[DaBrain]

The new Nvidia 185.20 Forceware allows real-time Ambient Occlusion in games.
http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=80520

If you don't know what this is, this is what can be done with it:



Of course FS2 would really benefit from this. Especially the bigger ships, with a lot of texture tiling.
It already be used in some games. I don't know how that works, but it looks like you can somehow force it in the driver and it works in some games.

Anyway, I've been told that it doesn't work in DX9. So you need DX10 games to use it.

Well, now I'd like to know if this could be by any chance supported by a new OpenGL extension and used in FS2.

[Turambar]

yay! finally something else to cut my FS2 framerate!  I've been trying to do it with heavy antialiasing, but my card only goes up to 16xQ and the OpenGL renderer doesnt support supersampling, so my framerates are consistently high and stable.

Judging from what the driver AO does to Crysis, I think that it might actually be able to make a dent in my FS2 performance!

[captain-custard]

but this only works in vista............


but all of these drivers are availible as modded forcewares for laptops as well , if you need something to keep your coffee hot

[DaBrain]

Well, it also comes with some new OpenGL extensions. It's just kinda hard to find out which ones.
Oh and it has support for OGL3 and GLSL 1.3.

So far it was only said that it doesn't work in DX9 games.

[captain-custard]

there is a mod for dx9 laptops out there, but im pretty sure that the thing is set up for vista , the driver itself will work with xp but the ambient occlusion option is not in tne control pannel as for the open gl i think those extensions were there in the 181 forceware

[chief1983]

So then this should work on a G92 8800 GTS 512 I take it.  Cool.

[captain-custard]

i know these have been modded for laptops but  look here for the info on the original driver.....http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/

[CP5670]

The Nvidia driver's implementation of it may be limited to DX10 games, but the effect itself can work in DX9 and probably OGL as well. There is a rendering mod out there for various old games that supports it, among other effects. It has a huge performance hit though.

yay! finally something else to cut my FS2 framerate!  I've been trying to do it with heavy antialiasing, but my card only goes up to 16xQ and the OpenGL renderer doesnt support supersampling, so my framerates are consistently high and stable.

The combined AA modes work fine in OGL and look better than the pure MS modes, as they work on textures and reduce the shimmering effect.

[Darklord42]

For this, wouldn't we have to get directX up to par in FSO? I thought we were primarily focusing on OGL for its multi-platform ability.

[chief1983]

It may work with OpenGL as well, that's kind of what the original post was asking about.

[DaBrain]

The Nvidia driver's implementation of it may be limited to DX10 games, but the effect itself can work in DX9 and probably OGL as well.

Well, the driver implementation is what makes it interesting, cause it's supposed to make it a lot easier to add it to a game engine. (At least that's what I heard...)

Even if it would require a shader 4.0 card, it would still be a great improvement.

[CP5670]

The Nvidia driver's implementation of it may be limited to DX10 games, but the effect itself can work in DX9 and probably OGL as well.

Well, the driver implementation is what makes it interesting, cause it's supposed to make it a lot easier to add it to a game engine. (At least that's what I heard...)

Even if it would require a shader 4.0 card, it would still be a great improvement.

If it actually works in OGL, then you don't really need to add it in at all. The driver can force it on in the same way as AA. From what I'm seeing though, the IQ benefit in most games is questionable given the big performance hit.

This is the thing I was referring to earlier. Deus Ex is an especially interesting one since its engine is pretty old, although the ambient occlusion still kills the framerate for me.