My my look what ATi is doing......

[Dave Baumann]

(But, how come nobody's denouncing rendermonkey for being bad for the business?)

I don't think there is enough information about it as yet - the potential concerns over the back end and what else it does are probably still there, dependant on the details. However, it seems that there is nothing stopping NVIDIA or anyone else creating their own compiler for the Renderman is there?

 

[LittlePenny]

(But, how come nobody's denouncing rendermonkey for being bad for the business?)

The ATi website says its open, so does this mean anyone can configure the RMonkey compiler for their gfx chip?

 

[KimB]

Actually I was more referring to the fact that it is incredibly unlikely that I'll ever purchase an ATI graphics board, given my good experiences with nVidia's.

And it's certain I won't buy one in the next year or two, as I'm not upgrading my video card for a while yet

 

[RussSchultz]

So i'm guessing "open", when referring to ATI is good and beautiful, but "open" when referring to NVIDIA is evil and vile.

What I really hate (more than fanboys) is hypocrites.

 

[Ailuros]

Actually I was more referring to the fact that it is incredibly unlikely that I'll ever purchase an ATI graphics board, given my good experiences with nVidia's.

And it's certain I won't buy one in the next year or two, as I'm not upgrading my video card for a while yet

In all seriousness -for whatever reason- no one expected otherwise. No offense

 

[LittlePenny]

So i'm guessing "open", when referring to ATI is good and beautiful, but "open" when referring to NVIDIA is evil and vile.

What I really hate (more than fanboys) is hypocrites.

If you are referring to me, let me clarify my position a bit. I am absolutely clueless on the issues of Cg and RenderMonkey. I didn't know NVIDIA advertised Cg as being open, but, my question posted above was unsarcastic and I really would like to know what ATi means by "open"?

 

[Joe DeFuria]

That's OK...Russ is a closet nVidia fan-boy himself, so now that ATI has the clear upper hand, he's just been thrust in defensive mode.

We're going to see a lot of "attitude" changing from both the ATI and nVidia camps going forward....

In any case, I don't like the idea of "multiple" high level shading languages and interfaces. In the ideal world, we'll have one, at most two, universally accepted shading languages. The sytax of which either open or controlled by several IHVs. This is not the case of Cg, nVidia completely controlls the Cg language itself. I don't know what the real deal is with RenderMonkey, or exactly what it is for that matter. So to compare Cg to Rendermonkey in terms of "evilness" at this point is pretty fruitless.

Every hardware vendor should be responsible for creating their own compiler for the OPEN shading language.

 

[Doomtrooper]

So I assume people that are harping about 'fanboys' have no preference for cars, TV'S, Football teams, Hockey teams, Boats...for every person like Russ claiming he is not a fan of anything, I could prove him wrong

I like ATI cards, I have no problem stating that either

 

[Gollum]

First of all I think Rendermonkey as name is cool, and even a stupid name has rarely stopped me from using a good product, considering how many silly named plugins are available out there, I've heard far worse then Rendermonkey too. Looking forward to learn more about Renderman's little primate brother.

I am a little bit curious about the lack of critical comments compared to when the first Cg rumors came up though. Forgive me if I rant a little now, but knowing little about the whole thing has *not* stopped people from mainly talking bad about Cg even prior to its announcement, whole threads were full of "oh this is just going to be so bad for the industry, this will ruin the future of 3D gaming, etc." yet we knew just as little about Cg then as we know about Rendermonkey now. First rumors indicated Cg was suposedly "open", yet most people were (rightfully) very sceptical and argued that open can mean many things, this time the claim about "open"-ness is apparently just accepted though. What I find most amusing though is that suddenly an option like "nobody is stopping company A from doing the same thing as company B, if A doesn't properly support B's products" isn't rising any eyebrows - yet when discussing Cg it was the most horrible thing one could imagine. I realize there is probably a difference between what Cg aims to achieve (game programming environment) and what Rendermonkey will most likely offer (content creation environment?), but a lack of hard facts hasn't stopped critics in the past, so why now? Anyway, everybody of us has some sort of bias, I just find it a bit distracting how large the gap to this board's traditionally more unbiased attitude has become recently ...

Now that my ranting is done I'm gonna hop into another thread and spread some more excitement about the cool new ATI products announced today ...

 

[RussSchultz]

Ahem. Whatever.

I personally don't have a clue whether renderman or Cg is a better shader language, but that really hasn't been debated.

The issue is the vehement, irrational hatred of Cg for certain reasons that apparently don't apply to all products evenly.

Hey, I'm all for calling Cg bad because of all sorts of reasons, but none of the reasons discussed so far wouldn't also apply to rendermonkey, or any other 3rd party, non-consortium developed HLSL. Yet, as Gollum states, we don't have the same outcry.

When something sucks ass on a product from a company that you seem to have a vendetta against, suddenly becomes "ok" when your favorite company does something similar, that is what I call hypocritical.

Feel free to have a sports team you support, but don't bag on the Cowboy's teammembers for being thugs and keep your trap shut when a member on your team ends up in jail for bar fighting or worse.

I'm not claiming to have no inclinations or preferances, but I will state that I don't trump up some irrational hatred for a company and lambast them at every turn, then turn a blind eye for the same thing on my favorite company.

