[oyvind]

Voodooextreme have posted an interview:

http://www.ve3d.com/hw/interviews/davidkirk/1.html


Øyvind

[demalion]

Originally Posted by oyvind

Voodooextreme have posted an interview:

http://www.ve3d.com/hw/interviews/davidkirk/1.html


Øyvind

Is there any competitor that he doesn't take a shot at? Ah well, my only real problem is with the name "interview" slapped on to that, the text is exactly what every company would do in an advertisement....ahh, internet journalism.

EDIT: Reverend!?!? For shame!

[jb]

Did you see him dig into "other vendors"

That brings me to a point about doing it right, versus cutting corners. Do you know that one of the hardware vendors only antialiases the top and bottom of the screen, but not the middle? That’s because in one of the main benchmarks, Quake3, you don’t see much difference. But, now you know: look for it, and you’ll see it. Here’s another one: do you know that one of the vendors who makes a lot of noise about anisotropic filtering doesn’t even do it right? It only works for almost horizontal or almost vertical edges. Try this. Fire up a flight simulator, and fly at a 30 or 45 degree angle, and look how jaggy things get.

Funny guess he has not seen CS or other games on a GF3/4 card and notice how well their AA works all of the time with those Alpha textures. Sorry I think he has done a great job but this is a little bit of the pot calling the kettle black. I wish he would just stick to techincal stuff like he use to and leave the cheap shots to the PR people as after all its their job

[Simon F]

Hmmm. I'm not overwhelmed by the phong shading example. Wasting instructions to normalise constant vectors?

Oh and Phong shading does not use half vectors. It's Blinn's technique they appear to be describing.

[andypski]

Originally Posted by jb

Did you see him dig into "other vendors"

Funny guess he has not seen CS or other games on a GF3/4 card and notice how well their AA works all of the time with those Alpha textures. Sorry I think he has done a great job but this is a little bit of the pot calling the kettle black. I wish he would just stick to techincal stuff like he use to and leave the cheap shots to the PR people as after all its their job

He also seems to be getting confused between antialiasing and anisotropic filtering - I doubt if the texture filtering gets _jaggy_ at 45 degree angles...

It seems his sideswipes are a bit ill considered. Maybe he was typing in a hurry to get them all in...

Originally Posted by D.Kirk on Voodooextreme

"Right now, with GeForce4, antialiasing is almost the same speed as aliased rendering"

Wow, I guess it'll be able to keep up with R300 after all then...

- Andy.

[GraphixViolence]

After reading that "interview", I have to ask... is Kirk a scientist or a salesman? Or worse, the latter hiding behind the guise of the former...

[Hyp-X]

Originally Posted by GraphixViolence

After reading that "interview", I have to ask... is Kirk a scientist or a salesman? Or worse, the latter hiding behind the guise of the former...

Or worse...

I conducted this from the last 8 or so interviews of his.
I didn't even bother reading this one...

[Dio]

Do I see Dr. Kirk, or Spin Doctor Kirk?

I believe that in less than a year, we will see real-time hardware rendered graphics as good as Monsters Inc, Final Fantasy, and Shrek.

nv30 must be REALLY special. What's it's strategy for motion blur again?

Pixel programs are harder to write.

Not on GF3/4 class hardware, where you only have 8 instructions. In contrast, some of the 128-instruction vertex shader programs are extremely hairy.

In a few years, I predict that graphics hardware may not even support aliased rendering.

I'm not sure PowerVR did....

[Reverend]

There was a miscommunication - the interview wasn't supposed to appear before 31 July. I just pulled it.

In any case, the content should essentially be the same however.

WRT David and his salesmanship - what do you expect? He works for NVIDIA

And what should I exactly be ashamed of?

[Randell]

strippers or gay bars I assume. Dont be sensitive

[Reverend]

Originally Posted by GraphixViolence

After reading that "interview", I have to ask... is Kirk a scientist or a salesman? Or worse, the latter hiding behind the guise of the former...

Kirk is an extremely smart guy. Unless you trade emails with him about 3D technology, you probably won't know that of course. It's easier to get non-PR answers when you talk direct (which was the case between me and Kirk) but sadly NVIDIA has decided that Kirk can't answer directly to members of the press.

Anyone who works for a company and is dedicated to the company he works for is that company's salesman.

[Randell]

Originally Posted by Reverend

Anyone who works for a company and is dedicated to the company he works for is that company's salesman.

and if he isnt to the public he should work elsewhere.

[Oompa Loompa]

Originally Posted by Randell

and if he isnt to the public he should work elsewhere.

Um, I think you're confusing "company representative" with "priest". Please try to be a bit less self-righteous.

[pascal]

"Priest" ... Hummmm

[demalion]

Originally Posted by Reverend

There was a miscommunication - the interview wasn't supposed to appear before 31 July. I just pulled it.

In any case, the content should essentially be the same however.

WRT David and his salesmanship - what do you expect? He works for NVIDIA

Well, I stated pretty much the same.

And what should I exactly be ashamed of?

