Game graphics that surpassed Doom3?

[Saem]

Ack, SPARC! No thanks. We're going for more performance, not less. =P Same thing with G3 of the days.

A stripped down Alpha would be nice -- in terms of the reliability features.

I heard Alpha has one of the cleanest/the cleanest ISAs with very little annoying quirks.

 

[saf1]

Late to a thread, darn it...

Not that it is console related, but when asked what game and/or engine can give the D3 engine a run for it's money...

Well - short answer is anything built on the current Unreal engine. For the most part - it is out now. Therefore, it is the target any new game should shoot for.

By far, and this is a matter of opinion, it is number one. Unreal Tournament 2003 and Unreal 2 push the graphics.

However, there are several games in development that may take the lead. However, Tim Sweeney and company are not resting on their collective rear end. If you read up during Comdex and/or the NV30 launch, then you would have seen a video of these next gen Unreal engine...

http://www.guru3d.com/tech/geforcefx/img/Games/Unreal_GFFX_01.jpg

In short - that alone will give Doom 3 a run for it's money. Soft shadows no doubt. While D3 is still in development - Unreal is moving forward and gaining games.

Who knows what is going to shake out in the end. But between the two - D3 and Unreal + - we will have enough eye candy to last us a while.

And in regards to everquest 2 - it has a lot of potential. The detail is supposed to be insane. They can afford it as it is not a FPS and frame rates are not "THAT" important. Detail like chain links in armor, etc. Will probably look nice. I'm betting the Planetside engine is close to what we will see in EQ2. Nice, but not "Unreal 2" if you will.

My vote goes to the Unreal crew - damn good job so far, and it is out now.
Peace.

 

[Tagrineth]

Ack, SPARC! No thanks. We're going for more performance, not less. =P Same thing with G3 of the days.

I meant it as a joke. And IIRC the SPARC ISA itself isn't that bad, just all of SUN's implementations so far are obviously targeted at stability, not performance, which I think is acceptable considering their target market. And besides, with a professional vid card like Expert3D they don't really need much CPU muscle.

PC coders just don't want to learn the oddities of a new ISA when they're already used to x86.

C++ code that compiles well for x86 might not compile very well for, say, PowerPC.

 

[Fafalada]

PC coders just don't want to learn the oddities of a new ISA when they're already used to x86.

If you can manage x86 though, any half decent ISA should be trivial to learn
But I guess you could argue that from x86 perspective anything half decent is also exceptionally odd :?

C++ code that compiles well for x86 might not compile very well for, say, PowerPC.

That would be a compiler problem though, no?

 

[BoddoZerg]

What really does the CPU need to do besides physics and AI, and maybe some sort of transformation that the vertex shaders can't handle? There's the game code, which should run fine as I really don't think iD is known for bloated code in its games or engines. There also might be some sound processing needed to be done, not too much of a chore.

Doesn't the Xbox have an incredibly powerful sound processor?

 

[archie4oz]

Ack, SPARC! No thanks. We're going for more performance, not less.

Actually the register window arch of SPARC, it does a rather nice job handling context switches and exceptions (something you encounter in heavy multi-user environments and/or if you're dealing low-latency real-time code (something that made SPARC rather appealing in earlier embedded machines).

PC coders just don't want to learn the oddities of a new ISA when they're already used to x86.

You'd be surprised how many really aren't all THAT knowledgeable about x86 (or any other arch)...

x86 might not compile very well for, say, PowerPC.

Hell x86 code compiled against one x86 target may not deliver the most ideal performance against another x86 target either...

If you can manage x86 though, any half decent ISA should be trivial to learn

Very true!

But I guess you could argue that from x86 perspective anything half decent is also exceptionally odd

Hehe, those damn friggen' 3-4 operand ISAs are too darn confusing!

That would be a compiler problem though, no?

True to a degree... But even ICL or VA would have a hard time scheduling and optimizing some code-mixes that were written with a different arch in mind. Of course it's usually when your trying to compile chicken-scratch x86 stuff on a RISC cpu that doesn't have extensive OOE resources to make up for compiler deficiencies that you'll really feel the pain...

OT: Wouldn't this be the perfect time to add your GCC rant to your sig.?

 

[MfA]

AND the P6 line supports SSE.

Mixed blessing, more registers vs superscalar execution with smaller vectors. The Athlon executes 3DNow! instructions with memory references pretty decently, combined with the LSU that makes the hurt of the loss of registers a little more bearable.

 

[Sonic]

Boddo, yes the Xbox has a very powerful sound processor. I don't know of any Xbox games that use the CPU for sound, it's just something that I stated to show that even if the CPU had to do some of the sound it could still run Doom3 run reasonably well.