Codename 'Parhelia'...

[Hyp-X]

On 2002-02-11 21:53, DemoCoder wrote:

I guess I'm just a RenderMan, but I dream of a day when hardware tesselates to micropolygons and the shading language is powerful enough to allow procedural displacement mapping.

You can procedurally "displace" vertices in existing vertex shaders. Actually DM is just a sampled scalar passed to the vertex shader, it's up to the shader to use it for displacing or whatever else it wants to use it for.

Moreover, I dream that the hardware is efficient and tesselates adaptively so that more vertices are created nearer than farer, and that this runs so blazenly fast that you can use it all over the place.

Your dream may come true sooner than you think!

 

[mboeller]

Hi ChrisK and Joe;

If you didn't know already here you can find additional information about the Talisman/Touchstone architecture and a few others too :

http://web.media.mit.edu/~wad/vsp/vspreview.html

Look at node 3 for the Talisman-info.


Manfred

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: mboeller on 2002-02-11 22:23 ]</font>

 

[Nappe1]

wow... :smile:

I was few hours away and did miss all this conversation? :smile:

anyways, AFAIK, Matrox isn't creating so much memory bandwidth limited card than nowadays cards are. I have heard that they have memory bandwidth available as much as 256 bit DDR memory interface would give on running at 300Mhz speed. (makes little bit under 20GB/s) but I have now idea how they are gonna reach that memory bandwidth. There are a lot of possibilities: eRAM, MultiChip, 256bit interface or perhaps QBM/QDR memory?

and couple of more things... first, everyone is talking about making walls and other things with Displacement Maps, but that could be done also with bump maps (does not look so good though.) How about using Displacement maps for generating real time Height Fields?

second, If I have understood right, displacement mapping needs very powerful tesselation unit that is able to read vertice displacement values from bitmap and because of that, it needs to access that bitmap many times during tesselation. Am I right?
if yes, then how about making a "room" on chip for displacement maps so that tesselation unit can access that almost without latencies? (oh well, I could ask this directly too: would be there any advantage placing displacement maps on-chip memory?)


I really don't know if anyone is interested, but IF Matrox has been working with something, we should start seeing things before or at least on GDC. Next event on Matrox calendar is E3 and I don't think they are going to show G550 cards there. :smile:

EDIT: how on earth I was able to do so many typos to single post??



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Nappe1 on 2002-02-11 23:45 ]</font>

 

[Hyp-X]

On 2002-02-11 23:34, Nappe1 wrote:

There are a lot of possibilities: eRAM, MultiChip, 256bit interface or perhaps QBM/QDR memory?

Well, we'll see...
But sometimes the simplest solution is the best. :smile:

How about using Displacement maps for generating real time Height Fields?

If you mean landscapes then yes that's definitely a good application.
Another idea is creating a very high poly model than create a matching low poly one and put the difference in a displacement map. Hmmm, doesn't that approach remind you of something?

second, If I have understood right, displacement mapping needs very powerful tesselation unit that is able to read vertice displacement values from bitmap and because of that, it needs to access that bitmap many times during tesselation. Am I right?
if yes, then how about making a "room" on chip for displacement maps so that tesselation unit can access that almost without latencies? (oh well, I could ask this directly too: would be there any advantage placing displacement maps on-chip memory?)

I doubt it will have comparable bandwidth requirement to simply texturing the object, so I don't see why should it be an advantage putting it on-chip. Actually this can be seen as a powerful geometry compression (like 32:1 !!!) saving a lot of bandwidth. Of course the geometry processing has to be very powerful to handle the amount of vertices/triangles that DM generates.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Hyp-X on 2002-02-12 00:57 ]</font>

 

[Nappe1]

Yes, I really ment Landscapes while I used term Height Fields... :smile:

It has been a such a long time since I used that... (hehe :smile: it was/is known as Height Field on POVRAY 2.0 :smile

 

[Nappe1]

Hyp-X: :smile:

I have been following Matrox Parhelia project almost as long as Bitboys Avalanche project and eventhough their memory bandwidth lacks 15% behind Bitboys one, it is still the best choice from upcoming chips. :smile:

Hyp-X: but what is the simpliest way? maybe 256 Bit bus, but I surely hope that Matrox have found a new way to do it. Otherwise that card is going to be blast off also in the price range, not only in the benchmarks and games.

aww... Who wants to buy All-In-Wonder Radeon? there will be one for sale hopefully pretty soon.

 

[3dcgi]

On 2002-02-12 00:56, Hyp-X wrote:
If you mean landscapes then yes that's definitely a good application.
Another idea is creating a very high poly model than create a matching low poly one and put the difference in a displacement map. Hmmm, doesn't that approach remind you of something?

Yep. They used this technique on Lord of the Rings.

I see displacement maps being used frequently in the future, but their use will be limited in the next few years. I believe landscapes were mentioned in the Matrox presentation from Meltdown. It will probably be a while before we move past bump maps for fine details. Also the actual displacement map probably doesn't need to be a very high resolution. I can't remember what the presentation said about procedural displacement maps, but I think we'll see more procedural landscapes than anything. So texture reads won't be a problem in this case.

