsons be funnier if it had more realistic drawings or real actors instead of voice actors and simple drawings which look less real than Disney's Snow White from the 1930s?
Look how anime gets away with simple "graphics", but is able to quickly communicate emotions. Same with "South Park." We need to be more worried about what we do in games and how we do it (look at the success of novelty items like the eye toy) instead of only trying to push visuals.
I understand the excitement over new graphics when they enabled new games. Pong->Space Invaders->Pac Man->Super Mario->Street Fighter II->Super Mario Cart->Virtua Fighter, but I just don't see the point any more.
Here are three screen shots; which looks most fun? fake far cry real far cry gish
Personally after watching the gish movies I think it looks the most fun:) But even the fake far cry screen shot, which won't happen until far in the future, doesn't really look more fun than the real far cry screen shot.
In my RTS example there is AI there. I give orders at the highest level, then at the lowest level little indivdual characters screw them up and I am forced to micromanage due to bad path finding AI.
What do you want from your AI? Do you want it to have feelings? Do you want the shop keeper's child to have been murdered by goblins the night before so that he won't give you the discount on your sword that your charismatic attributes you spent your level-up points getting are useless? Or do you want predicable AI?
What do you mean by wanting better AI? If you mean you don't want your Peons to creat traffic jams for themselves when harvesting resources I agree because if I'm playing I told them to do something and they aren't doing it, but beyond that I'm not sure what you mean. Can you give an examples of where you want smarter AI to make the game more fun?
Kind of like how Pong was so popular because of its story? Then Ms. Pac-Man totally had a better story, which is why it was so popular. Super Mario Bros. had the best story yet. Then there was Doom... Man, that Doom story took at least a paragraph to tell. It owned.
Story is sometimes important, but it is possibly the most overrated element (maybe graphics are). Look at the FMV games that focused on story and Square's Bouncer. These are games that worried about story. Chris Crawford has been focused on stories for years and nobody remembers who he is... How did Deux Ex2 do with its great story?:) A story can't make up for medicore game play
I don't think Half Life was even that popular on the console. Why not? Same story... Probably because FPS work best with the keyboard mouse so the game itself just wasn't as fun as it was on the PC. Half Life never even got a cartoon like Street FighterII. My point is even though Half Life was popular in a niche you know what games completely killed it in terms of popularity, even if you limit yourself to the PC? The Sims and Roller Coaster Tycoon. Those are fun "sand box" games. No story unless you want to make one up. Sports games like NHL Hockey 200x and party games like Eye Toy and Mario also do extremely well without stories. License games also do very well.
Take a look at the top 30 games. You can see there are games in there with story elements like Ninja Gaiden (currently in 1st place), but is it at the top because there is compelling character development or because you get to be a Ninja? I'd say because it is cool to be a ninja. There is basically no story, at least no compared to a book, or even a sitcom for that matter. Doors open, hundreds of faceless ninjas pop out, and you remoreslessly kill them for 95% of the time you are playing the game. There is only a bit of down time to pace the game where you get story hints, right? Here is the story for Ninja Gaiden.
The bottom line is games need to be fun. I'll admit I loved Half Life and I'm totally looking forward to the 2nd one probably because of the story, but the gfx, sound, and story are like icing on the cake. There needs to be a fundementally enjoyable experince there for the game to succeed. If they can give you a little break between levels to pace things out and put in a compelling story then even better. I thought Star Craft did that well. The thing you do is "Build a base and kill the other base", but with a story behind it. Same with Grand Theft Auto. "drive from point A to B", but sometimes you're picking something up, other times you're dropping something off.
Worry about a fun game first of all and once you've got that get an advanced graphics engine and write a good story. Don't do it the other way around like Bouncer.
Re:Real time films? Sooner than you realize!
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Actually ATI has given us Ashli which will compile renderman shaders to something that can be used real time. I'm sure you remember Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within running on a GeForce3. We've come a long way since then and in a couple years we're going to be a long way from where we are today. Sure, if you compile an advanced enough renderman shader you'll choke a wimpy ATI Radeon 9800XT (hahaha, the fastest pixel shading card on the market today), or if you tried to do a toy story scene it really won't be real time, but it'll still be faster than your CPU which will take hours or days.
