New ATi Demo

[Caprice]

Saw at [H]ardocp that ATi has a new Demo out for the X800. Besides the exe there is also Quicktime and MPG.

And a link to AI.implant (The program that made the simulation I guess)
Edit: Didn´t see link on ATi site.

 

[pocketmoon66]

Runs with bug on 9800Pro (with the existing x800 demo wrapper) - shows the shadows only!

You can switch to show ambient occlusion lighting only - you'll see the scene in B&W complete with soldiers, or switch to 'vector' which shows plain coloured soldiers (indicating instance id I guess)

Like a particle system on legs

Anyway, minimum fps arount 34, moslty around 45ish.

Another demo you don't need a X800 for

Oh and the sushi error (for colorless of course )

//=====================================================
// ATI Sushi Error Log Created 6/1/2004 11:51 pm
//=====================================================
[SSGenericAPI_D3D.cpp] (line 1312): No D3D Error message. You might be specifying more than one component on a source register.[oCrowdSkRandom.ssh] (line 288): Error creating Pixel Shader
[Main.cpp] (line 881): Normal Application Exit


Which sounds fixable...

 

[Caprice]

Oh and the sushi error (for colorless of course )

Poor him...more work.

 

[jvd]

hehe it looks nice though

 

[Ostsol]

Yeah, yet another example of what's becoming possible for games.

 

[GraphixViolence]

And to think they managed this without requiring SM3.0 and geometry instancing... go figure.

 

[nAo]

And to think they managed this without requiring SM3.0 and geometry instancing... go figure.

And it shows, it's really slow on my 9800 pro

 

[jvd]

And to think they managed this without requiring SM3.0 and geometry instancing... go figure.

And it shows, it's really slow on my 9800 pro

what are u running a wrapper on it ? Remember this is showing off the x800s not the r3x0 series .

 

[nAo]

what are u running a wrapper on it ? Remember this is showing off the x800s not the r3x0 series .

Yeah, I'm using the wrapper.
The demo doesn't seem to use any heavy shading stuff, just a lot of very low poly animated characters. Very unimpressive, imho.

 

[jvd]

what are u running a wrapper on it ? Remember this is showing off the x800s not the r3x0 series .

Yeah, I'm using the wrapper.
The demo doesn't seem to use any heavy shading stuff, just a lot of very low poly animated characters. Very unimpressive, imho.

it looks nice though. So does it matter in the end I would enjoy a rts made using that tech . Would look better than anything on the market.

 

[rainz]

How you make it run on a 9800 ?

RainZ

 

[ChrisRay]

Gonna try it with the NV35 in just a moment.

 

[ChrisRay]

No Dice on FX 5900 card with the NV3x Fix.

//=====================================================
// ATI Sushi Error Log Created 6/1/2004 8:25 pm
//=====================================================
[AwFn.cpp] (line 3418): D3DAw Error: AwCreateRenderableTexture - Unable to create color texture object
[StartEnd.cpp] (line 2047): Error creating color buffer "cDensity"!
[Main.cpp] (line 881): Normal Application Exit

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

I thought that geometry instancing was going to be a big "wow" visual effect in games that R420 would be lacking in comparison to NV40, but R420 appears to be able to do the same thing.

 

[Caprice]

And to think they managed this without requiring SM3.0 and geometry instancing... go figure.

Next spring there will be a new R500 demo:
Bring it on (23,6MB)

 

[mozmo]

I thought that geometry instancing was going to be a big "wow" visual effect in games that R420 would be lacking in comparison to NV40, but R420 appears to be able to do the same thing.

Geometry instancing removes the cpu bottle neck for rendering lots of enemies, this demo proves nothing about removing cpu bottles necks because the AI of the characters is pathetic, they all run a straight path with slight deviation, they don't stop, shoot at anything, take cover, use team work, they do absolutely nothing. Once you put some *real* AI under the hood and physics watch your fps come to crawling halt.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Geometry instancing removes the cpu bottle neck for rendering lots of enemies, this demo proves nothing about removing cpu bottles necks because the AI of the characters is pathetic, they all run a straight path with slight deviation, they don't stop, shoot at anything, take cover, use team work, they do absolutely nothing. Once you put some *real* AI under the hood and physics watch your fps come to crawling halt.

Well NV40 isn't going to be able help with AI either. I got the impression that geometry instancing isn't about AI, it's about being able to generate a lot of the same thing over and over that are different (ie like flocking). Nvidia demoed it with an asteroid field, which also has zero AI, but sure looks very impressive when it is used to fill an environment.

There's been other speculation at B3D that you would use it for thing like Far Cry's trees and vegitation.

 

[DemoCoder]

Is this demo OGL or DX? Geometry Instancing generally isn't needed on OGL as much.

Anyway, the characters all run at identical speeds, just different positions, and animation frames shifted, which may indicate they are batching several models together.

The only way to really demonstrate whether instancing is saving performance is to use it on a non-canned scene, not one that can be pre-computed (e.g. precomputed paths)

Why are fanATIcs so insistent on downtalking every single NV40 feature, even one that's really a generic efficiency improvement that fixes problems with DX and small batches.

If someone produces a hi-res normal map demo using DXT5 tricks and pixel shaders to do decompression, does this invalidate 3Dc too?

 

[Ostsol]

I think Mozmo's point was simply about reducing the CPU load in general. Still, his mentioning of AI is rather irrelevant, considering we don't know exactly what's involved in the algorithms used.

 

[Caprice]

Bouncing Zabaglione Bros. wrote:

I got the impression that geometry instancing isn't about AI, it's about being able to generate a lot of the same thing over and over

That´s my understanding too:

According to DB:

...the possibility to loop a number of times over the same vertex buffer, and this allows you to create multiple instances of the same object without driver overhead. For example, a forest can be created by supplying the base tree position in the slow stream, the fast stream contains the actual tree model and is looped through for each element of the slow stream.

And: [H]ardopc:

...A good example of this would be in an RPG game where you are controlling a large army, and in that scene the characters all look the same. Instead of having to draw each one separately with geometry instancing the video card could simply draw one of them and copy the rest therefore providing a performance increase.