• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Sm 3.0

As some people have already said, it's not like there are a ton of games out that even support PS2.0 right now and the percent of people that will have PS3.0 capable cards will be pretty small even at the end of this year.

I will keep an open mind on this but I don't want to convince myself to get another video card this year again just because a couple of games actually use PS3.0 features and not just performance optimizations.
 
Yeah, but all PS2.0 games can be upgraded to PS3.0 by a patch. The Far Cry team said it only took 3 weeks to implement it in. So, same or better image quality at faster speeds in not much development time even on existing games. Yep, completely useless technology :rolleyes: .

The sm2.0 speed is so low for the 6800 that enabling sm3.0 will pull it 'up to par'.
Click to expand...
Whoever said this is just fooling themselves, it already is behind by such a small amount it is unnoticable.
 
far cry is gonna be patched, i havent heard anything about a painkiller or driv3r patch. supposedly they are. i know hl2 is rumored to have a sm3.0 patch after its released via steam.
 
Brent_Justice said:
FarCry will use Parrallax Mapping which can be done in SM 2.0 and up.



Again, that is not Displacement Mapping. It is Parrallax Mapping, also called Offset Mapping.

HDR can be done on the 9700Pro and up as well.



It is not Displacement Mapping.

Parrallax/Offset Mapping can be done in SM 2.0 and up.
Click to expand...

LOL.... Do you ever feel like a broken record, Brent?

I feel like I just read a thread started by someone in Nvidia's marketing department, on purpose. :D
 
kcthebrewer said:
Brent, in your opinion...

6800GT or x800Pro at the same price and at stock speeds?
Click to expand...

i don't know, i haven't played any games on a 6800GT yet

but we will do one, and an x800pro will be compared in it, so when i do the review i'll be sure to comment on which one provides the best gameplay versus price etc...
 
MrHappyGoLucky said:
LOL.... Do you ever feel like a broken record, Brent?

I feel like I just read a thread started by someone in Nvidia's marketing department, on purpose. :D
Click to expand...

yes, it seems like i'm repeating this almost every day

there is a LOT of confusion out there apparently
 
Explain in plain english what you were saying above brent.. as in "it matters/doesn't matter because blah" short answer.. I think that would be prudent.

~Adam
 
CleanSlate said:
Explain in plain english what you were saying above brent.. as in "it matters/doesn't matter because blah" short answer.. I think that would be prudent.

~Adam
Click to expand...

with regard to????
 
Originally Posted by Brent_Justice
FarCry will use Parrallax Mapping which can be done in SM 2.0 and up.



Again, that is not Displacement Mapping. It is Parrallax Mapping, also called Offset Mapping.

HDR can be done on the 9700Pro and up as well.



It is not Displacement Mapping.

Parrallax/Offset Mapping can be done in SM 2.0 and up.


-----

It's just confusing is all, I'd like to know what the point is and even the third time reading your posts I'm still confusled.

~Adam
 
CleanSlate said:
It's just confusing is all, I'd like to know what the point is and even the third time reading your posts I'm still confusled.

~Adam
Click to expand...

Any ati card from the 9700 series to current can show all the cool effects everyone is talking about.
 
CleanSlate said:
It's just confusing is all, I'd like to know what the point is and even the third time reading your posts I'm still confusled.
~Adam
Click to expand...

You have a texture; you want to make that texture look 3D. There are ways to make it look 3D without actually effecting it physically. One of these ways is Bump Mapping. Bump Mapping is a fakey way of doing things, when you look at a brick wall from the side you will see it is still flat, but when you look at it from a distance it kinda looks 3D.

There is an even better method though that currently has 3 names for this one technique. Offset Mapping, Parrallax Mapping, and Virtual Displacement Mapping. They all mean the same thing. It is basically taking Bump Mapping to another level of realism. But the texture is still flat physically, when you look at it from the side its still 2D.

Displacement Mapping is totally different; it physically effects the vertices of triangles to raise the bricks in a wall so that they are physically 3D. When you look at it from the side you can see the bricks sticking out. Also because its physical you can interact with it correctly, for example light reflections and shadows act correctly, and you can do things like have a bird come and land on one of the rocks sticking out from a wall for example.

There are a lot of games that use Bump Mapping now.

There are not any games that use Offset/Parrallax Mapping yet, but FarCry will be the first.

There are not any games that use Displacement Mapping.

Every card from Shader Model 2.0 and up support Bump Mapping and Parrallax/Offset Mapping. In fact, I have learned that you can in fact squeeze Parrallax Mapping into Pixel Shader 1.1, though it aint easy.

Only the Matrox Parhelia, Radeon 9700Pro and up, and GeForce 6 series support Displacement Mapping.