In a just a couple generations Pixar will use render farms of GPUs on the PCI Express bus and the CPU won't matter. In a couple years high end video games will look just as good to the eyes of many people as movies like Shrek.
There is a thread talking about OpenGL 2.0 going on right now. Basically the 3Dlabs proposal of a 2.0 which could be backwards compatible or pure was ditched and they're just going forward one step at a time. I guess OpenGL|ES can be thought of as the pure OpenGL 2.0 in some ways:)
For 1.5 VBOs were promoted to core from extensions, but you don't need to support GLSL in order to support OpenGL 1.5 because it was left as an extension.
Mobile phones with more power than a Dreamcast
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Of course nVidia and ATI and others are also going to release 3d for mobile phones.
In the last video game generation people were shocked at the unbeliveable power the consoles had. The n64 featured an advanced 64bit 100MHz MIPS RS4?00 chip with SGI level 3d graphics designed by SGI for $200. Only a few years before that a slower 32bit 33Mhz MIPS 3000 chip with worse graphics would've cost many thousands of dollars. Just wait a couple years and we'll have $20 watches with gigs of memory to replace our iPods and more power than the xbox;)
Give me examples of what you're missing in OpenGL 1.5 that you get in D3D or how D3D is optimized more than OpenGL.
Don't say something like programmable graphics? OpenGL introduced fragment programs to take advantage of PS2.0 hardware (Radeon 9500+, GeForceFX+) before MS released DirectX 9.
Just because OpenGL started with a great base and has evolved up to version 1.5 doesn't mean it is worse than another API which is at version 9...
I thought most renderman stuff was rendered, not raytraced?
I'm sure you've seen the raytracing OpenGL examples such as nVidia's
The OpenGL 1.0 pipeline is great for games, CAD, etc. The future of OpenGL is basically "here is a really powerful parallel processor (AKA pixel shader) and some memory (AKA textures), go use/abuse this in anyway you like."
There are a lot of people working on General Purpose ways to program the GPU/VPU such as BrookGPU. Moving forward graphics chips look less like old style OpenGL where the chip is hardwired to support up to 8 lights, gouraud shading, and a texture, and more like a giant processing farm that will be good at certain tasks (render farm) and worse at others (compile farm). I belive raytracing will be one of the tasks future GPU/VPUs are good at.
Nintendo had this figured out when it had the monopoly back in the 80s. Nintendo Power, the Nintendo controlled magazine, was the most read magazine by kids.
Did they hype up coming products ever? They published tips, level guides, cheat codes, etc. They wrote articles about games you could buy and encouraged people to go buy games.
They also didn't have enough of that game in stock so you hopefully would buy another and come back later to get the one you wanted, but, hey, that's a monopoly.
Instead of talking about games you can't buy for a long time the focus needs to be more on games you can buy right now. Before a game comes out you read months of previews. Then one month of reviews and that's it, it's on to hyping another game.
The game industry is often compared to the movie industry. Sure, you can read a bit about a movie coming out with xxx staring in it once in a while, but 95% of people who go see a movie don't see hype about it a year before it comes out. They pretty much don't even learn about it until a couple weeks or one month before it comes out. In the game industry most people know about games long before they are close to coming out.
and merely counting bits is no way to estimate performance.
If you only have room for 16k of data in your L1 cache and all your size_t, pointers, and in most cases longs too take twice as much memory at worst it is like you have only 8k of cache now compared to the 32bit version!
At best it is going to make no difference, but at worst it is like your system now has only half the cache and half the memory bandwidth. Seems to me that by counting bits you can estimate your performance will be between 100% and 50% of the 32bit version, all other things equal.
A noteable exception would be when you need a 64bit value and are forced to emulate that.
Since you can fit ~80minutes of music on a ~700meg CD you have ~146K/sec for your music. That is at 16bit 44.1KHz stereo songs. Now audio data will take 8.7 times as much memory if recorded in stereo, but if recorded with eight (7.1) channels each song will take almost 35x as much memory thanks to the higher sampling rate and the use of 32bit values instead of 16bit. That is 5.08 megs/sec for your audio.
