3D tech preferences

[Reverend]

Of all the available techs, which one(s) do you find most exciting and why?

We'll probably need to separate this into programmers' POV and that of the "layman" (no disrespect intended).

I ask here only because talking to the devs I know invariably results in responses that seem to me to be politically correct, so to speak.

 

[Tagrineth]

Hmm. Intriguing question.

Probably the number one 3D technology overall would have to be tile-based rendering... hey, it allows a TNT2-spec card to keep pace with GeForce2 GTS cards. ^_^

 

[tkopp]

From the layman's perspective:

FSAA, texture filtering, truform, and other technologies that can increase the visual quality in games today. As a consumer I'm hard-pressed to see any need for a DX8-class video card today, and how long have the Geforce3s been around? We're almost to DX9! So the improvements that get me excited are those that don't have to wait so long for implementation. Either hardware methods to improve speed (bandwidth, fillrate, TBR, embedded ram, etc) and quality (FSAA, 64-bit color, mipmapping methods, etc), or technologies that can be implemented quickly by game designers (truform).

 

[pcchen]

I was pretty excited by DX8 pixel shader 1.4 when it first appeared. It's a right step from the messy pixel shader 1.1.

Other "exciting" techs available now to me includes DX8 vertex shader 1.1, high degree anisotropic filtering, and high speed 4X FSAA at 1024x768 32bpp.

I am eager to see OpenGL 2.0 and higher precision textures.

 

[nooneyouknow]

Higher-precision textures + PS 2.0 (and beyond) are an awesome combination. Especially when you start to realize that a texture is a look-up table. The possibilites are almost endless :smile:

 

[pascal]

layman´s opinion: OpenGL 2.0

Well developers will have a lot more freedom.
- Most will not know what to do with it, but will say they are doing something cool.
- Some will do something cool.
- Few will just do unbelievable things (guess who).

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: pascal on 2002-02-28 20:18 ]</font>

 

[Matt]

Two things that has made my gaming awesome:

FSAA and anisotropic filtering.

Funny thing, I actually put down FSAA at first, didn't think it was that great. I was in the "1600x1200 is better anyways" camp, but when I got the GeForce2 Ultra to review and started using it, I found that if I turned it off, I would go "ewwwwwww!" Then I felt really bad that I would put down 3dfx fans for praising FSAA all the time, because they were right, and they had an even better implementation over the one I was using.

Anisotropic filtering was a stunner. I didn't think it was going to be all that, but after using 64-tap anistropic filtering on a GeForce3 and turning it off, same with FSAA: "ewwwwwww!!" :smile:

How's that for layman terms?

 

[multigl]

i was fairly excited about Pixel Shader 1.4, 1.1 is nice, but 1.4 is definitely a bigger step to what we all really want :smile:. I am fairly excited about displacement mapping, not so much as implemented in DX9, but the possibility of what it can become.

From a gamers perspective, i am the most excited about NVIDIA's accuview.

 

[Humus]

As a developer:

Fragment shader are among the coolest thing yet. :smile: Can't wait for the next step in generality with conditionals and loops, that will allow me to collect an arbitrary number of lights into the same pass with just one shader. That will remove some of the limitations on translucent surfaces too. Arbitrary dependent texture reads ala Radeon 8500 is must for the future, perhaps extended to allow perpixel mipmap selection in a sensible way.

API cleanup, OpenGL 2.0 looks really cool and solves most problems with the current API and all of it's extensions with their own interfaces. It's very uniform and it's "objectification" of everything rox! :smile:

Displacement mapping, looks very cool, will probably usually be combined with dot3 for finer bumps.

As a gamer:
Bumpmapping, both dot3 &amp; embm. I've waited long to get something like this into games, but in all real games I've tried that have some sort of support for bumpmapping the implementation have sucked. Doom3 will probably have the first real implementation.

 

[Nappe1]

as a programmer: well I must say that from my point of view it is definately HW T&amp;L. my 3D programming skills are rather limited and bad, but HW T&amp;L made things relly run fluently.

as a Gamer: as enthuasm of car and racing games, I must admit that 1nsane's great multitexturing engine was fantastic. Also Rally Trophy's reflection maps and mostly Cubic Mapping impressed.

What I am waiting? well, Displacement Maps and fps hit free FSAA.

 

[DemoCoder]

Developer:

Stanford's Real Time Shading Language, or something similar implemented in either OpenGL2.0 or DX9.

Higher precision.

More, more, speed for higher samples per pixel higher multipass. (temporal multisampling -- motion blur, soft shadows, depth of field)

Displacement mapping.

Gamer:
No tech. Just drop legacy and make 1Ghz GF3/ATI 8500 the "minimum" platform. That would do more to boost the quality of today's games than all the tech in the world. I want developers to start designing for today's tech! DX9/OpenGL2.0 will just increase the balkanization further for the moment.

 

[Nexiss]

Programmer:
Looking forward to OGL2.0 and pretty much all the other stuff the other programmers have already mentioned.

 

[Humus]

As a maya users:
More than 8 simultaneous hardware lights :smile: