SwiftShader

[Zaphod]

We had to break with the SourceForge projects to prevent it from influencing the TransGaming products. Sure people can place the source code in a new project with the same license, but what's the point other than offering a backup? The SourceForge projects died about a year ago and nobody seemed to care. I never got any significant contributions even when they were under very active development. Taking things commercial was a natural evolution and the only way forward for this technology.

I completely understand you abandoning the open source development once you sold the tech under a commercial license. I guess something like this is simply too narrow to carry some dual licensing scheme supported only by yourself. I was just wondering about the removal. If someone really wanted to build another (even commercial) ‘competitor’ partly of your tech they still could (keeping the LGPL), so it seemed slightly revisionist and pointless. Especially if there were, as you say, little interest.

Anyway: Good luck with the venture. Could you give some concrete examples with regards to performance? I see that you have included an .ini file for MaxPayne: Any examples of games that can are playable on, say, a typical P-M 1.7 w/Extreme Graphics II that can be run with SwiftShader that can't without it (or can, but shaderless)?

 

[Reverend]

Nick, approximating the RefRast is no longer worth the time nor the resources.

Not to say that I don't find this very impressive!

 

[davepermen]

I understood you weren't talking about remote desktop, but rendering over the network and using components not in the terminal computer reminded me of that. I never did try VNC with my experiments, but it's even slower than remote desktop which is also too slow for video.

uhm, we had nice performance over both here at work. nearly stutterfree.. not for hd-resolutions, but else..

it's more to see like 3dstudiomax or maya, where you press render, and, instead of doing it locally, it transfers to a renderfarm wich does the job. my plan is to do realtime rendering on a renderfarm, instead of, by now, a gpu. as there isn't a gpu giving me (enough?) raytracing power yet.

 

[oeLangOetan]

Does it outperform Pixomatic in UT2003??

 

[darkblu]

congrats, Nick, nice to see your project taking the transition to a commercially-viable product.

so that means the beers are on you now : )

 

[Nick]

Does it outperform Pixomatic in UT2003?

I don't have Unreal Tournament 2003 (and the demo version doesn't support Pixomatic), but you can easily test it yourself using UMark. For Unreal Tournament 2004 the performance varies between 70% and 110%.

Some remarks: Performance characteristics depend a lot on the processor used. On my laptop with a Pentium M 1.4 GHz I've reached 110% in the DM-Rankin map with two bots. On a Pentium 4 Pixomatic has an advantage. But it should be noted that Abrash, Pixomatic's lead developer, has good Intel contacts (as can be read in his Dr. Dobb's articles about Pixomatic). We also never had any contact with the UT2004 developers. So it's possible that UT2004 has Pixomatic specific optimizations in the engine (it has it's own 'driver' PixoDrv.dll). Furthermore, SwiftShader supports more features, so for a fair comparison we have to lower the settings. But then it still renders effects that Pixomatic doesn't (which is limited to two texture samplers), and things like mipmapping quality is higher (we balance between aliasing and blur for per-polygon mipmapping, while Pixomatic only blurs). Last but not least, UT2004 offers no potential for us since it already has a very adequate software renderer. There's only one optimization we did specifically for UT2004, to reduce overdraw, but that will also be reused for the projects of our own clients.

I hope that answers your question.

 

[Nick]

congrats, Nick, nice to see your project taking the transition to a commercially-viable product.

so that means the beers are on you now : )

Cheers darkblu!

Yes, the beers are on me, and not just any beer, Belgian beer! If you come over I'll let you have Duvel, Westmalle, Leffe, Rochefort, Rodenbach, Kasteelbier, Delerium Tremens and Gulden Draak (just to get you started).

 

[3dcgi]

Hi Nick. I'm curious about the business side of your venture. Did you approach Transgaming or did they approach you? If you approached them what made you pick them as a partner?

 

[Nick]

Hi Nick. I'm curious about the business side of your venture. Did you approach Transgaming or did they approach you? If you approached them what made you pick them as a partner?

Gavriel States, TransGaming's founder and CTO, contacted me. He's a great visionary and always believed in the project's commercial viability. And we got in touch at the perfect time because I was looking for an investor and had just released some proof-of-concept demos and a new swShader website. Although I was broke and probably would have signed almost any contract, I must say I can't imagine any better company to help me create a product like SwiftShader.

 

[mboeller]

Something OT I have just seen on TV; but maybe related:

http://www.diepfreundts.de/pv4d/home.html

these guys had to program an software-renderer to display supercomputer results in realtime because GPUs were not fast enough ( to much data ).

 

[Mate Kovacs]

Is my observation correct that SwiftShader doesn't implement the texcrd PS1.4 instruction, or maybe am I just doing something inappropriately?