I like that this standard is very future proof, but when can we use it? Already CD sound is good enough for all but maybe 10,000 people on the planet. Most people's audio experience is probaby limited by their audio hardware, not the source sound. Hey, most people are quite happy encoding their mp3s at 128k!
Where will the high quality sound data come from? Audio CDs are still going to be 16bit, stereo, 44KHz. DVDs have compressed audio. Almost all video games use compressed audio of some sort too because we don't have enough memory yet for even CD quality sound.
I love that it is 7.1 and that it is very future proof, but other than making 7.1 standard it seems to be a standard for marketing to use as an advantage, not something consumers will ever use (by the time they can use it they'll have upgraded anyway). It seems that this beyond CD quality audio is just included because they can and we'll never see it in use this decade:)
Better to overbuild than underbuild I guess. But I'm not excited about this promise of higher quality audio.
I saw some mis-information in a couple places. Rather than responding to all of them I'm just going to start a new thread.
"GeForce 3 isn't capable of running the shaders that Doom 3 needs. You would need to have a GeForce 4 at the very least"
nVidia has five generations of cards worth talking about; nv0x-TNT series nv1x-GeForce, GeForce2, GeForce4MX, nForce, nForce2, etc nv2x-GeForce3, GeForce4Ti, Xbox nv3x-GeForceFX series nv4x-next generation unannounced cards
A GeForce3 is tweaked GeForce4 and will run Doom3 well. For ATI's cards we have this chart: http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=15 44 r1x0-Radeon, Radeon 7000/7200/7500 r2x0-8500/9000/9100/9200 r3x0-950 0/9600/9700/9800
Doom3 is going to have at least five methods of rendering according to a year old post by John Carmack: http://www.webdog.org/plans/1/ ARB1-pre tty much standard OpenGL to be compatible with everything. Most DX7 level cards will use this. No specular highlights, no vertex programs so this'll put more work on the CPU. NV1x-five passes, renders all features NV2x-two or three rendering passes, renders all features R200-usually single pass, renders all features NV3x-single pass, renders all features ARB2-advanced standard OpenGL, single pass, renders all features. This will be used by all DX9 and better cards other than the GeForceFX which has a special optimized rendering path.
The ATI Radeon and Intel Extreme Integrated Graphics will use the ARB1 path. The Matrox Parhelia will probably fall back to the standard DX7 path and not use its ability to do things like vertex programs. I'm not sure where the WildcatVP falls in, it supports nvidia's register combiner extensions so it could pretend to be a GeForce1/4MX, but I seem to remember a.plan file saying Doom3 may support the OpenGL high level shading language which would mean there is a sixth path; ARB3-basically be the exact same as ARB2, but using vertex/fragment shaders instead of vertex/fragment programs (high level language instead of low level asm shading language). Currently only supported by WildcatVP, but presumably ATI and nvidia would support this soon too. And any other DX9 level cards.
The XGI Volari and S3 DeltaChrome would use the ARB2 path as would ATI's next generation card. Not sure about the NV4x... Users would probably have the option to choose any rendering path their hardware can do if they want.
*rumour* The PowerVR Kyro is possibly not going to be able to run Doom3 because it can't do Cube Maps. If they allow Doom3 to run without CubeMaps then I guess the nvidia TNT, ATI Rage, Matrox G400, S3 Savage 2000, 3dfx cards, and Intel 815G integrated graphics, will be able to run it too. In theory;) I bet bad drivers prevent it from running, and even if it did run it would actually walk, or crawl.:) */rumour*
If Doom3 supports fragment/vertex shader it'll be the first on the market to do so. The only other advanced OpenGL game on the market for windows I know of is Homeworld2 which uses new extensions like fragment programs and vertex buffer objects.
