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Bah, I could out-drink both of them AND you, Connie!

mentholiptus wrote:

AAPL Shareholder wrote:

I'm wondering how effective the hardware extensions would be. You obviously won't be able to displacement map the hell out of everything in a real time environment.

But being able to REALLY use it where it counts, without taxing the hardware, will be huge.

All in all, we'll have to see. Deforming geometry is intensive. As I recall, displacement maps, even though they may be applied on low poly models, physically deform a surface and increase the amount of polygons in an environment.

If hardware accelerated displacement mapping is a feature, I'm not expecting a mature technology.

But who knows, perhaps the Revolution is powered by Jesus and magical unicorns.

Last edited by AAPL Shareholder (2005-12-13 2:39 pm)

IcarusFountain wrote:

Hey, its not every day we get to have a pissing contest of this magnitude.

Oh wait.  It happens every day.

Of this magnatude?? Is this a "HARD CORE" pissing contest? I say relax, and enjoy the show. Or don't. Either way...

I guess where I was going before it turned into 360 vs Rev "pissing contest" was...could something like this work? Could Nintendo, by including dedicated hardware to deal with displacement mapping, use lower spec components and still get graphics that aren't too far behind the PS3 or 360? If so, it seems like MS and Sony could have saved themselves some money (and saved consumers a bit'o'cash as well).

Of course there will be a performance gap. but if a 485MHz G3 and a 167MHz ATI can do what the GC does, then why can't a 1.7GHz G4 variant, 300MHz ATi card, and dedicated displacement mapping hardware get any respect?

mentholiptus wrote:

IcarusFountain wrote:

Hey, its not every day we get to have a pissing contest of this magnitude.

Oh wait.  It happens every day.

Of this magnatude?? Is this a "HARD CORE" pissing contest? I say relax, and enjoy the show. Or don't. Either way...

It isn't a pissing contest until fido and I are banned.

ConnertheCat wrote:

NAG wrote:

Well at least they got over the metroid v halo debate a while ago.

OMG Masterchief could drink Samus under the table!!!WTFBBQ!!!111one

He totally could.
Firstly, Samus is a female, and we all know that, pound-for-pound, women can't take as much alcohol as men can.
So even if Samus weighed the same as Master Chief, which is doubtful considering we have no accurate measurements of her height/bust size/hips/etc , she probably wouldn't be able to drink as much as he could.
Secondly, Samus is a blonde, and we also know that blondes get drunk EVEN FASTER than "regular" women (either that or they just appear to get drunk faster due to their natural flakiness).
I suppose that might not be her real hair color, in which case I would be forced to withdraw my above statement, but I doubt she has time to dye her hair whenever you return to her ship where her cosmetic supplies are obviously located, and even if she did, it's quite a while between the last scene of the game where you see her hair and the last time you saved at the ship, leading me to believe that her roots would be visibly turning darker by then.
Thirdly, we have no reason to believe either of them boozers as they are both from the future and are generally busy killing things most of the time, nor do we have any evidence that either of them are children of drunkard parents, so it's best to assume that they're on the same level with regards to built up/inherited alcohol tolerance, so my previous reasoning on general feminine vs masculine body types is sound.

Earendil the Mariner wrote:

ConnertheCat wrote:

NAG wrote:

Well at least they got over the metroid v halo debate a while ago.

OMG Masterchief could drink Samus under the table!!!WTFBBQ!!!111one

He totally could.
Firstly, Samus is a female, and we all know that, pound-for-pound, women can't take as much alcohol as men can.

I'm glad someone got that.

Displacement maps aren't that fast. Maybe they have a real simple low-res mapping system that is able to keep up but I don't think they would be able to load too much detail. It's a game, not zbrush.

It is sad that my limit is about 2 drinks then i start falling down.

ukimalefu wrote:

ConnertheCat wrote:

Hot.  *readies the crow*

Hats stuffed with...!

Darn straight.

AAPL Shareholder wrote:

Twisted Guy wrote:

Greywolf wrote:

Displacement maps aren't that fast.

