I have seen no indication of the magic of shaders. What games there are that uses texture or vertex programs are decidedly "low key" (for lack of a better word) in terms of their implementation. Yes, performance may still be lacking if developers go overboard with the effects but surely there must be something in games that really show off shaders to great effect other than water surfaces (!).
More than a year on and shaders are unimpressive
- Thread starter Reverend
- Start date
Well, in the PC market a year is too soon to see the impact of shaders. You will have to wait until the bulk of PC graphics support the feature before games can afford to take advantage of it. That's still about two years from now.
Using pixel shaders requires signifigant investment in artwork, and art is already the most expensive part of game development. So you won't see developers adding support for pixel shaders until the improved visual quality is nescessary to sell the game.
On consoles, the PS2's lack of pixel shaders, and difficult-to-program vertex shaders, leads to a similar situation. Only single-platform Xbox or GameCube titles can afford to use pixel shaders.
You might try looking at Xbox games - some of them have good pixel shader effects. For example, many upcoming fighting games are using dot3 bump mapping. Halo's interior surfaces use a bunch of pixel shader effects. Several games use pixel shaders for pretty good looking grass, water & fur.
As for PC games, DOOM3 shows off pixel shaders pretty well, I think.
Using pixel shaders requires signifigant investment in artwork, and art is already the most expensive part of game development. So you won't see developers adding support for pixel shaders until the improved visual quality is nescessary to sell the game.
On consoles, the PS2's lack of pixel shaders, and difficult-to-program vertex shaders, leads to a similar situation. Only single-platform Xbox or GameCube titles can afford to use pixel shaders.
You might try looking at Xbox games - some of them have good pixel shader effects. For example, many upcoming fighting games are using dot3 bump mapping. Halo's interior surfaces use a bunch of pixel shader effects. Several games use pixel shaders for pretty good looking grass, water & fur.
As for PC games, DOOM3 shows off pixel shaders pretty well, I think.
That's because developers are just now hitting DX7 level support in their games. Look at hardware T&L on consumer boards. . .we've had that for almost 3 years now and I think game geometry is still scaling alongside CPU speed increases rather than video chip capabilities.
But was your post more concerned with the limited developer support for emergent (god is this word over-used these days or what?) technologies or the artistry with which a limited handful of games have made use of the technology?
But was your post more concerned with the limited developer support for emergent (god is this word over-used these days or what?) technologies or the artistry with which a limited handful of games have made use of the technology?
I didn't say the number of games but the implementation. Kinda like John's use of the word artistry.
duffer, you said DOOM3 shows off shaders pretty well. You seen it running? I have (quite certain it's not the same one as at E3 tho'... older stuff) and it (shaders specifically) is not great.
duffer, you said DOOM3 shows off shaders pretty well. You seen it running? I have (quite certain it's not the same one as at E3 tho'... older stuff) and it (shaders specifically) is not great.
Doomtrooper
Veteran
Although first person shooters seem to be the most popular style game in the community I think games like Diablo and Wing Commander series (space sim) could really use Pixel Shader effects.
Until developers start designing games for the GeForce3 as the minimum spec, I don't see how we're going to see very large strides taken.
Consider this. Only now, in the upcoming DOOM3 and Unreal-engined games, are we finally going to see some games that are designed with the original GeForce as the minimum spec. In other words, only in these games are we finally going to be able to see the use of these video cards to their fullest.
It's going to be another two years, in all liklihood, before any games come out that require DX8 as their minspec. But by then, we'll be crying for the widespread usage of newer features.
Right now, I think the #1 difference we'll notice with games that are designed with the GeForce3 as the minspec will be dynamic environments. We should finally have games with living environments. Models won't just look like strung-together limbs and such, but should actually be able to show off cool effects like flexing muscles and the like. Of course, this is a ways off, but it will be very impressive.
Consider this. Only now, in the upcoming DOOM3 and Unreal-engined games, are we finally going to see some games that are designed with the original GeForce as the minimum spec. In other words, only in these games are we finally going to be able to see the use of these video cards to their fullest.