Finally there have been Doom3 benchmarks released: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc. html?i=1821 &p=21 Medium Quality: 1024x768: 104fps - GeForceFX 5900 Ultra
95fps - GeForceFX 5800 Ultra
77fps - Radeon 9800 Pro
55fps - GeForceFX 5600 Ultra
40fps - Radeon 9600 Pro
47fps - GeForceFX 5200 Ultra
19fps - Radeon 9200
Those are from May 12th, 2003. Probably a full year before the game ships. But it gives you an idea of how well the GeForceFX can do when partial precision floating point is used via the NV3x fragment program extension (there standard OpenGL fragment program extension only allows you to hint fastest, don't care, or nicest for the entire program while AFAIK the nvidia extension allows you to specify per instruction if you want 16bit or 32bit precission) and how well the GeForceFX "ultra shadow" technology works.:)
Slashdot Mirror
They are on the market right now.
However they are still RGB, and unless you allow negative values for those components there are certain colours you can not represent by adding them together. Hence this article.
You're stingy. Or a student.
Many interesting board games such as Carcassonneor Cranium cost almost that much. You generally only play those for a few hours. Taking your GF to the movies can easily be $30 ($50AUS?) for two tickets, parking, and a popcorn combo and that only lasts two hours. A night at the bar can quickly run in the hundreds. A table top game like Warhammer 40,000 will cost $50 for the rule book and single models can cost $10 a pop (people often have over $1k of miniatures!). How much does a tank of gas cost in your vehicle if you want to go on a road trip? $30? What about a hotel room? $80?
Life is expensive. If you like games then set aside enough cash to buy one a month. I wish games were cheaper so kids could give them as gifts at birthday parties or more relatives could give them at Christmas, but I don't set the pricing. If you can afford modern hardware then you can probably afford the software. If you don't think Doom3 is worth your money then contribute to a Free/Open Source game.
If I get four hours of enjoyment out of Doom3 I'll be happy. In fact I'd rather have it last 4 hours and be totally fun than have it drawn out over 40 where I'm bored of the game for the last 30 hours.
Back in the Amiga days is the first I'd heard about things like this. They'd sell a little piece of hardware you'd plug into your computer and for certain things it would go faster.
The piece of hardware was merely a dongle and the software was simply a set of drivers optimized for certain tasks (i.e. popular benchmarks). Their FAQ saying they're something like this too:
"Q. What is GameZap?
GameZap is a technology to accelerate games, which is based on Hare - but instead of imitating the Kernel, it improves some common DirectX or OpenGL calls in order to make the game smoother."
I bet nVidia and ATI already have those optimizations...
I think there were products like this more recently for the PC that optimized your computer (defrag the HD and the registry) and set some keys in the registry to disable the pretty windows things like resizing windows and making the start menu blend in so that your PC appeared faster.
If it feels like you've got your money's worth then go for it. Personally I'm saving up for a new system.
I know this is a silly question since the rumours say 64bit windows won't be out until 1H 2005, but I recently saw a demo that claims to be 27% faster compiled as 64bit vs the 32bit version.
Have any id employees mentioned anything about an AMD64 version?
Long ago John Carmack said in Jan 2003 Doom3 was going to have a ARB1, nv1x, nv2x, R2x0, nv3x, and ARB2 path. We recently heard the nv3x path was dropped now that nvidia's driver compiler does a good enough job on optimizing a ARB_fragment_programs (Pixel Shader 2.0 in D3D terms) that the nv3x isn't needed. But is the ARB1 path still around?
The article says the min spec is:
*Supported 3D Graphics chipsets:
ATI: Radeon 8500, 9000, 9200, 9500, 9600, 9700, 9800
NVIDIA: GeForce 3, GeForce 4MX, GeForce 4 Titanium, GeForce FX, GeForce 6
It doesn't list other manufacturers, but I don't know if this really implies other manufacturers currently can't run it.
What about the PowerVR Kyro (no cube map support), Radeon 7x00, Intel Extreme Integrated, SiS Xabre (useless drivers), Matrox Parhelia, 3DLabs P10/P9? Without the ARB1 path they wouldn't be able to run the game. Well 3Dlabs used to support nvidia's register combiner extensions so could use the nv1x path if their drivers are up to snuff. It is one thing to be able to run the game quickly (the reson the GeForce4MX is supported when it is technically just a quicker version of the older GeForce/GeForce2/GeForce2MX) to ensure the game is enjoyable, but it is another thing to not be able to run it at all due to not supporting modern OpenGL extensions. It would be nice if older cards could run Doom3, slowly and without specular, instead of not at all.
