New SpeedTree Demo

[Apoc]

SpeedTree has published a new demo: "Trees of Pangaea". Extracted from the frontpage of NvNews

"Interactive Data Visualization (IDV) has released the Trees of Pangaea demo, which contains seven of the most stunning environments ever seen in real-time. Built with SpeedTreeRT v1.7, which is scheduled for release in September 2004, Trees of Pangaea reflects a quantum leap over older SpeedTreeRT demos.

Amazing lighting effects, unparalleled global and local wind behavior, and trees and plants in unprecedented numbers stretching for as far as the eye can see — this is what all the best games are going to look like soon. Features enabled with the help of NVIDIA technology include:

* Uses instancing when available (currently GeForce 6 Series cards only)
* Shader Model 2.0 vertex and pixel shaders for local and global wind, shadows, and sunlight effects
* Numerous shadows techniques
* Volumetric fog
* Bump mapped barks"

Link

Currently downloading (slow downloading, also downloaging more stuff). Has anyone tested it?

 

[Inane_Dork]

Yes, I have. The trees look quite nice. The only thing not there is how it will look/run with more than 8 trees on-screen. I seemed to get around 45 fps or so from this 9800 PRO.

 

[Apoc]

Yes, I have. The trees look quite nice. The only thing not there is how it will look/run with more than 8 trees on-screen. I seemed to get around 45 fps or so from this 9800 PRO.

It's faster than I expected. Later I will try it on my 9500 with 256 bits mem (core 398, mem 620)

 

[Pete]

Ignorant/silly Q: why no instancing for ATi cards, if it only seems to use SM2.0? Is this just a question of time?

 

[Neeyik]

From the DX9 SDK:

"Draw Multiple Instances of Geometry More Efficiently
Given a scene that contains many objects that use the same geometry, you can draw many instances of that geometry at different orientations, sizes, colors, and so on with dramatically better performance by reducing the amount of data you need to supply to the renderer.

This technique uses two vertex buffers: one to supply geometry data and one to supply per-object instance data. Instancing requires a device that supports vs_3_0. Because the Microsoft Direct3D runtime software vertex-processing implementation supports vs_3_0 (without the best performance available with a hardware implementation), you can use instancing with software vertex processing (see D3DCREATE_SOFTWARE_VERTEXPROCESSING). This style of instancing, which uses a vertex buffer for geometry and a vertex buffer for the instance data, is not supported in the fixed function pipeline but is available in vs_2_0 and vs_3_0 (though, again, only on devices that support vs_3_0). For more information, see Drawing Multiple Instances of Geometry Efficiently."

 

[tEd]

From the DX9 SDK:
but is available in vs_2_0 and vs_3_0 (though, again, only on devices that support vs_3_0).[/i]"

8)

 

[Skinner]

Well I think I have some serious problems with my rig, and I kept it so nice and clean..

I cann't get this thing running with my X800XT PE and cat 4.9. I have reinstalled a fress dx9c runtime, but I keep on getting the message; "could not initialize d3d" blabbla

Does someone else with cat4.9 and a X800 get this running? or is something wrong, I couldn't get shadermark running either

 

[tEd]

Well I think I have some serious problems with my rig, and I kept it so nice and clean..

I cann't get this thing running with my X800XT PE and cat 4.9. I have reinstalled a fress dx9c runtime, but I keep on getting the message; "could not initialize d3d" blabbla

Does someone else with cat4.9 and a X800 get this running?

yes it works here with cat 4.9(x800pro) but for some odd reason it chooses my second output device as the main one which means it only runs on my 15" monitor

 

[Skinner]

Well I think I have some serious problems with my rig, and I kept it so nice and clean..

I cann't get this thing running with my X800XT PE and cat 4.9. I have reinstalled a fress dx9c runtime, but I keep on getting the message; "could not initialize d3d" blabbla

Does someone else with cat4.9 and a X800 get this running?

yes it works here with cat 4.9(x800pro) but for some odd reason it chooses my second output device as the main one which means it only runs on my 15" monitor

Thanks, I guess I have to do some formatting

 

[karlotta]

runs great, X800 XTPE.

 

[Inane_Dork]

Ignorant/silly Q: why no instancing for ATi cards, if it only seems to use SM2.0? Is this just a question of time?

The easiest way to use instancing in D3D is the official way, and that way only works for GF6 cards (at the moment). You can get some of ATi's cards to do the feature, but you have to take a circuitous (sp) route to get there.

Whether they plan on working that hack or not I don't know. You'd have to ask them.

 

[Ostsol]

Ignorant/silly Q: why no instancing for ATi cards, if it only seems to use SM2.0? Is this just a question of time?

The easiest way to use instancing in D3D is the official way, and that way only works for GF6 cards (at the moment). You can get some of ATi's cards to do the feature, but you have to take a circuitous (sp) route to get there.

Correction: the easiest way to detect instancing support is the official way. Usage of the feature is exactly the same for all hardware that supports it.

 

[Sxotty]

Ostol, could we change the device id on the ATI cards then to make it think they were nvidia cards and it would then work?

I have a x800XT by the way.

 

[Inane_Dork]

Correction: the easiest way to detect instancing support is the official way. Usage of the feature is exactly the same for all hardware that supports it.

Really? Excuse me, then. I thought it took a different path.

 

[CMAN]

It runs good on my 6800 GT. I did notice that there was tearing since VSYNC was off. Also, occulsion culling (spelling?) was very buggy. It would mess up textures and trees that should have been rendered. Other than that, it is cool to play around with the helicopter.

 

[SsP45]

The demo won't start for me either. I'm running a 6800 GT with the 66.00 drivers and DirectX 9c and it gives me the can't initialize D3D error.
________
Volcano Classic

 

[Ostsol]

Correction: the easiest way to detect instancing support is the official way. Usage of the feature is exactly the same for all hardware that supports it.

Really? Excuse me, then. I thought it took a different path.

Nope. The spec bundles instancing with SM3.0, even though there is no part of SM3.0 that instancing requires. In fact, it works with any vertex shader version. Based on the spec, the normal way to detect instancing would be to check for SM3.0 support. ATI does not currently have SM3.0 support, but does support the exact same instancing feature that NVidia does. The only difference is that one has to use an alternate method to query for support. Humus wrote an instancing demo, not long ago. It works on both ATI and NVidia cards using the exact same rendering code.

 

[Pete]

Neeyik and Inane Dork, I was basically asking if ATi would have to proactively encourage SpeedTree, rather than leaving it up to SpeedTree to patch things. I was mostly sure that ATi supported instancing in hardware, if not in device caps (as Ostsol pointed out, and I'm sure Neeyik knows [he just didn't know I knew =)]). My point was that as this demo doesn't otherwise use SM3, I don't see why SpeedTree didn't include an extra line to detect ATi's cards/FourCC hack, unless this is a nV-sponsored project a la CodeCreatures, etc.

 

[karlotta]

well i did get it from nvidas site... so ya thats why Pete.

 

[radiATIon]

Downloading now........40 min more..