What became drivers in a game console ?

[barbarella]

hello all,

Drivers are usefull in a PC, and a user can change his GC without having to change the API neither the os, just the driver.

But in a Game console, like X-box, Gamecube, Ps/2, ... what became the driver ? Are they intégrate in the API (mean the API has direct access to the graphic processor) or did Nintendo, Sony MS, ... keep driver ?

 

[barbarella]

Well,

it seems, my question is a little to hard for you all . Ok, what I think is that driver are no more necessary because the API could make direct calls to the graphic processor. BUt i'm not sure if in practice, ms, sony, nintendo did make that.

Anyone, know what really happen to drivers in a console game ?

thx a lot

 

[Tagrineth]

Basically drivers are completely unnecessary in a console.

The purpose of a driver on a PC component is to take generic compiled code and convert it to something the hardware can understand.

Take graphics for example...

When a game developer codes the video engine, they do it using (almost) fully generic OpenGL or Direct3D code (or GLide, in the past).

The video card's driver takes the compiled D3D or OGL calls and interprets them for the video card, translating the generic code into more specific code the core can execute - ATi, nVidia, and PowerVR all apply the same textures via the same code, but the cores themselves actually do the texturing in pretty different ways.

Now, in a console, things are different - Direct3D and OpenGL don't exist (except Xbox, I'll cover that later). So the developer, for all intents and purposes, writes their OWN low-level graphics code, completely bypassing the need for a driver. Or, sometimes, the "driver" will be built into the compiler and packaged on the game medium with the game itself.

Xbox is a little different though... it actually supports and currently ONLY uses DirectX for everything. In this case, drivers are run dynamically by the game itself, and generally an appropriate slightly modified set of system drivers (mostly nVidia, LOL) will be on the DVD itself, with no installation overhead - the files are all already there and marked in the allocation tables.

 

[barbarella]

hello,

thx for your answer .