Ardrid said:
So does anyone know what the first image was? It seems far to bland to be PS2.0 based.
http://www.presence-pc.com/news/n3625.html
My translation of the author's comments on those screenshots (and remember not to shoot the messenger, since I am in no position to corroborate or refute his claims):
"But NVDA goes further, and demonstrates 4 screenshots from the game FarCry, the first set allegedly using pixel shader 2.0 versus 3.0 for the second. Obviously, if taken at face value, the difference is considerable and we would quickly conclude that this technology provides a significant improvement in image quality in a game that has already been released. Except that several remarks can be made when looking at these screenshots.
Indeed, the image of the statue rendered with shader 2.0 seems to have been rendered without using any shader technology at all, and even without Normal Mapping. The output is therefore visibly not up to par with the capabilities of even the original GeForce.
The screenshot of the staircase using shader 2.0 seems to be of higher quality. From this shot, the rendering of the stones on the wall seem to use Paralax Mapping. This technique can be rendered via shaders 1.X (DirectX 8.X), but is ideally obtained with shader 2.0. The Displacement Mapping used on the left screenshot is only possible using shader 3.0, which would make this consistent. It is therefore more than probable that these shots are authentic, although we cannot state this with certainty. Note that in this case, the difference in quality compared to shader 3.0 is also less. Difficult to investigate this issue further without a GeForce 6800 card to run FarCry.
