Discussione about unused old chips features

[Simon82]

What do you think it was the betters but unused old chips features that would change the 3d realtime graphic rendering on pc gaming if supported by sw house or api's?
I'm referring for example to the Truform in hardware technology or the per pixel shading functionality of the NV15, and why not the Tbuffer VSA100 technology.

What was they capable of?

Bye

 

[Simon F]

HW per-pixel translucency sorting?

 

[I.S.T.]

What sucks about Truform is playing old games that support on a 8x00 series card. You'd think it'd have been supported by now...

 

[Simon82]

HW per-pixel translucency sorting?

I don't remember exactly but it supported a sort of programmable pixel shading tech just seen on the paper and never seen on real facts.

Even the Enviromental bump mapping I think it was not used so many times. First images was wonderful compared to old rendered one. I think it was Slave Zero...

 

[Putas]

Tbuffer effects were ugly or not worth the performance hit.
NV15 was too slow for general per pixel lightning.
I remember some not interesting dolphin demo for Truform and never saw anything in real world.

 

[Blazkowicz]

NV15 features were all supported by NV10, the driver that enabled them were launched with the geforce 2 which was marketed with the "new" features.
The one game that uses them is.. Doom 3, which was said in reviews to be playable on the fastest NV1x boards in 640x480 (geforce 2 Ultra, geforce 4MX 440/460), if you disable specular lighting which doesn't have too much of a visual impact.

the "Giga Texel Shading" stuff used are the register combiners, which I remember someone likening it to "pixel shader 0.5".

 

[Simon F]

I don't remember exactly but it supported a sort of programmable pixel shading tech just seen on the paper and never seen on real facts.

I was referring to CLX2 (DC) and the later PMX<can't remember the number> for the (PC). The trans sort feature was dropped from later PC chips because very few developers ever made use of it <shrug>.

 

[Simon82]

NV15 features were all supported by NV10, the driver that enabled them were launched with the geforce 2 which was marketed with the "new" features.
The one game that uses them is.. Doom 3, which was said in reviews to be playable on the fastest NV1x boards in 640x480 (geforce 2 Ultra, geforce 4MX 440/460), if you disable specular lighting which doesn't have too much of a visual impact.

the "Giga Texel Shading" stuff used are the register combiners, which I remember someone likening it to "pixel shader 0.5".

Yeah this feature. I didn't know Doom3 use it|

 

[Davros]

do any games use the d3d version of truform ?

 

[Raqia]

A little off topic but how about the entire T&L unit on Savage 2000 chips heh. I recall that S3TC compression was broken on GeForce 3. Wonder if there were any other hardware mishaps.

 

[Arnold Beckenbauer]

do any games use the d3d version of truform ?

UT2003, Rainbow Six: Raven Shield.

 

[Richard]

Even the Enviromental bump mapping I think it was not used so many times. First images was wonderful compared to old rendered one. I think it was Slave Zero...

Dungeon Keeper supported this on Matrox cards. Haven't played it recently so I don't know if it's used on the current cards.

I recall that S3TC compression was broken on GeForce 3.

It was broken on the NV1x too. Well, DXT1 at least. IIRC, all the other formats were fine.

Npatches were cool. I think I only played a handful of games that supported them (Return to Castle Wolfenstein?).

EDIT: Seems there were more games that used it. Too bad I was using 3dfx/nVidia back then.

 

[Simon82]

One big feature used passively by the software and lot of people probably didn't see the difference, it was the Truecolor 32bit internal palette of the Kyro1/2 at the age when lot of games were coded for 16bit color. I remember the Thief and Thief2 quality compared to a Geforce2 Mx 16bit palette was like passing from an S3 Virge to a Voodoo in Quake.

 

[Davros]

i cant get slave zero working on xp also expendable used ebm
iirc the thrid party opengl renderer for ut also supports truform as does the deusex ogl renderer
its surprising no one has made a sort of wrapper to convert truform calls into the d3d eqiv

 

[swaaye]

Serious Sam and Morrowind have truform support. For Morrowind, you need the FPS Optimizer to enable it.

Dungeon Keeper 2 can use bump mapping on modern cards just by using the command line options to enable it as with G400.

 

[wingless]

I'm still waiting for Tessellation to be enabled in games. I bought a 2900XT and now have a 4870. I feel sorta ripped hehe.

 

[Blazkowicz]

not until directX 11 I guess. games developers probably don't want to create whole geometry assets that can only be used with a particular vendor, so I think tesselation won't be used till nvidia and Intel GPUs on the market support it (and even then it may take a while)

 

[no-X]

One big feature used passively by the software and lot of people probably didn't see the difference, it was the Truecolor 32bit internal palette of the Kyro1/2 at the age when lot of games were coded for 16bit color. I remember the Thief and Thief2 quality compared to a Geforce2 Mx 16bit palette was like passing from an S3 Virge to a Voodoo in Quake.

PowerVR and Matrox suported internal 32bit rendering. 3Dfx suported internal 24bit rendering and only nVidia and ATi used 16bit... But later GPUs (R300-R580) used 32bit anytime MSAA was enabled.

 

[Freak'n Big Panda]

Anybody know what the differences are between 8500 Truform and the tessellation hardware found on the R600? Or is it essentially the same hardware?

 

[Humus]

Truform is fixed function. The R600 tessellator is programmable.