That that was called an "interview", I guess. You definitely have the knowledge to have contradicted some of his implications and assertions, or atleast have gotten more details, but that knowledge went completely to waste in that piece. Any hack could have gotten those answers (and has in the past). It doesn't suite the term "interview" when the interviewer is you, Reverend.

But, all that is just IMO, and it wasn't like it was on THIS site.

[Randell]

Originally Posted by Oompa Loompa

Um, I think you're confusing "company representative" with "priest". Please try to be a bit less self-righteous.

in a basically PR interview people here are attacking David Kirk for being pro his company. I'll be as righteous as I want to be thanks.

[Mulciber]

Originally Posted by Oompa Loompa

Um, I think you're confusing "company representative" with "priest". Please try to be a bit less self-righteous.

well this did come from a reverend :P j/k
anyways, even though I dont particularly agree with some of the things Dr Kirk said, theres no reason to get so overzelous about the whole thing. Every person representing their company does the same thing more or less.

[Dolemite]

Originally Posted by Reverend

There was a miscommunication - the interview wasn't supposed to appear before 31 July. I just pulled it.

In any case, the content should essentially be the same however.

WRT David and his salesmanship - what do you expect? He works for NVIDIA

And what should I exactly be ashamed of?

Whenever something has to be specifically timed like this, you can be assured of its PRness. IMO, this is the kind of journalism (if you can call it that) that we can do without. It seems the distinction between reporter and PR-slut gets blurrier by the day.

What happened to the days when so-called journalists actually communicated what they learned instead of this NDA'd PR cockgobbling?

[jb]

David should be pro for his company. Cheap shots from a techincal guy are not needed. It IMHO makes him look bad. Also the fact that nV them self has chosen a higher perfromance method of AA knowing its has issues (alpha textures for one) could be used by another vendor in the SAME mannor (...hey did you know that the reason the GF4 is so fast is that they dont do any AA on textures while our super dupper x6000 does.....). Again I would expect a highly techincal person to still be techincal and pro for his company, while leaving cheap shots to the PR or fanboy groups.

[Mulciber]

Originally Posted by Dolemite

Whenever something has to be specifically timed like this, you can be assured of its PRness. IMO, this is the kind of journalism (if you can call it that) that we can do without. It seems the distinction between reporter and PR-slut gets blurrier by the day.

What happened to the days when so-called journalists actually communicated what they learned instead of this NDA'd PR cockgobbling?

lol, those days are gone(dont know if they ever existed in this industry). if nvidia pr doesnt get its "cock gobbled" properly, then you can be damn sure the people who are getting the info now, wont be getting any chance of seeing it in the future

[OpenGL guy]

Originally Posted by D.Kirk on Voodooextreme

"Right now, with GeForce4, antialiasing is almost the same speed as aliased rendering"

Amazing... I guess he never compared 4x AA results on 3D Mark 2001 at 1600x1200

Maybe he was thinking of some CPU limited cases

[GraphixViolence]

Originally Posted by Reverend

Kirk is an extremely smart guy. Unless you trade emails with him about 3D technology, you probably won't know that of course. It's easier to get non-PR answers when you talk direct (which was the case between me and Kirk) but sadly NVIDIA has decided that Kirk can't answer directly to members of the press.

Anyone who works for a company and is dedicated to the company he works for is that company's salesman.

I have no doubt that he is extremely smart... he just won an achievement award at SIGGRAPH, and you don't get to be chief scientist at Nvidia by being an idiot. The problem is that he is making statements that clearly undermine his credibility when viewed by anyone that knows more than a little about graphics. This forces you to wonder of how much of what he says is his honest opinion, and how much is designed solely to cover up weaknesses in his company's products.

For example, rather than acknoweldging that there are many valid ways to perform anisotropic filtering, he makes statements like the following:

That brings me to a point about doing it right, versus cutting corners. Do you know that one of the hardware vendors only antialiases the top and bottom of the screen, but not the middle? That’s because in one of the main benchmarks, Quake3, you don’t see much difference. But, now you know: look for it, and you’ll see it.

Not only is this a ridiculous oversimplification, but do you honestly think someone as bright as Mr. Kirk would think a fast adaptive algorithm is "wrong" while a slow, brute force approach is "right"? Even as he admits that with Quake 3, "you don't see much difference"? Certainly both methods have their merits - but instead of taking the opportunity to discuss that objectively, he takes a pot-shot at a competitor. It makes you wonder how much of what is attributed to him in interviews is his own true belief, and how much is Nvidia's company line. In any case, I think people have a right to expect more from a Chief Scientist.

[Basic]

Originally Posted by Dr David Kirk

It goes something like this:

DP3 R0, c[11].xyzx, c[11].xyzx;
RSQ R0, R0.x;
MUL R0, R0.x, c[11].xyzx;
MOV R1, c[3];
MUL R1, R1.x, c[0].xyzx;
DP3 R2, R1.xyzx, R1.xyzx;
RSQ R2, R2.x;
MUL R1, R2.x, R1.xyzx;
ADD R2, R0.xyzx, R1.xyzx;
DP3 R3, R2.xyzx, R2.xyzx;
RSQ R3, R3.x;
MUL R2, R3.x, R2.xyzx;
DP3 R2, R1.xyzx, R2.xyzx;
MAX R2, c[3].z, R2.x;
MOV R2.z, c[3].y;
MOV R2.w, c[3].y;
LIT R2, R2;

In Cg, the code is 2 lines:

COLOR cSpec = pow(max(0, dot(Nf, H)), phongExp).xxx;
COLOR cPlastic = Cd * (cAmbi + cDiff) + Cs * cSpec;

And first price in the obfuscated PS code contents goes to...

