Tweet
To all those moaning about apparent lack of bandwidth saving techniques such as Occlusion Culling please read on:
Has no one read Matrox' website?
Parhelia has no need to have the Z buffer culling techniques such as Occlusion culling and whatever ATi do with their Hyper-Z and so on because of Matrox' Patent Pending <B>Depth-Adaptive Tessellation</B>. This technique simplifies objects by reducing the number of polygons used to draw it as the object moves further away from the camera. This is so much more advanced than simply removing polygons you think/hope aren't needed.
From the HDM Whitepaper:
This works both ways too - an object close up to the camera can be drawn using extra polygons to increase detail!
See hdmc_depth_avi.zip on http://www.matrox.com/mga/media_cent...arhelia512.cfm for a great video which shows this off.
I'm amazed no-one has picked up on this!
Has no one read Matrox' website?
Parhelia has no need to have the Z buffer culling techniques such as Occlusion culling and whatever ATi do with their Hyper-Z and so on because of Matrox' Patent Pending <B>Depth-Adaptive Tessellation</B>. This technique simplifies objects by reducing the number of polygons used to draw it as the object moves further away from the camera. This is so much more advanced than simply removing polygons you think/hope aren't needed.
From the HDM Whitepaper:
Depth-Adaptive Tessellation is an advanced tessellation scheme that tessellates meshes using multiple levels of detail (LODs) to maximize the geometry detail of a 3D scene while maintaining high levels of performance. By using LOD-based tessellation, the graphics processor
avoids unnecessarily processing triangles that would otherwise not contribute significantly to the visual quality of the final rendered image.
Lower levels of detail are acceptable when the object being rendered is further back in the scene. Because it appears smaller, it is rendered
using a lower number of screen pixels. In fact, depending on the distance, increasing the number of triangles beyond a certain point may have
little or no effect on an object's appearance. The ability to reduce the LOD for distant objects provides considerable savings on
transformation, lighting, setup and rasterization, leaving a higher triangle budget for objects that are up-close.
LODs can also be applied to an object whose mesh spans a significant portion of the scene's depth on the display. A good example of such
an object is a terrain. For such objects, Depth-Adaptive Tessellation ensures that no cracks are seen on the seams where changes in LODs occur.
avoids unnecessarily processing triangles that would otherwise not contribute significantly to the visual quality of the final rendered image.
Lower levels of detail are acceptable when the object being rendered is further back in the scene. Because it appears smaller, it is rendered
using a lower number of screen pixels. In fact, depending on the distance, increasing the number of triangles beyond a certain point may have
little or no effect on an object's appearance. The ability to reduce the LOD for distant objects provides considerable savings on
transformation, lighting, setup and rasterization, leaving a higher triangle budget for objects that are up-close.
LODs can also be applied to an object whose mesh spans a significant portion of the scene's depth on the display. A good example of such
an object is a terrain. For such objects, Depth-Adaptive Tessellation ensures that no cracks are seen on the seams where changes in LODs occur.
...[ tessellation ] converts a mesh with a low triangle count into a mesh with a higher triangle count.
While tessellation does not significantly alter the underlying shape of the object, it sometimes helps to smooth the surface of the object...
While tessellation does not significantly alter the underlying shape of the object, it sometimes helps to smooth the surface of the object...
I'm amazed no-one has picked up on this!
).
I still want my parhelia though 
Comment