Also what about GLSL? Even longer ago Mr. Carmack said in June 2002 (wow, they've been working a long time!) "I am now committed to supporting an OpenGL 2.0 renderer for Doom through all the spec evolutions" in refernce to the GL shading language. Will there be a Doom3 renderer which uses the high level GLSL extension instead of the fragment program extension? I get the impression there won't be, and it would be pretty pointless with the fragment program support, but 3Dlabs currently only supports the high level fragment shaders, not the low level fragment programs...
Super Swamper mud tires on the rear and slicks on the front. Best of both worlds!
How do the sales figures of comics compare to popular novels?
"Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth" sold 100,000 in hard cover. I think Harry Potter sold a few more, even before the movie was made which I'm sure helped sales.
There are a lot of people talking about the poor performance of Java as a platform for 3d.
http://www.megacorpsonline.com/ is a Java game that more or less proves that a "high quality" FPS can be done in Java. It's beta, done by a small team, so it isn't quite going to compare to Doom3 or Half Life 2, but it does show a game 3d application running well.
How many people remember this AMD Dual Core K8 Architecture slide? AMD has been planning this for a long time.
They introduced the k8 on a .13micron process and it was 192mm with 1024k L2 cache. Moving to .09micron it will shrink to 114mm and a dual core version, with 1024k L2 per core, may come in at ~215mm, not much bigger than the current Athlon64!
AMD will claim the market is ready for dual core processors when they move to .09microns sometime next year. We've all read this quote from AMD chairman and CEO (Hector Ruiz), right: "One of the most powerful things next year is going to be our dual-core product. To me, that's going to really shock the hell out of everyone, because it's going to be hardware-compatible, infrastructure-compatible, pin-compatible. I mean, people that have a 2-P system can slap in a dual-core product and end up with a 4-P system for the price of a 2-P. That's been the biggest drawback, everyone tells me. What keeps them from going from a 2-P to a 4-P system? It's price."
Paul DeMone had a great article about the 64bit processors we'll see in 2005 and the k8 is looking pretty good!
>> Personally after watching the gish movies I :) But even the
>> think it looks the most fun
>> fake far cry screen shot, which won't happen
>> until far in the future, doesn't really look
>> more fun than the real far cry screen shot.
> That's nice, but how bout playing the games
> THEN decide which is more fun?
I said that gish LOOKS most fun to me. Not that it would BE more fun. You should read carefully before replying. I'll explain why I felt that way. The primary reason that gish looked the most fun is because it showed a movie of *game play*. Not a movie of cut scenes or engine features, but a movie about what the game is like to play. It demonstrated the game is based around a simple concept, but when applied to different situations leads to emerging game play. Looks fun. To me anyway. But I'm a bit passed the point where graphics are really important to me so for people looking for an *emmersive experience* (think about the definition of those words) instead of a simple game (again, think about the definition of the word "game") they'll have different tastes.
Which screenshot looks the most fun to you? Why?
much. Unless you are trying to simulate reality I don't understand the continued obsession with improved graphics. With the Dreamcast hadn't we reached the golden age where any game imaginable can be created? What about using stylized graphics like Jet Set Radio instead of realistic graphics? Would The Simpsons be funnier if it had more realistic drawings or real actors instead of voice actors and simple drawings which look less real than Disney's Snow White from the 1930s?
Look how anime gets away with simple "graphics", but is able to quickly communicate emotions. Same with "South Park." We need to be more worried about what we do in games and how we do it (look at the success of novelty items like the eye toy) instead of only trying to push visuals.
I understand the excitement over new graphics when they enabled new games. Pong->Space Invaders->Pac Man->Super Mario->Street Fighter II->Super Mario Cart->Virtua Fighter, but I just don't see the point any more.
