6 replies to this topic

[rektide]

When will we see hardware with Geometry/Primitive shaders? What NVidia & ATI gear will support them, I havent seen much about this next generation.

And just as importantly, is opengl doing any work on GLSL on this now? Or are they doing a wait and see? There's a great article on gamedev on the future of advanced effects in opengl at this site, but its very hazy about whether its just a glimmer in some guru's eye, or whether there's discussion / production of something workable.

I'm very interested in playing with shadow volumes, but I'd much rather be doing it with geometry shaders than the cpu. Unfortunately I'm not a DirectX person, so DX10 is out of the question, however soon or not the new API comes out.

my many thanks gurus.
-rektide :skull:

[Nick]

DirectX 10 class cards are expected either this summer or before Christmas. NVIDIA is working on the G80 chip, which is expected to be named Geforce 8800. ATI is working on R600, which should become the Radeon X2800. They are both very quiet about them to have the biggest impact on release. Without a doubt things will get interesting when they arrive, together with Intel Core and Windows Vista...

OpenGL is trying to catch up but the legacy interface and demands from the workstation market are slowing it down. Microsoft is spending millions on DirectX development and works very closely with NVIDIA and ATI to get the maximum out of it. So unless you want things cross-platform I'd really consider Direct3D 10.

[.oisyn]

I don't think we'll be seeing DX10 hardware this summer. And keep in mind DX10 will only be available in Windows Vista, which according to the latest info isn't going to be released until Q1 2007.

[Nick]

If I recall correctly, DirectX 9 class hardware was released in the summer of 2002, while DirectX 9 itself was only released at the very end of 2002.

So it's not all that unlikely that the hardware will be available before DirectX 10. After all the API is worthless without the hardware, but the hardware can still run DirectX 9 no matter when it's released. And most games will use DirectX 9 for a long time. If the hardware is finished anyway they're not going to hold it back.

Besides, I expect a DirectX 9 update which supports Shader Model 4.0 on Windows XP. It makes no sense for Microsoft not to provide any backward compatibility.

[rektide]

I'm deeply saddened to hear any death reports on opengl. As a linux coder, I'm fucked. Hopefully embedded mobile and embedded video game consoles will save our arse!

How can I better follow workings of hte OpenGL working groups?

-R

[rektide]

I dont remember such silence before a new video card. G70 was pretty well doc'd on theinquirer &all, G80 has been totally invisible. Here's to Christmas?

Sadly I need a new video card well before then. I might just get a 7600 or 6800gs or something midstream to hold me over, kind of a waste though. I suppose I can rock an SLi and use it for a quad monitor setup. ;-)

-R

[.oisyn]

Nick said:

If I recall correctly, DirectX 9 class hardware was released in the summer of 2002, while DirectX 9 itself was only released at the very end of 2002.

Well the guidelines weren't that strict before DX10. DX9 had support for SM3.0, but it took a while before the actual SM 3.0 hardware was released.
I recall a particular SM3.0 programming contest (where a pure pixelshader implementation of frogger won first place), but because there was no hardware all the entries needed to be run on the reference rasterizer.

But fair enough, hardware could be released sooner of course. Although my point was more that the topicstarter wanted to get started with the new features, and for that he simply needs to wait for the DirectX10 API (and thus Windows Vista) . OpenGL extensions are an option, but they'll probably be very vendor specific and good documentation will be hard to come by in the beginning.