mjtdevries
Newcomer
Laa-Yosh is right. We are now experiencing the same problems with those videocards as the pre-rendered CG world is still struggling with.
And while a lot of work might be done on tech-demo's it's not likely to be used in games.
You can do a reasonable good cloth simulation on a simple skirt. But anything more complex eats lots of cpu/gpu power. It can also quickly create weird artifacts. '
Same with hair. In Nvidia's techdemo it looks very nice because it streams through water. But on ATI's character you couldn't use it because you would need collision detection and gravity to have it fall correctly on the shoulders and against the head. That gives horrible performance on pre-rendered CG, not the mention the performance hit in games.
You can only use quite short hair, and not too many strands of it. Like has been used in 3DMark03.
The way ATI has made hair is the best option for games in the next couple of years. It is also still the method that is used the most in the CG world.
Actually it can be improved quite a bit when you play around with transparancy maps for the hair. You can see some examples here:
http://secure.daz3d.com/shop.php?op=itemdetails&item=1864
http://secure.daz3d.com/shop.php?op=itemdetails&item=1899
http://secure.daz3d.com/shop.php?op=itemdetails&item=1822
Those are made using the same techniques ATI used, but with some more advanced textures.
I wouldn't mind if the next generation of games used that kind of hair.
And while a lot of work might be done on tech-demo's it's not likely to be used in games.
You can do a reasonable good cloth simulation on a simple skirt. But anything more complex eats lots of cpu/gpu power. It can also quickly create weird artifacts. '
Same with hair. In Nvidia's techdemo it looks very nice because it streams through water. But on ATI's character you couldn't use it because you would need collision detection and gravity to have it fall correctly on the shoulders and against the head. That gives horrible performance on pre-rendered CG, not the mention the performance hit in games.
You can only use quite short hair, and not too many strands of it. Like has been used in 3DMark03.
The way ATI has made hair is the best option for games in the next couple of years. It is also still the method that is used the most in the CG world.
Actually it can be improved quite a bit when you play around with transparancy maps for the hair. You can see some examples here:
http://secure.daz3d.com/shop.php?op=itemdetails&item=1864
http://secure.daz3d.com/shop.php?op=itemdetails&item=1899
http://secure.daz3d.com/shop.php?op=itemdetails&item=1822
Those are made using the same techniques ATI used, but with some more advanced textures.
I wouldn't mind if the next generation of games used that kind of hair.
Maybe they don't show spines and backbones and the likes. 