Here are three screen shots; which looks most fun? :) But even the fake far cry screen shot, which won't happen until far in the future, doesn't really look more fun than the real far cry screen shot.
fake far cry
real far cry
gish
Personally after watching the gish movies I think it looks the most fun
In my RTS example there is AI there. I give orders at the highest level, then at the lowest level little indivdual characters screw them up and I am forced to micromanage due to bad path finding AI.
What do you want from your AI? Do you want it to have feelings? Do you want the shop keeper's child to have been murdered by goblins the night before so that he won't give you the discount on your sword that your charismatic attributes you spent your level-up points getting are useless? Or do you want predicable AI?
What do you mean by wanting better AI? If you mean you don't want your Peons to creat traffic jams for themselves when harvesting resources I agree because if I'm playing I told them to do something and they aren't doing it, but beyond that I'm not sure what you mean. Can you give an examples of where you want smarter AI to make the game more fun?
Kind of like how Pong was so popular because of its story? Then Ms. Pac-Man totally had a better story, which is why it was so popular. Super Mario Bros. had the best story yet. Then there was Doom... Man, that Doom story took at least a paragraph to tell. It owned.
Story is sometimes important, but it is possibly the most overrated element (maybe graphics are). Look at the FMV games that focused on story and Square's Bouncer. These are games that worried about story. Chris Crawford has been focused on stories for years and nobody remembers who he is... How did Deux Ex2 do with its great story? :) A story can't make up for medicore game play
I don't think Half Life was even that popular on the console. Why not? Same story... Probably because FPS work best with the keyboard mouse so the game itself just wasn't as fun as it was on the PC. Half Life never even got a cartoon like Street FighterII. My point is even though Half Life was popular in a niche you know what games completely killed it in terms of popularity, even if you limit yourself to the PC? The Sims and Roller Coaster Tycoon. Those are fun "sand box" games. No story unless you want to make one up. Sports games like NHL Hockey 200x and party games like Eye Toy and Mario also do extremely well without stories. License games also do very well.
Take a look at the top 30 games. You can see there are games in there with story elements like Ninja Gaiden (currently in 1st place), but is it at the top because there is compelling character development or because you get to be a Ninja? I'd say because it is cool to be a ninja. There is basically no story, at least no compared to a book, or even a sitcom for that matter. Doors open, hundreds of faceless ninjas pop out, and you remoreslessly kill them for 95% of the time you are playing the game. There is only a bit of down time to pace the game where you get story hints, right? Here is the story for Ninja Gaiden.
The bottom line is games need to be fun. I'll admit I loved Half Life and I'm totally looking forward to the 2nd one probably because of the story, but the gfx, sound, and story are like icing on the cake. There needs to be a fundementally enjoyable experince there for the game to succeed. If they can give you a little break between levels to pace things out and put in a compelling story then even better. I thought Star Craft did that well. The thing you do is "Build a base and kill the other base", but with a story behind it. Same with Grand Theft Auto. "drive from point A to B", but sometimes you're picking something up, other times you're dropping something off.
Worry about a fun game first of all and once you've got that get an advanced graphics engine and write a good story. Don't do it the other way around like Bouncer.
In a just a couple generations Pixar will use render farms of GPUs on the PCI Express bus and the CPU won't matter. In a couple years high end video games will look just as good to the eyes of many people as movies like Shrek.
There is a thread talking about OpenGL 2.0 going on right now. Basically the 3Dlabs proposal of a 2.0 which could be backwards compatible or pure was ditched and they're just going forward one step at a time. I guess OpenGL|ES can be thought of as the pure OpenGL 2.0 in some ways :)
For 1.5 VBOs were promoted to core from extensions, but you don't need to support GLSL in order to support OpenGL 1.5 because it was left as an extension.
2004 will see the first handheld devices using the same 3D technology that powered the Dreamcast gaming console.
Of course nVidia and ATI and others are also going to release 3d for mobile phones.
In the last video game generation people were shocked at the unbeliveable power the consoles had. The n64 featured an advanced 64bit 100MHz MIPS RS4?00 chip with SGI level 3d graphics designed by SGI for $200. Only a few years before that a slower 32bit 33Mhz MIPS 3000 chip with worse graphics would've cost many thousands of dollars. Just wait a couple years and we'll have $20 watches with gigs of memory to replace our iPods and more power than the xbox ;)
Give me examples of what you're missing in OpenGL 1.5 that you get in D3D or how D3D is optimized more than OpenGL.
