What Level of Performance Do You DEMAND?

[Greebe]

He's a beta tester as several of us are here so yes he would know more than those touting it's pure vapor.

[Joel]

Well, from my understanding of how it works, Depth Adaptive Tessellation is a feature that requires the use of Hardware Displacement Mapping (HDM). So if your application doesn't make use of HDM then you aren't going to see Depth Adaptive Tessellation.

Well isn't that part of what we are talking about in that as you start to crank up the features then the others will not be able to keep up?? I've also heard that implimenting DM is not that difficult for developers. And as it stands Matrox is the only one with Hardware Displacement Mapping and they own the patent on it. They licensed it to Microsoft for inclusion in DX9. And while Matrox continues to do DM in Hardware the others, from my understand, will be doing it in software. I am confident that Matrox will have some unique bandwidth saving features that we have not seen before. I could be wrong but time will tell.

And as far as any vaporware card goes there is no doubt that they will be faster, if they see the light of day, but is 200fps better than 150fps if the image quality sucks?

http://forums.murc.ws/showthread.php?s=&threadid=33171

Joel

[R.Carter]

Originally posted by Greebe
DM is part of DX9, so in saying that as more and more vendors are moving away from OGL and to DX even tho Oclussion Culling does boost performance, leaving out a key feature of DX9 is a foolish move.

Hmm... is support for displacement mapping a required feature of DirectX9?

I seem to recall Microsoft talking about supporting preimaged as well as sampled displacement mapping. Of course sampled seems to be the preferred method since it is compatible with adaptive tessellation and LOD, both of which are helpful for 'big' things like terrain.

That said, I don't think that the current Parhelia-512 supports all of the key features of DirectX9 either. I mean, it doesn't support ps.2.0.

[TdB]

I thought DAT also worked with curves(like n-patches), i wonder if you could force DAT in the drivers, for existing? games that uses n-patches.

[R.Carter]

Originally posted by TDB
I thought DAT also worked with curves(like n-patches), i wonder if you could force DAT in the drivers, for existing? games that uses n-patches.

Sure the method should be compatible with N-Patches, but I'm not sure if the feature is usable without displacement mapping or not. The chip block diagram show the Depth-Adaptive Tessellation Unit as being part of Displacement Mapping Engine.

And all of the examples in the literature show it in relation with displacement mapping.

However, the literature does say:

"Highly flexible and scalable, Depth-Adaptive Tessellation is compatible with most higher-order surface types, including N-Patches. Moreover, Depth-Adaptive Tessellation has the added advantage of providing the best tessellation environment for displacement mapping, as explained in the next section. A patent-pending technology, Depth-Adaptive Tessellation offers the highest quality while providing maximum scalability, efficiency and performance."

[TdB]

Not unlike having different methods of interpreting displacement data, we also offer two methods of tessellating mesh triangles, either using Linear or N-Patch tessellation. Both of these, under Matrox's algorithmic implementation, offer completely adaptive tessellation of triangle surfaces depending on the viewing angle and distance from the camera, effectively tessellating each triangle independently and non-uniformly to provide the best triangle coverage in screen space without the usual level of detail 'popping'. This 'popping' is difficult to visualize unless seen in action in a progressive animation rendering.

from:

http://developer.matrox.com/content/lev1/doc/Dmap-Content-Creation-for-Artists.doc

[R.Carter]

Originally posted by TDB

from:
http://developer.matrox.com/content/...or-Artists.doc

Yes, but this document shows meshes being tessellated as part of the displacement mapping process.

Nothing in this document indicates that tessellation is possible for an object that isn't having a displacement map applied to it.

[Greebe]

R.C., while it's true Parhelia doesn't support PS 2.0, Displacement Mapping and it's Depth Adaptive Tessellation is being integrated by a great many developers at an amazing rate right now. Why, because it's fairly easy to code and greatly improves realism.

No one can say that about PS 2.0

Shoot, most don't even care about PS 1.4 which is why I'm willing to bet M opted to stay with PS 1.3 which is used.

[R.Carter]

Originally posted by Greebe
DM is part of DX9, so in saying that as more and more vendors are moving away from OGL and to DX even tho Oclussion Culling does boost performance, leaving out a key feature of DX9 is a foolish move.

Well, while it is true that it seems more PC only titles are moving towards supports DirectX, there are still some vendors who wish or plan to support multiple platforms.