 

[Bentarr]

Off-topic warning. Sorry.

Because I think today games have hopelessly low polygon counts. Guess what? It's fillrate/bandwith limited even at 640x480!
- - -
Q3 is fillrate/bandwidth limited so the overdraw is the most likely problem in this case. That's why kyro2 got such high scores.

I´ve said nothing contrary to this. I wrote polygons, not vertices. Misunderstanding, i guess.

On Q3? Well, did you see the nv15 map?
I stopped in one of the very low poly corridor and loaded a bot. I was always able to tell where the bot was just by looking at the framerate. Read: Q3 gets CPU limited with high polycounts.

It's because the high polys was done with BSP, and the game is likely died in routines like collision detection. If high polys would be added just like additional "eye candy" models (not affecting gameplay directly), than no it wouldn't affect framerate much.

Any engine. I have not had a specific one in mind. I know the bunker map and i´ve seen exactly the same thing happen on another map.

What is a "not affecting gameplay direcly" model/object? Should not an engine still check for collision and such on whatever objects, except if you exclude them manually (like "detail" brushes out of the vis-set in Q3)?

 

[Ant]

Actually the G800 was released some time back, it is known as the G550, it is a bastardised shadow of its former self. Simply take Sisoft SANDRA and point it at a G550 and it will reveal its true identity to you!

Matrox screwed up the G800 big time by underfunding it and not fixing serious hardware issues. Whether they can ever recover from that is debatable, I'm not sure if they can, but if they do expect a strong resurgence from them at the top end (don't naturally associate that with gaming) of the market away from the bland OEMness they have been wallowing in for the last few years.

Nappe1 I'm quite interested in how you have been closely following the Parhelia project, have you been leading stealth Ninja operations in Montreal again?

Ant

On 2002-02-11 17:51, ChrisK wrote:
I remember reading about an imminent release of the famous G800 there in late 2000.

 

[NTD]

On 2002-02-13 09:50, Ant wrote:
Nappe1 I'm quite interested in how you have been closely following the Parhelia project, have you been leading stealth Ninja operations in Montreal again?

Well check out his homepage:
http://www.bol.ucla.edu/~rahjr79/ninja.htm

That's him in the middle ;-D

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: NTD on 2002-02-13 10:04 ]</font>

PS. Ya'll do realize I'm only joking...

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: NTD on 2002-02-13 11:11 ]</font>

 

[Ant]

So that's what Nappe looks like, I always imagined him to be blonde haired and blue eyed being a Fin :smile:

 

[muted]

if i wasn't that clumsy i'd probably go down there.. 20 minute drive maybe

but I'D KEEP ALL THE secrets to myself

they're just leaving all the budget/low-end market , they're already big in the video editing , and had the thus useless line of marvel cards axed

 

[Nappe1]

Nappe1 I'm quite interested in how you have been closely following the Parhelia project, have you been leading stealth Ninja operations in Montreal again?

Ant

Ant, Nice to see you here. :smile:

well, I think I should answer here " by reading MURC Crystal Ball forum."

but anyways,
I hear things... but as always, my sources will stay anonymous and I never trust on single source before I found another one confirming things.

Ant, I know that Murc's Crystal Ball -section is something like Reactor Critical (so very good source of rumours, but any facts? maybe some, but you have to read between the lines and after that use Bullsh*t filter and then you might have something for real. )

Still, MURC is something that at least I think being more than just a fan site and it's quality much higher than nVnews or Rage3D. (I have owned Matrox , ATI and nVidia card and after I sold my G400, I just haven't found the same quality things from nVnews nor Rage3D.)

and yeah, I am always on stealth mode and my middle name is "wall"

 

[Dave Baumann]

Most gratuitous use of smilies on the new forum award thus far give to Nappe1!

 

[Johnny Rotten]

If you mean landscapes then yes that's definitely a good application.
Another idea is creating a very high poly model than create a matching low poly one and put the difference in a displacement map. Hmmm, doesn't that approach remind you of something?

Welcome to John Carmacks Doom technology.

 

[Nappe1]

On 2002-02-13 17:39, DaveBaumann wrote:
Most gratuitous use of smilies on the new forum award thus far give to Nappe1!

Dave Baumann: thanks... :rollseyes:

well, enough...

 

[Nappe1]

On 2002-02-13 10:04, NTD wrote:

On 2002-02-13 09:50, Ant wrote:
Nappe1 I'm quite interested in how you have been closely following the Parhelia project, have you been leading stealth Ninja operations in Montreal again?

Well check out his homepage:
http://www.bol.ucla.edu/~rahjr79/ninja.htm

That's him in the middle ;-D

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: NTD on 2002-02-13 10:04 ]</font>

PS. Ya'll do realize I'm only joking...

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: NTD on 2002-02-13 11:11 ]</font>

LOL! :smile:

well, if anyone is interested, my picture can be found from IRC Gallery at http://irc-galleria.net/