Quoting Demirug on HL2

[Unknown Soldier]

OK, here we go.

This informations are from Gary McTaggart (senior software engineer at Valve) and part of a Q&A for the german PC Games Hardware magazin.

There will be two new modes that kann be used with the "Lost Coast" Level: Best Quality and Lower Quality.

For Best Quality you will need a chip with:
- FP16 filtered textures
- FP16 targets with alpha blend support.
- SM 3.0

For Lower Quality:
- FX16 filtered textures
- SM 2.0

In both cases the lighting informations are stored in textures with higher range (FX16 for lower; FP16 for best) Best will use FP16 targets, too.


IMHO I am still not sure if I want to call the "Lower Quality" Mode a HDR Mode. It looks more like a common bloom postprocessing with a FX16 lightmap.

Does this mean that the the R520 will start supporting FP16? I thought they weren't gonna support lower than 24FP?

US

 

[bloodbob]

I kind of doubt they would support FP24 blending if the only reason would be that it uses 50% more memory bandwidth. Don't get confused with shader precision. If you really need FP24 blending then you probably won't have that many transparent triangles ( probably a single full screen quad ) and you could emulate it with shaders.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Ahh .. ok thx

US

 

[Xmas]

Does this mean that the the R520 will start supporting FP16? I thought they weren't gonna support lower than 24FP?

US

Don't confuse shader precision with texture/render target precision. ATI does already support FP16 and FP32 for textures and render targets (without filtering/blending). But not in the shader.


I guess the lower quality mode won't run on NV4x because it supports only one- and two-channel FX16 textures and no FX16 render target.

 

[Demirug]

Does this mean that the the R520 will start supporting FP16? I thought they weren't gonna support lower than 24FP?

US

Don't confuse shader precision with texture/render target precision. ATI does already support FP16 and FP32 for textures and render targets (without filtering/blending). But not in the shader.


I guess the lower quality mode won't run on NV4x because it supports only one- and two-channel FX16 textures and no FX16 render target.

McTaggart didn't say anything about FX16 render targets he only talk about FX16 textures. Additional he say that in Lower Quality they have no overbright information for the bloom as in Best Quality.

 

[Geo]

Would it be fair to assume that "lower quality" is aimed at X8xx line and mid/low-rangy GF6 cards, while the higher quality is aimed at top-of-the-line GF6, R520, and that-nv-card-we're-not-quite-100%-sure-what-to-call-but-is-probably-G70?

 

[ANova]

Would it be fair to assume that "lower quality" is aimed at X8xx line and mid/low-rangy GF6 cards, while the higher quality is aimed at top-of-the-line GF6, R520, and that-nv-card-we're-not-quite-100%-sure-what-to-call-but-is-probably-G70?

Yes

 

[pat777]

Does this mean that the the R520 will start supporting FP16? I thought they weren't gonna support lower than 24FP?

US

Even if R520 did support FP24 blending, I doubt Valve has an R520 to test it on.

 

[Geo]

Does this mean that the the R520 will start supporting FP16? I thought they weren't gonna support lower than 24FP?

US

Even if R520 did support FP24 blending, I doubt Valve has an R520 to test it on.

If Valve doesn't have an R520 by now, I'd be deeply, deeply alarmed.

 

[ZoinKs!]

I've been waiting for more technical info about hl 2's hdr method. I figured they'd have a sm 2 method that'd basically be bloom on steroids.

It'll be interesting to see what they look like--- anyone know which method was used in the recently released vids?

 

[squarewithin]

It'll be interesting to see what they look like--- anyone know which method was used in the recently released vids?

I've got a lot of experience with tonemappers. Care to send me a link and I can tell you. Though, chances are very high it's basically the same one that is in the DirectX SDK, ie. global tonemapper portion of Reinhard Photographic, with some blooms stuck in at the end for good measure.

 

[Pete]

sw, it's the Apr 26, 2005 'Lost Coast' file toward the bottom of this page.

 

[_xxx_]

If Valve doesn't have an R520 by now, I'd be deeply, deeply alarmed.

Why? I see nothing alarming about that.

 

[squarewithin]

sw, it's the Apr 26, 2005 'Lost Coast' file toward the bottom of this page.

Hrmm... actually that's hard to tell. By my logic, the point of a tonemapper is to bring a large dynamic range down to one small enough to be displayed. This means on the by and large that you shouldn't have the large washed-out areas. The Reinhard TM does have a wash-out constant for the brightest value that will be mapped into the viewable range. They may be setting that low for effect (something I think is really self-defeating). Overall, I'm uncertain of what exactly they are using, they didn't show much of how the exposure adjusts itself, other than the dimming the sun, and they appeared to put some hard breaks on how much it changes.

 

[neliz]

If Valve doesn't have an R520 by now, I'd be deeply, deeply alarmed.

Why? I see nothing alarming about that.

With AMR being "launched" at computex and ati wording that AMR would be launched after R520 .. that would be "alarming"

Now, I have no doubt whatsoever that Valve has R520 boards, but it would be easier to just e-mail valve, a lot of them are really really open to e-mails.
a "I can't tell you anything about that" would indicate a full yes..

 

[Blazkowicz]

the "FX16 textures mode" should be usable with fsaa, so it may end up looking better

 

[Apple740]

Yeah, but will R520 support FSAA icw FP16HDR?

 

[Pete]

You mean FP16 blending? I'm not sure why the question. Do you know that G70 will offer AA w/FP blending (unlike NV4x)?

Edit: I dunno, either. I was asking if you did.

 

[Apple740]

You mean FP16 blending?

Yes

Do you know that G70 will offer AA w/FP blending (unlike NV4x)?

Is that a question to me or a statement/fact from you?
Me, i don't know.