Usually these are "serious" applications, but that doesn't mean that there are no games being released that use OpenGL. One of the more recent game titles (still hasn't been released yet) that I can think of is Neverwinter Nights. NWN requires your video card support OpenGL 1.2.

Of course, BioWare is planning on releasing a PC, Machintosh and Linux version of the game. So using OpenGL makes sense.

Of course, if all you care about is the PC platform (and XBox) then it would make more sense to go with DirectX.

[TdB]

read carefully:

Not unlike having different methods of interpreting displacement data, we also offer two methods of tessellating mesh triangles, either using Linear or N-Patch tessellation. Both of these, under Matrox's algorithmic implementation, offer completely adaptive tessellation of triangle surfaces depending on the viewing angle and distance from the camera, effectively tessellating each triangle independently and non-uniformly to provide the best triangle coverage in screen space without the usual level of detail 'popping'. This 'popping' is difficult to visualize unless seen in action in a progressive animation rendering.

i read this as DAT being possible on n-patches too, a subject this document also mentions(section 3).

edit:

it seems like we are both right:

This is why as part of our displacement technology and solution, we offer absolutely smooth view-dependant adaptive LOD (level of detail) tessellation of triangles by means of Linear or N-Patch (DX8+ spec) tessellation, resulting in subdivision of surfaces having up to 360 times the geometric detail of the initial base mesh.

their support for n-patches, seems to be implemented in their displacement mapping unit, n-patches CAN be viewed as a subset of displacement mapping.

[R.Carter]

Originally posted by Greebe
Displacement Mapping and it's Depth Adaptive Tessellation is being integrated by a great many developers at an amazing rate right now.

Yes, I've heard that argument before and it makes sense given the wow factor of HDM.

I suppose all of those titles using HDM will require DirectX9 and I guess they will have to ship with the needed DX9 redistributables "in the box". Not sure when DX9 is going to appear though.

About the only application that I can think of right now that uses displacement mapping is Pixar's RenderMan. I think it does it in software.

Guess we'll just have to wait and see what titles appear or are announced that support displacement mapping.

[Greebe]

The only reason more and more titles are going the way of DX and away from OGL, is cost reduction and the massive amounts of improvement made to DX in the last two years.

And also because there are of the high cost involved in development and support. Lest not forget the huge majority of PC vs Mac's.

You're arguments are weak, weak as water

LOL especially when you mentioned Neverwinter Nights

[TdB]

afaik westwoods Earth and Beyond will support displacement maps...

[Electric Amish]

NWN is also Direct X 8.1 compliant.

amish

http://nwn.bioware.com/about/requirements.html

[{PainCresT}DAn]

You know when I was new to PC's (meaning my second system I bought years ago) I bought at Matrox Mystique 2MB PCI vidcard... I would on rare occasions get access to the """INTERNET""" (at the time the internet was a very big thing in my area and only a few ppl had access to it... eye waz lucky) and I would check out for update and I would get dirvers and firmware update regularly (at least in those days you didn't need to check every week... more like every 6 months) and I thought that was normal for video card companies and then I bought a ATI Mach 64 4MB (boy that was a mistake... was AGP tho).

I found out just then what a GOOD company is compaired to a BAD company (I never got any new drivers for that card at all during the 1 year I had it). I then thought getting a Nvidia card was much better because they actualy had updates... But what's this no firmware (and I mean firmware that doesn't void your warranty)...... I could go on but what I'm trying to say is that these days support is probably more important than 2 billion FPS, for me 80+ FPS is perfect smoothness (and I mean when doing a 180 degree spin in a FPS (first person shooter this time) ).

Example I play Counter-Strike and with a GF3 Ti200 64MB I get FPS loss when smoke is displayed at 800x600 w/FAA 2x and all eye candy enabled (btw my specs are 1800+ XP, Micron 512MB PC133 CAS2...)... this is probably more a problem with software rendering (BTW I'm not a Graphics expert so don't hose me because I know S*** by your standards) but come one third generation GeForce and it still has problems with full eye candy at 800x600. That is not acceptable in my books, gues what I'm throwing my GF3 as soon as I can because now a company with a level of professionalisme has finaly come back into the gaming world.

The only reason I went Nvidia in the first place was FPS in games and unfortunatly the GXXX series did not have that even though I wish it were so.

PS: If you guys who are beta testers are really beta tester why don't you just say what its real world performance is... or is it a legal thing .... and does anyone have any clue to the price range of the product.

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