Don't say something like programmable graphics? OpenGL introduced fragment programs to take advantage of PS2.0 hardware (Radeon 9500+, GeForceFX+) before MS released DirectX 9.
Just because OpenGL started with a great base and has evolved up to version 1.5 doesn't mean it is worse than another API which is at version 9...
Troll?
I thought most renderman stuff was rendered, not raytraced?
I'm sure you've seen the raytracing OpenGL examples such as nVidia's
The OpenGL 1.0 pipeline is great for games, CAD, etc. The future of OpenGL is basically "here is a really powerful parallel processor (AKA pixel shader) and some memory (AKA textures), go use/abuse this in anyway you like."
There are a lot of people working on General Purpose ways to program the GPU/VPU such as BrookGPU. Moving forward graphics chips look less like old style OpenGL where the chip is hardwired to support up to 8 lights, gouraud shading, and a texture, and more like a giant processing farm that will be good at certain tasks (render farm) and worse at others (compile farm). I belive raytracing will be one of the tasks future GPU/VPUs are good at.
Nintendo had this figured out when it had the monopoly back in the 80s. Nintendo Power, the Nintendo controlled magazine, was the most read magazine by kids.
Did they hype up coming products ever? They published tips, level guides, cheat codes, etc. They wrote articles about games you could buy and encouraged people to go buy games.
They also didn't have enough of that game in stock so you hopefully would buy another and come back later to get the one you wanted, but, hey, that's a monopoly.
Instead of talking about games you can't buy for a long time the focus needs to be more on games you can buy right now. Before a game comes out you read months of previews. Then one month of reviews and that's it, it's on to hyping another game.
The game industry is often compared to the movie industry. Sure, you can read a bit about a movie coming out with xxx staring in it once in a while, but 95% of people who go see a movie don't see hype about it a year before it comes out. They pretty much don't even learn about it until a couple weeks or one month before it comes out. In the game industry most people know about games long before they are close to coming out.
and merely counting bits is no way to estimate performance.
If you only have room for 16k of data in your L1 cache and all your size_t, pointers, and in most cases longs too take twice as much memory at worst it is like you have only 8k of cache now compared to the 32bit version!At best it is going to make no difference, but at worst it is like your system now has only half the cache and half the memory bandwidth. Seems to me that by counting bits you can estimate your performance will be between 100% and 50% of the 32bit version, all other things equal.
A noteable exception would be when you need a 64bit value and are forced to emulate that.
That's what DVD-A/SACD are for.
DVD-A is up to 192kHz/24bit, not 192kHz/32bit. Still, Above about 22-24 bits, there is no point in adding bits, as the noise floor of the system is below the threshold of thermal noise and other effects. A true 24-bit converter, for example, would give a noise floor of -144 dB, and apart from the fact that you can't realistically do anything with a -144 dB noise floor, no one can make components that quiet anyway: most 24-bit converters are hard pressed to reach -120dB. So 24 bits is more than enough. So I guess DVD-A is ok, but it is only 5.1, not 7.1.
Since you can fit ~80minutes of music on a ~700meg CD you have ~146K/sec for your music. That is at 16bit 44.1KHz stereo songs. Now audio data will take 8.7 times as much memory if recorded in stereo, but if recorded with eight (7.1) channels each song will take almost 35x as much memory thanks to the higher sampling rate and the use of 32bit values instead of 16bit. That is 5.08 megs/sec for your audio.
:)
I like that this standard is very future proof, but when can we use it? Already CD sound is good enough for all but maybe 10,000 people on the planet. Most people's audio experience is probaby limited by their audio hardware, not the source sound. Hey, most people are quite happy encoding their mp3s at 128k!
Where will the high quality sound data come from? Audio CDs are still going to be 16bit, stereo, 44KHz. DVDs have compressed audio. Almost all video games use compressed audio of some sort too because we don't have enough memory yet for even CD quality sound.
