Chalnoth said:Keeping FP24 would be bad in a different way than sticking with a dated FSAA algorithm.
Yeah, different in the sense that the first doesn't matter much, if any whatsoever, on software for the foreseeable future, while the second has immediate VAST visible imperfections right now.
Specifically, I think that FP24 in a future video card would place a limitation on the shaders themselves that shouldn't be there.
You haven't even been able to produce a significant example of where 24-bit fp won't have sufficient quality, so why should anyone worry about this?
Before fp24 becomes a real problem, you have already got a shader so slow no current hardware can deal with it in realtime, and in the future that will be true for no hardware a normal person is willing to spend money on (sub-$200 bracket), and stay true for QUITE a while. Years, likely, due to developer slowness and lagging adaption in low-end of PC marketspace.
That you can have some shader somewhere that gives some visible imperfection somewhere at fp24, in what way is that a problem, really? I mean, compared to the glaring banding errors of old with transparent textures and 16-bit frame buffers?
Seems to me you're desperately trying to make a problem out of something that is not a problem at all, really. By the time fp24 has *actually* become a problem, hardware will already have moved on past that point, but NOW is not that point in time. We won't get there for a long while. Hell, we don't have a single title yet built with DX9 in mind and you're worried about shader precision??? You've definitely got your priorities screwed up, dude.