Could PlayStation 4 breathe new life into Software Based Rendering?

Compute based means it's not using the graphics pipeline, just the shaders.

 

Seems like it.
Cannot wait to see their Siggraph presentation, really interesting tech.

 

Where can I find the Siggraph presentations schedule? Also, will there be live video feeds?

 

The course schedule is here. Alex is presenting in the first part of Advances in Real-Time Rendering.

SIGGRAPH doesn't do live video feeds, unfortunately.

 

Proven to work + looks good. Scales well to big scenes. Animation system seems too limited for AAA character animations. They have a fully custom CSG/SDF content production pipeline that is not compatible with existing commercial modeling, texturing and animation softwares. That would be a big problem for wide adaptation in big AAA games.

I love how they abuse the GCN 64 bit atomics for plotting the points to the screen. If I inderstood properly, they pack depth in high bits, pack other stuff in low bits and use 64 bit atomic min to guarantee that the closest point remains. This makes porting to PC hard, since the PC graphics APIs only expose 32 bit atomics.

Too bad we never see how well this would run on Xbox One, as Media Molecule is PS4 exclusive. ESRAM would be perfect for point rendering. Atomics sidestep ROPs (another PS4 advantage). Also 1080p at 64bpp = 16 MB < 32 MB.

 

Suck on that, 32 bit atomic PCs! Oh wait, that's my PC too!

 

They certainly have opened the door to others trying their hand at this by openly sharing though, so I really hope every platform gets a serious attempt at this ...

And looking at what Oculus was doing creating similar 3D sculpting tools and handing them over to real life sculptors, VR is definitely an area where this technology, content creation included, could make it big.

 

My Little Pony Petting Zoo Desert Edition?

 

Maybe I missed it, but anyone not mentioning the utterly phenomenal stuff going on in Resogun (still my go-to game when everything else bores the frack out of me) in this thread, is bonkers. Photo mode in this game should be illegal: stop and navigate through what seems to be millions of voxels/cubes, particles, lights. It's madness.
So you are all bonkers cause you didn't mention this game. Or maybe it just has nothing to do with this thread and I'm the bonkers one.

 

It's the second.

 

Resogun has a photo mode???

 

Yes. Yes, it does. And stopping it while everything is exploding, then going in with full control of the camera with all that stuff floating around, is just insane. Try it.