Why are games so far behind 3d technology?

[Nagorak]

I think the bottomline is graphics don't make a game.

I'll take a good game over a pretty game any day. Frankly, whether or not it's realistically possible to push the envelope on 3d tech, I'd rather have game designers push the envelope on game play. That's something anyone can enjoy, from a PIII 500 MHz on up.

 

[Humus]

Not only memory, but 3d texture lookups are also, in my experience, rather slow.

In my experience they aren't much slower, but then in like 90% of the cases they are magnified, which means it's not that bandwidth heavy. I can imagine that they slow down stuff a bit when used for materials.

 

[Humus]

3d textures are seldom used for materials, but rather for stuff like vector fields, attenuation maps etc.

You must be speaking for the realtime world only, because the offline world uses 3d textures as mainstream.. Attenuation maps, vector fields, etc.. are never pre-computed but computed by the CPU during rendering.

Yes, of course, only talking about realtime graphic, when I play around with Maya I don't hesitate to use 3d textures for materials as that makes texture placement easier.

Btw, I looked at your webpage and see that you have substantial experience in the realtime graphics world. Never have I seen someone have so many projects done and not actually be working for a company that does those things!

Heh, well, I'll start doing my examination work at ATi in mid-september ...

 

[RussSchultz]

Pardon the language gap, what is "examination work"?

 

[Doomtrooper]

I would take that as a internship or something of that nature..

 

[Basic]

Word for word translation of "examination work" to Swedish is "examensarbete". Translating it back to english becomes "Masters Thesis".
(Assuming that's what Humus is going for.)

Humus: What are you studying? Is it 180p with a 20p "exjobb"?

 

[Humus]

Yeah, it's 180p with 20p "examensarbete" ... I'm calling it "examination work" as it's the direct translation of the words and there's no direct counterpart of this in america afaik. A master thesis and the swedish "examensarbete" isn't really the same thing afaik, and from what I've been told a master thesis is much more extensive and goes on for a much longer time. A normal examination work is about 10 weeks actual work, and 10 weeks for the rest ... like putting together the report, attending a certain number of presentations, do your own oral presentation and provide feedback on others, and other people's reports etc. From what I've been told a master thesis is often a year or two of work, right?

 

[pascal]

I think you are right Humus.

I had one year of graduate class and one year of Master Thesis here in Brazil. It is what we call Master of Engineering degree "Stritu Sensu" (not Master of Science).

In US IIRC only Stanford have what they call the Engineer degree with almost one year of thesis: http://soe.stanford.edu/programs/graduate/graduate.html

The Engineer's degree requires 45 units of course work and research combined, three full-tuition quarters beyond the master's degree, as well as a thesis and usually takes two to three years to complete.

 

[RussSchultz]

So you're going to work for ATI for 10 weeks only?

Or is it 10 weeks with hopes of being hired on permanently?

 

[VFX_Veteran]

They'll pick him up, I'm sure. If not them, then certainly someone else in the gaming or realtime scene.

Good Luck dude! You deserve it!

-M

 

[Basic]

Yes, you're right. There isn't any direct counterpart. But it's still often called a Masters Thesis, since the degree you get after doing it is "Master of Science". The "exjobb" might be smaller than the whole Master, but when you start the "exjobb" you're ahead of someone that's just "graduate". So when you sum it all up, CivIng with 20p "exjobb" is concidered equivalent to Master of Science.
CivIng with 15p "exjobb" isn't enough though.
This is of course if they haven't changed it recently.

Either way, cool "exjobb". And I hope everythig goes your way, and they want you to stay. Yes I'm envious.
Are you permitted to talk about what you're going to do? And in that case, do you want to tell?

 

[Humus]

So you're going to work for ATI for 10 weeks only?

Or is it 10 weeks with hopes of being hired on permanently?

We haven't talked about anything beyond the 10 weeks except that I've stated that I might want to get back there again after my education is done. I'll have to see how things goes over there however before I decide whether to continue (if I they even want me to continue ). After all, pretty much everyone I know lives in Sweden, so chances are that I might wanna stay in Sweden too. I'll see how it feels later on ...

 

[Humus]

Are you permitted to talk about what you're going to do? And in that case, do you want to tell?

Well, I at least haven't been told that I can't, so I assume I can ...
I'll do some kind of help library to ease the process of handling various kinds of graphics related data such as shaders and textures. It should include features somewhat similar to effect files in D3DX, (but better of course ). As a secondary task I'll do few PS2.0/VS2.0 samples.