I love that it is 7.1 and that it is very future proof, but other than making 7.1 standard it seems to be a standard for marketing to use as an advantage, not something consumers will ever use (by the time they can use it they'll have upgraded anyway). It seems that this beyond CD quality audio is just included because they can and we'll never see it in use this decade
Better to overbuild than underbuild I guess. But I'm not excited about this promise of higher quality audio.
I saw some mis-information in a couple places. Rather than responding to all of them I'm just going to start a new thread.
5 440 0/9600/9700/9800
e tty much standard OpenGL to be compatible with everything. Most DX7 level cards will use this. No specular highlights, no vertex programs so this'll put more work on the CPU.
.plan file saying Doom3 may support the OpenGL high level shading language which would mean there is a sixth path;
;) I bet bad drivers prevent it from running, and even if it did run it would actually walk, or crawl. :) */rumour*
. html?i=1821 &p=21
:)
"GeForce 3 isn't capable of running the shaders that Doom 3 needs. You would need to have a GeForce 4 at the very least"
nVidia has five generations of cards worth talking about;
nv0x-TNT series
nv1x-GeForce, GeForce2, GeForce4MX, nForce, nForce2, etc
nv2x-GeForce3, GeForce4Ti, Xbox
nv3x-GeForceFX series
nv4x-next generation unannounced cards
A GeForce3 is tweaked GeForce4 and will run Doom3 well. For ATI's cards we have this chart:
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1
r1x0-Radeon, Radeon 7000/7200/7500
r2x0-8500/9000/9100/9200
r3x0-95
Doom3 is going to have at least five methods of rendering according to a year old post by John Carmack:
http://www.webdog.org/plans/1/
ARB1-pr
NV1x-five passes, renders all features
NV2x-two or three rendering passes, renders all features
R200-usually single pass, renders all features
NV3x-single pass, renders all features
ARB2-advanced standard OpenGL, single pass, renders all features. This will be used by all DX9 and better cards other than the GeForceFX which has a special optimized rendering path.
The ATI Radeon and Intel Extreme Integrated Graphics will use the ARB1 path. The Matrox Parhelia will probably fall back to the standard DX7 path and not use its ability to do things like vertex programs. I'm not sure where the WildcatVP falls in, it supports nvidia's register combiner extensions so it could pretend to be a GeForce1/4MX, but I seem to remember a
ARB3-basically be the exact same as ARB2, but using vertex/fragment shaders instead of vertex/fragment programs (high level language instead of low level asm shading language). Currently only supported by WildcatVP, but presumably ATI and nvidia would support this soon too. And any other DX9 level cards.
The XGI Volari and S3 DeltaChrome would use the ARB2 path as would ATI's next generation card. Not sure about the NV4x... Users would probably have the option to choose any rendering path their hardware can do if they want.
*rumour*
The PowerVR Kyro is possibly not going to be able to run Doom3 because it can't do Cube Maps. If they allow Doom3 to run without CubeMaps then I guess the nvidia TNT, ATI Rage, Matrox G400, S3 Savage 2000, 3dfx cards, and Intel 815G integrated graphics, will be able to run it too. In theory
If Doom3 supports fragment/vertex shader it'll be the first on the market to do so. The only other advanced OpenGL game on the market for windows I know of is Homeworld2 which uses new extensions like fragment programs and vertex buffer objects.
Finally there have been Doom3 benchmarks released:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc
Medium Quality: 1024x768:
104fps - GeForceFX 5900 Ultra
95fps - GeForceFX 5800 Ultra
77fps - Radeon 9800 Pro
55fps - GeForceFX 5600 Ultra
40fps - Radeon 9600 Pro
47fps - GeForceFX 5200 Ultra
19fps - Radeon 9200
Those are from May 12th, 2003. Probably a full year before the game ships. But it gives you an idea of how well the GeForceFX can do when partial precision floating point is used via the NV3x fragment program extension (there standard OpenGL fragment program extension only allows you to hint fastest, don't care, or nicest for the entire program while AFAIK the nvidia extension allows you to specify per instruction if you want 16bit or 32bit precission) and how well the GeForceFX "ultra shadow" technology works.
I'm really looking forward to this game!