OK, it wasn't that bad. But it's obvious that the PS program is "spiced up" to look more complex than it is.

Why put the prefix '.xyzx' on every place you only use the first three components of a register? Just leaving the register without any prefix would do the same thing, and be the most natural thing to do.

Why does the PS code keep normalizing vectors when the Cg code doesn't, and that's not the only differense in the calculation? (Does Cg have some kind of vector data type that get auto-normalized?)

Why do MOV component by component when you can move any number of components in one instruction?

Why do the 'MAX' instruction when it's already built into the following 'LIT'?

The PS program is kind of an extended version of the first line of Cg code. But that line of code can actually be written in 4 PS instructions. The following line can be written in 3 PS instructions.


Don't get me wrong, I think it's great that we start to see C-like shading languages for home 3D hardware. But if he want to put the message forward then he should show some kind of respect to the readers that is supposed to use it, and do a fair comparison. Even a fair comparison would show that a HLSL is more readable, he doesn't need to overdo it.

Reverend:
You might want to give David Kirk a chance to correct that so he doesn't look stupid. (Or you might not want to do that if you want him to look stupid, that's up to you.)


Update:
I realized where he got the MAX/MOV/MOV/LIT sequence from. That's the sequence you get from the Cg compiler when you tell it to compile pow(max(0,A),B). An assembler programmer would do it in two instructions.

And this is actually a difficult part about writing compliers. It's easy to look at the C-code and expand each part to a few instructions. It's not as easy to see that expanded code from two functions then can be compressed to a fewer instructions. It's possible and it's done in most compilers with optimizations turned on, but it's not easy and it doesn't seem to be done in the cg compiler yet.


Even more update since I read a few more posts:
Regarding this being an "interview". I suppose that most interviews on web sites are done in a DX6/7 style (pre dependant texture reads). It's more like a Q&A where you send a bunch of questions to someone, he thinks about them for a while and sends answers back. And that's it. You might get some clarifications if some answers are unclear, but you don't get a chance for followup questions. (Say if I'm wrong Reverend.)

So it's either a inteview with "question dependancy"=0, or there is no interview at all. And if that's the choices, then I take the limited interview. Because even if it has a high marketing speak factor, it's more likely that there are some interesting bits in there than in a pure marketing document.

[artisan7]

"The workstation vendors do stupid driver tricks to make CDRS go faster, while consumer vendors do stupid driver tricks to make Q3 go faster"
J.carmack..
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

i think this old quote is good to remember for those peoples
who fanatically believe in SOME companies with theirs so called "game benchmarks" or Hardware quality and "features" as the ultimate Truth.

http://www.digit-life.com/articles/gf4/index6.html

and i think this is just ONE example of this STUPID tricks john carmack
was saying..

"eficient way of AF" ? no thanks!

good to hear also about the antialiasing trick(cheat) to score better fps in games. Flight Simulators fans will not be very happy to know about
this BELIEVEME!!.
the more customers are aware of this very un-profesional practices
the LESS Videocard companies will be tempted to cheat ,forcing
then to bring Just quality products.

but i think those Stupids ; who dont REmeber the past are condemned to repeat it AGain ... Quake3 "Quackhack" time demo anyone?

Im not saying that Today!! ATI is doing the SAme Stupids! Things
they have done in the past to get higher numbers in timedemos at
the expense of Image quality.

but i hope his next product really Shines! in not only in performance
but in Imagequality without doing STUPID Things like thay have done
in the Past.

So i welcome the comments of ANY!!! scientist or expert in the Industry from ANY company that say the STupids things SOme companies are doing .. and stop them from lying to the public and from doing this AGAIN in the Future..!

At least if we are going to pay very hard earned $400.00 for something we deserve to know the truth about the quality of the product.
dont you think?

[DemoCoder]

Basic, I think the real issue is whether developers want to hand tune vertex shaders to compress them to optimal length, or write in HLSL.

I could show you how ugly C/C++ compiler code looks and argue that "I could hand write 80x86 assembler that is alot shorter", but the number of people willing to do that is small.

I don't think we should require absolutely optimal code in these examples because where do you stop? Some nitpicker is always going to find a way that it could be optimized by yet another method.


Anyway, I think lines of code comparisons are stupid. A terse language is not a readable or maintable one. I personally opt to write expressions over multiple lines and rely on common subexpression elimination in the compiler, since it is more readable to everyone.

I optimize at the last step, and only the code that performs badly.

The real power of HLSL comes from freeing developers from register management and condition label management and introducing structural improvements to allow programs to be decomposed into subroutines, loops, blocks, etc It makes code alot more readable, easy to modify, and checkable by the compiler for correctness.