There are no games in the works right now that I know of that are going to use Displacement Mapping.

Displacement Mapping is not an easy thing to do, it requires a lot of vertex power, mainly creating geometry.

My guess (read opinion) is that we won't see Displacement Mapping in games until DX Next level video cards in 2006.
 
CleanSlate said:
Explain in plain english what you were saying above brent.. as in "it matters/doesn't matter because blah" short answer.. I think that would be prudent.

~Adam
Click to expand...

Any ati card from the 9700 series to current can show all the cool effects everyone is talking about.
Click to expand...

He sums it up. What he forgot to add is this is true for all games this and next year.
 
Better... so what does that have to do with the relevence of SM3? If displacement mapping can be done on as low as 9700 pro, who gives a rip about SM3?

Edit: yea that's what I was getting at.. GG I'm ordering my over-priced gf 6800Ultra today (maybe I'll get it by the end of this year)!

~Adam
 
CleanSlate said:
Better... so what does that have to do with the relevence of SM3? If displacement mapping can be done on as low as 9700 pro, who gives a rip about SM3?

~Adam
Click to expand...

and there lies the big confusion, a lot of people are confused and think that Displacement Mapping is a SM 3.0 only feature, which it is not

the confusion stems from the fact that in Vertex Shader 3.0 you can do vertex texture lookups, and that is one way to do Displacement Mapping (and maybe the better way, no one really knows cause its untested), but it isn't the only way, the 9700Pro and up does it through N-Patches, two different methods of achieving the same goal

but the whole thing is moot cause there are no games that use displacement mapping, and by the time there are ATI's next gen will be out...

displacement mapping really needs a lot of geometry creating power that even these latest cards may not have enough of to render it with playable performance in a game...
 
SM3.0 = Same or better image quality at faster speeds in new games and not much development time to add it on to some existing games that support SM2.0. It is really not new as in an image quality standpoint for the same shaders but a better way (read faster) of using existing technology. Faster rendering can lead to more complex shaders which end up in better image quality.
 
Hey, that's the best kinda marketing.. it does 2 things.. that coincide with the evolutionary theory..

1. it screws ppl who aren't rigorous when they buy things
and
2. it makes ppl hate the company that screwed said ppl...

thus eliminating 2 road bumps to human evolution... I applaud it!

~Adam
 
kcthebrewer said:
SM3.0 = Same or better image quality at faster speeds in new games and not much development time to add it on to some existing games that support SM2.0. It is really not new as in an image quality standpoint for the same shaders but a better way (read faster) of using existing technology. Faster rendering can lead to more complex shaders which end up in better image quality.
Click to expand...

which is the same way 3Dc has the potential to bring higher IQ

through using the normal compression you can increase performance, thus allowing you to pack it with higher level texture sizes and models in effect increasing image quality

or you can opt not to and instead reap the benefit of the added performance

its all up to the developer
 
MrHappyGoLucky said:
Hey Brent.... since we are talking about PS3.0, when does DX9.0c come out?
Click to expand...


If your crazy enough to install microsoft beta software on your system, the newest SP2 build has DX9c in it. I recall reading its the final build, of DX9c that is.

EDIT : I even have a link for you.
 
But honestly do video cards gain ANY performance by running in shader model 3 mode in games that don´t utilize longer shaders than say the 1500 PS 2.x and ATI offers?

I know a guy huymmus that did a demo (mandelbrot) with 64 ALU instructions for his 9X00. He got 100 fps with a 9X00 in a window at 800x600 and 190 fps with an X800 PRO he got now.

He also states that at 1500 instructions he would get a whopping 8,1 fps at that res and then all the demo do is processing shaders as fast as possible!

In that light why do nVidia include shader model 3 support? If I ain´t wrong Finding Nemo you only need 1000 shader instructions or something.

If you aren´t running long shaders why have shader model 3 support??
 
Games already have an ungodly long development time right now. I just can't see the average publisher pumping money into a dev team and then being told they are taking extra time to make features that only a small fraction of the consumer market will be able to utilize. I think we won't start seeing any serious amount of actual PS3.0 features put into games until ATI releases soem video cards that also support it seeing they are a major video card supplier. Let us also not forget that Intel still has a big chunk of the market but obviously that is more geared toward the lower end of the market. It's not like PS2.0 is actually being utilized a hell of a lot right now.

I agree that PS3.0 big days are probably over a year away at best right now. The end of this year we may actually start seeing PS2.0 games coming our way.
 
I think it will be put in use when video cards have the power for it. That is not the case today not even the high end video cards. So as long as they can´t render finding Nemo scenes in realtime it will start to have a purpose I think.

Then perhaps VS 3.0 is a bit more interesting if it´s way of handling displacement mapping is more efficient than the VS 2.0 methods.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top