Yes, I've owned more NVIDIA cards than anything else (I guess...Trident, Tseng, Matrox G200, Savage4, Voodoo3, GF2MX, GF3, GF2MX for the wife's computer). Yes, I prefer Intel Motherboards over VIA; Yes, I don't like Macs.

But I'll assure you, I'll call a spade a spade, and I certainly won't talk out of both sides of my mouth. If I do, feel free to call me on it and I'll fess up.

But talking about the R300. I like the MS + AF approach. Quincunx looks like arse in games where you have a hud or text(especially on the LCD monitor I have). A shame the damn thing costs $400, which I find way too expensive for any product. (And no, I bought the GF3-200 when it was $199 and even that was just a tad too expensive for my tastes)

I'll personally wait until somebody gets a product out that is less than $200 before I get too interested in upgrading to DX9 capabilities.

 

[Doomtrooper]

ATI didn't write a complete HLSL, they chose a plugin for popular rendering software like Renderman and Maya..there is a big difference here...this isn't a 'C' language.
As I said before Type and Geeforcer can eat their words this time around

 

[Joe DeFuria]

I personally don't have a clue whether renderman or Cg is a better shader language, but that really hasn't been debated.

Probably because from what I can tell, Rendermonkey is NOT a new HLSL. (Maybe that's part of it? I haven't seen any evidence of that yet though). And that's the point. In fact, I read that ATI will be developing a compiler for renderman. That seems more of an industry friendly thing to do compared to creating a separate language like Cg.

Now, AFAIK, renderman is not really suited for real-time gameing type applications. But then again, I haven't seen ATI promote ANY type of Cg like langauge, app designed for gaming purposes. Everything I've read so far is more about professional type applications.

The issue is the vehement, irrational hatred of Cg for certain reasons that apparently don't apply to all products evenly.

My objection to your "objection", is that you are treating Cg and "Rendermonkey" as identical products from two different vendors. IMO, this does not appear to be the case. I see no evidence so far that ATI is promoting their own proprietary shading language.

And to be clear, I don't "hate" Cg. I do dislike the fact that nVidia is promoting it, while retaining full control over the language itself.

 

[Dave Baumann]

Hey, I'm all for calling Cg bad because of all sorts of reasons, but none of the reasons discussed so far wouldn't also apply to rendermonkey, or any other 3rd party, non-consortium developed HLSL. Yet, as Gollum states, we don't have the same outcry.

Well, I think partly its because we’ve already had the outcry to a certain extent (and my initial thoughts on the subject are detailed in there) and we still don’t have that many details on RenderMonkey. However, to me providing a compiler for RenderMan, a recognised and industry used language, seems to be a reasonable place to start rather than an new generated language, doesn’t it? The issues surrounding the compiler themselves and what it compiles to (I believe they mentioned R300 Assembler – is that DX9, OpenGL with R300 extensions or ATI’s own R300 specific assembly code?) could wel be an issue, but going for a well recognised language such as renderman doesn’t prevent anyone else creating their own compilers for the language either.

 

[Joe DeFuria]

I'll personally wait until somebody gets a product out that is less than $200 before I get too interested in upgrading to DX9 capabilities.

IMO, The DX9 capabilities are simply a (very) nice "extra". The real benefit is the step change in perofmance (and potentially quality as well) with aniso and AA. So, this board will give a serious upgrade in USABLE features OOTB.

Unlike the situation that 3dfx faced with the VSA-100, nobody really needs to be "convinced" about the benefits of AA and advanced filtering.

 

[Ailuros]

nobody really needs to be "convinced" about the benefits of AA

Remains to be seen then how many will need to get "convinced" with the benefits of Multisampling eh?

 

[Gollum]

Unlike the situation that 3dfx faced with the VSA-100, nobody really needs to be "convinced" about the benefits of AA and advanced filtering.

Yup, that and now you actually have really playable framerates with 4xFSAA enables, whereas a V5 still struggled performance-wise...

 

[nggalai]

Can't we postpone this rather silly Cg vs/ RenderMonkey war until at least after Siggraph? I think it's a save bet we all will know more by then.

ta,
-Sascha.rb

 

[RussSchultz]

IMO, The DX9 capabilities are simply a (very) nice "extra". The real benefit is the step change in perofmance (and potentially quality as well) with aniso and AA. So, this board will give a serious upgrade in USABLE features OOTB.

Unlike the situation that 3dfx faced with the VSA-100, nobody really needs to be "convinced" about the benefits of AA and advanced filtering.

"Luckily" for me, I have an LCD monitor, so I'm resolution limited to 1024x768. Additionally, I've been playing non-FPS games so I haven't had performance envy lately (NWN performs well enough on what I have now), or at least not strong enough to get me out of my budget and upgrade. Maybe in a few months when I get hooked on another game that needs the performance (4x+AF at 1024x768 with high frame rates) I'd consider it, but $400 is still too expensive for me--for a NVIDIA part, or a Matrox part, of an ATI part. Whatever it is will have to be under $200.

If I had been holding my breath and saving my pennies awaiting on an upgrade from a GF2MX for two years now, I might consider it. But, I haven't--I cracked my piggy bank on the GF3 when Tribes2 came out. Its only been about 6 months or so. Tough to sell that to the wife.