Hence having unique dedicated hardware and techniques for accelerating the rendering of displacement maps, and reducing the strain on the processor.

The point some of us were trying to make it that because they're SO intensive, it is fairly unlikely hardware acceleration is going to produce anything like the images posted on the last page of this thread.

I'm with Greywolf, if something like this does get implemented, it will probably only be used for low resolution displacement maps, or very sporadic implementations of displacement mapping.

Or we could do the whole wait and see thing…

ConnertheCat wrote:

AAPL Shareholder wrote:

Twisted Guy wrote:

Hence having unique dedicated hardware and techniques for accelerating the rendering of displacement maps, and reducing the strain on the processor.

The point some of us were trying to make it that because they're SO intensive, it is fairly unlikely hardware acceleration is going to produce anything like the images posted on the last page of this thread.

I'm with Greywolf, if something like this does get implemented, it will probably only be used for low resolution displacement maps, or very sporadic implementations of displacement mapping.

Or we could do the whole wait and see thing…

Get out.

Twisted Guy wrote:

AAPL Shareholder wrote:

The point some of us were trying to make it that because they're SO intensive, it is fairly unlikely hardware acceleration is going to produce anything like the images posted on the last page of this thread.

I'm with Greywolf, if something like this does get implemented, it will probably only be used for low resolution displacement maps, or very sporadic implementations of displacement mapping.

You're completely missing the point.

The entire purpose of having dedicated hardware and the like is to make intensive tasks less intensive, and therefore faster and easier to implement.

That's why we have 3d acceleration in the first place; rendering 3d graphics is intensive and complex (and once thought to complex to implement, especially to the level we see today), so a dedicated processor with special technology designed to accelerate 3d rendering is used.  Processing high-quality audio is a CPU intensive task, so consoles and computers have dedicated processors for that.  The computation of physics is very complex, which is why we're on the verge of having add-on cards for computers dedicated to handling physics.

It stands to reason, then, if the rendering of displacement maps is a high priority for Nintendo in the graphics department (and given the patents, it obviously is, since you don't develop and subsequently patent unique technology you don't care about or plan to use), that they would see to having specialized hardware dedicated to accelerating and improving that task.  Something to make the whole dynamic tessellation process faster and less intensive on the GPU/CPU.

It is clear that Nintendo knows rendering displacement maps are intensive, and plans to make the rendering process faster and more efficient, given two known facts; first, that part of one patent discusses reducing the strain placed on the CPU when rendering displacement maps, and second, that part of the other patent discusses vectors, though whether this be as a graphics format (ie. replacing memory intensive bitmaps with smaller, resolution-independent, and ultimately more efficient vector maps), or with processing a large quantity of the data needed to render the displacement maps at a time in vectors seems a bit unclear, but both have merits in improving the speed and efficiency of rendering detailed, high-resolution displacement maps.

Missing the point? Please.

ALL hardware has limitations. I don't know how to make this any clearer to you. Do interactive 3d development or game development...then you'll understand.

Displacement mapping has been around for quite some time, and if you think Nintendo or one of their respective partners, stumbled upon some magical way of producing pre rendered quality models on a 286 Tandy, you're mistaken.

Hardware could potentially accelerate some displacement mapping. But I wouldn't expect to see real-time high res displacement maps for quite some time. Low res displacement maps could be used sporadically where a designer or developer would desire displaced geometry over a normal map, high poly model, or both. That would be pretty rad, but don't expect a world full of characters wearing the armor that's one page back. Most stuff like that will still probably be normal / bump mapped, and will still have jaggy silhouettes.


And as for "vectors"...the patent does not refer to vector based maps. It refers to the vectors used for normals and texture displacement. That's nothing new. Everything in a 3d environment revolves around vectors.

And hypothetically speaking, if there were a such thing as vector based displacement maps, I have no idea how the f'k one would go about making them with current modeling tools. Moreover, they'd need smurf loads of anchor points which would be counter productive... think "traced bitmaps". bleh.

Last edited by AAPL Shareholder (2005-12-13 10:27 pm)

ConnertheCat wrote:

Again, how about waiting to see?

I agree.