bezier patches will never(*) be used, the chief reason being
A/ they dont give as much control to the artists as fixed geometry does
B/ they are a PITA to work with
C/ patches joining with other patches/geometry leads to sparkle t-splits
D/ theyre not a unified solution, some shapes cant be represented by them
(*)outside of certain game type exceptions, but for FPSs etc no (though q3a used them for arches, though were tesselated to triangles before rendering, FWIW u could see gaps where the arches meet the other geometry, search for T splits or something for the reasons behind this )
heres the first time they were exposed with consumer hardware
http://www.opengl.org/registry/specs/NV/evaluators.txt
they were soon dropped by nvidia, of the 100-200 extensions, this is one of the handfall that got dropped + IIRC it was dropped like within a couple of years, thats how bad it was
A/ they dont give as much control to the artists as fixed geometry does
B/ they are a PITA to work with
C/ patches joining with other patches/geometry leads to sparkle t-splits
D/ theyre not a unified solution, some shapes cant be represented by them
(*)outside of certain game type exceptions, but for FPSs etc no (though q3a used them for arches, though were tesselated to triangles before rendering, FWIW u could see gaps where the arches meet the other geometry, search for T splits or something for the reasons behind this )
heres the first time they were exposed with consumer hardware
http://www.opengl.org/registry/specs/NV/evaluators.txt
they were soon dropped by nvidia, of the 100-200 extensions, this is one of the handfall that got dropped + IIRC it was dropped like within a couple of years, thats how bad it was