New Parhelia UT2k3 Surround Gaming screenshot

[Oric]

AMazing !!!

[AD]

photoshop, ut2003, while watching a divX. THIS IS HUGE!

[AD]

oh and that 3840x1024 pic..WHOA!! hehe Nvidia should be bundling mirrors with their video cards, just so people can place them on either side of the their screen to make it seem bigger

[bm1]

Originally posted by AD
oh and that 3840x1024 pic..WHOA!! hehe Nvidia should be bundling mirrors with their video cards, just so people can place them on either side of the their screen to make it seem bigger

LOL !!

[Novdid]

Originally posted by labrador
I had a similar experience after buying the G400. The tech demo of the pixie flying around bump mapped logs and water surfaces was fine, but that level of detail never materialized in one game I played.

This is a real game that will be out in a couple of months, not a techdemo. And surround gaming seems to be an awesome feature!

For one thing, typically, the screen shot is carefully selected to show the best view that could potentially occur, but perhaps a level of realism that is only provided in 10% of the general gaming experience.

I agree with you on this one though. It's pure marketing and it does boost sales.

[markedmundb]

OMG!!! I'll have to buy a bigger desk.

Still at least my old 17" wont go to waste now I've got a nice 19".

Anyone got another 17" CTX PR711F For sale?

[Pace]

For one thing, typically, the screen shot is carefully selected to show the best view that could potentially occur, but perhaps a level of realism that is only provided in 10% of the general gaming experience

Yeah, but if Epic make every level stunning, NVIDIA might take out a lawsuit for "Actual Graphic Harm" to GeBlurs

Seriously though, Q3 for instance showed off the best graphics yeah - but if every level was as stunning, then it would run pretty slow on lesser machines. I know it can be tweaked, but most of will be happy playing the other levels on a HQ setting

P.

[labrador]

When the Geforce came out I read that nVidia asked idgames to develop some Quake levels that would add a richer polygon count and thus showcase the advantage of owning a Geforce. idgames did so, but nVidia wasn't happy with the detail and wanted more, so they sent over some of their own programmers to do the work.

I think this, and the many years it took to complete Max Payne, are illustrating another bottleneck to gaming realism that has nothing to do with your hardware bandwidth at various points.

More detail demands more artwork and coding on the development side. I'd die and go to gaming heaven if a flight simulator would show grass being whipped around by prop wash on grassy runway strips, but who is going to go to that extreme to place this detail in a full sized world. Obviously that would require a different approach than the scenery you'd see in the tiny world of Quake or Doom - something Microsoft has dabbled with in the latest FS2002 when it comes to generating trees and urban blocks. But if we expect to see a specific structure rendered in high detail that can't be auto generated (say the Eiffel tower down to the level of showing rivets and bolts), it requires enormous resources of the art and coding departments.

Perhaps there will be a clever Direct X 12 hack that will create development shortcuts in these areas, but until that time, it is yet again a story of the hardware emerging far in advance of what the software uses to full potential. It probably can't occur in the other order, but I say this to once again remind us that the sexy aspects of the capabilities may be in advance of actually enjoying them for a number of years. This has been true of the Geforce in any version and continues today.

There are some features that will be more generally available than others. With the G400 I think the dual head gaming feature was more of a widely supported and useful feature than EM bump mapping. I don't know how many people could splurge on a second monitor, but at least that isn't an issue the game developers have to deal with.

I'm sure the same will be true of the Parhelia - some features being widely available to use in games while others being seldom seen. This will be part of my evaluation of when to jump in and get one.

[EecheE]

Originally posted by AD
oh and that 3840x1024 pic..WHOA!! hehe Nvidia should be bundling mirrors with their video cards, just so people can place them on either side of the their screen to make it seem bigger

oh and that 3840x1024 pic..WHOA!! hehe Matrox should be bundling monitors with their video cards, just so people can place them on either side of the their screen to make it bigger

[Snake-Eyes]

Originally posted by labrador
More detail demands more artwork and coding on the development side. I'd die and go to gaming heaven if a flight simulator would show grass being whipped around by prop wash on grassy runway strips, but who is going to go to that extreme to place this detail in a full sized world. Obviously that would require a different approach than the scenery you'd see in the tiny world of Quake or Doom - something Microsoft has dabbled with in the latest FS2002 when it comes to generating trees and urban blocks. But if we expect to see a specific structure rendered in high detail that can't be auto generated (say the Eiffel tower down to the level of showing rivets and bolts), it requires enormous resources of the art and coding departments.

We need a camera capable of digitizing a scene in 3 dimensions into computer models. (Anybody else remember the holodoc's holocam from some of the Voyager episodes?)

[VJ]

Let's not forget that the modelling software has an increasing number of functionalities that will aid the creation of the models.

Just think about the movie Monsters Inc. : the artists didn't have to worry about the hair on Sully (the hairy blue monster), they had created a technique to model the hairs automatically (just saying : we need hair there, the motion of it was generated by the software, based on atmosphere/motion of Sully/...). It will probabely take some time for such things to be done in real time, but it will happen... (modelling grass, etc would then be no problem)


Jörg

[KngtRider]

ATi have a fur demo using pixel shaders. (nice one too)

nvidia made a similar one of less quality.

[TdB]

Originally posted by KngtRider
ATi have a fur demo using pixel shaders. (nice one too)

nvidia made a similar one of less quality.

powervr have had a fur demo for ages, and thats without pixelshaders.

not really impressive though.

[yangsong]

dx7 fur demo

Microsoft research has a dx7 fur demo:
http://research.microsoft.com/~jedl/

MMHK/yangsong

[WaltC]

I sort of don't get it...

From a distance, and superficially, it seems like three screens would indeed be cool for gaming.

I don't know about the rest of you, however, but having my viewing area divided into thirds by the monitor bezels seems like it would be most distracting, and take away a lot from the game play.

I like what I've seen so far from Parhelia (keep wanting to say "Para"), but would probably choose to stay away from multiple screens, at least for gaming, for that reason.

Now, if only someone could figure out how to make a curved screen with no distracting "joints" in the way--now that would be something to see. Seriously, I'm surprised something like this hasn't already been done with projection. As it is, the monitor bezels really distract and completely ruin the "surround" image concept, IMHO.