It's going to be another two years, in all liklihood, before any games come out that require DX8 as their minspec. But by then, we'll be crying for the widespread usage of newer features.
Right now, I think the #1 difference we'll notice with games that are designed with the GeForce3 as the minspec will be dynamic environments. We should finally have games with living environments. Models won't just look like strung-together limbs and such, but should actually be able to show off cool effects like flexing muscles and the like. Of course, this is a ways off, but it will be very impressive.
Reverend said:
I've only seen DOOM3 running live at E3. I don't know how earlier builds looked. Have you looked at the various videos of the E3 demo that are floating around the net? Did they look impressive to you? If not, why not? Was it that detailed models and environments just aren't compelling to you?
If it comes down to just not liking the art style of recent games that use shaders, I think we can all agree that a shaderless game with good artwork beats a shader-using game with poor artwork.
Btw, I just have to say that one thing that will contribute greatly to the use of newer hardware more quickly is the use of more scalable features. Things like Higher-order surfaces and programmable pipelines are going to go a long way in helping games to use newer features more quickly.
Well, with collision detection, it's already pretty much necessary to have lower-poly models just to test collisions, so that's not a huge issue (Such lower-poly models should be relatively easy to generate automatically at design time...). With shadows, I reasonably certain that you can do full hardware shadows on GeForce3 hardware, so that shouldn't be an issue either.
Johnny Rotten
Regular
Doom3's perpixel lighting model is shader based. And if the Doom3 demo wasnt impressive to you its time to find a new hobby. 
Actually, DOOM3's minspec is still the original GeForce. All of the shadowing effects and such will still be fully-visible on the original GeForce. As for the extent to which pixel shaders improve the visuals, I don't know. However, I'm fairly sure that the pixel shaders, even in DOOM3, don't improve image quality, just performance.
I have not seen the E3 video (I'm on dial-up). Can't comment on shader effects from the various E3 screenshots. What I experienced was something done quite a number of months ago (possibly solely for showing off to faithful id engine licensees) and while the DOT3, the lighting, the animation, the models and having bumps almost throughout really was eye-opening, I saw no other shader effects that was particularly impressive. Perhaps the E3 demo is very different (how big is the video file again?? Is it of good enough quality?).
duffer is possibly right regarding artwork but that wasn't what I meant by being unimpressed by shader effects.
duffer is possibly right regarding artwork but that wasn't what I meant by being unimpressed by shader effects.
Do you mean special effects?
The ultimate purpose of pixel shaders is to do lighting calculations that used to be done at the vertices and interpolated to be done on a per-pixel basis, and to mimic some material properties procedurally rather than use static textures.
RenderMan is the ultimate "shader" language. Can Rev point to some favorite RenderMan shader that he deems as "impressive"?
The ultimate purpose of pixel shaders is to do lighting calculations that used to be done at the vertices and interpolated to be done on a per-pixel basis, and to mimic some material properties procedurally rather than use static textures.
RenderMan is the ultimate "shader" language. Can Rev point to some favorite RenderMan shader that he deems as "impressive"?
Hellbinder
Banned
ok, since Dot3 has been available LONG before programable shaders... Why are you guys pulling a feature like this out and saying looky looky.
Doing Dot3 shading was not the bill that sold the public on Pixel shaders. We are supposed to be seeing ultra realistic surface effects, and dynamic real time reflections etc.. AS it is most of the dot3 effects seen today could easily be approximated if S3TC was actually beign used as intended by its creators.
BTW, an origional GeForce will no more run doomIII than i could flap my arms and fly to the moon. GF3 is said to be about 30fps average. a GF1 will be a stinking film strip.
Doing Dot3 shading was not the bill that sold the public on Pixel shaders. We are supposed to be seeing ultra realistic surface effects, and dynamic real time reflections etc.. AS it is most of the dot3 effects seen today could easily be approximated if S3TC was actually beign used as intended by its creators.
BTW, an origional GeForce will no more run doomIII than i could flap my arms and fly to the moon. GF3 is said to be about 30fps average. a GF1 will be a stinking film strip.
