[ZmaN]

What is it?  What does it do?  How does i improve performance?  How does it improve over Shader Model 2.0?

[aldo_14]

http://www.elitebastards.com/page.php?pageid=4136&head=1&comments=1

edit;

[IceFire]

Originally posted by ZmaN
What is it?  What does it do?  How does i improve performance?  How does it improve over Shader Model 2.0?

More fancy things.  More flashy tricks. I forgot some of the details but there is quite a bit to like.  It can be faster...but usually the faster bit is paired away with new features.

I forget if HDR lighting is part of it...but realistic lighting has been seen in quite a few SM3.0 enabled games.

In Pacific Fighters, there is a special SM3.0 mode where the water goes from a flat pixel shaded surface to a rolling 3D geometry based surface with whitecaps and the whole deal.  I think that bit is called displacement mapping or something...probably in this case procedural displacement mapping.  Or something like that.

[Styxx]

More instructions per program. More texture accesses. Heaps for loops and conditional codes. All of this resulting in a lot more flexibility for shader coding.

[Bobboau]

it is the coolest thing ever, realy it is a huge leap from PS/VS 2, you can have looping and conditionals so it's actual programability.

[Bri_Dog]

Are there any plans to implement it into FSO?

[phatosealpha]

FSO isn't even using shaders yet.

[Carl]

Originally posted by IceFire

I forget if HDR lighting is part of it...

It is. I know this because AOE3 uses 3.0 and it have HDR as one of it's most hyped features. too bad it only works on Nvidia.

[IceFire]

Originally posted by Carl


It is. I know this because AOE3 uses 3.0 and it have HDR as one of it's most hyped features. too bad it only works on Nvidia.

The new Radeon X1 series has SM 3.0.  Well the X1800 does for sure.

[Carl]

yes, but rumor has it that MS made a deal with Nvidia that made it so AOE3 could only use HDR on their cards, and Ensemble studios was said themselves that ATI cards will not show HDR in AOE3

[IceFire]

Originally posted by Carl
yes, but rumor has it that MS made a deal with Nvidia that made it so AOE3 could only use HDR on their cards, and Ensemble studios was said themselves that ATI cards will not show HDR in AOE3

Well then they are bastards...

Can I say that?

[Grey Wolf]

No.
Now you must be purged.

[BlackDove]

*purges IceFire*

[Styxx]

HDR is just a shader like any other. The Pixel Shader Model 3.0 allows it because it has 32 bit floating point support, which is required for HDR effects. Oh, and add this 32 bit floating point support to my previous list.

[ZmaN]

sounds decent....  not worth the wait for me tho...  too bad, i like how it looks!

[Styxx]

Do you mean the game? Because there's already plenty of cards with PS3.0 support.

[phatosealpha]

Technically, HDR isn't a part of SM 3.0 - Half Life Lost Coast is going to do it on SM 2.0+ cards, and the Day of Defeat source demo already does it on the radeon X800 series.

The reason some games support HDR only on nVidia cards is because the nV cards support 32 bit framebuffers.  I'm fairly sure that those aren't actually part of the SM3.0 specification, and are just something NV does and ATi doesn't.

[DaBrain]

Originally posted by Styxx
HDR is just a shader like any other. The Pixel Shader Model 3.0 allows it because it has 32 bit floating point support, which is required for HDR effects. Oh, and add this 32 bit floating point support to my previous list.

Uhm... I thought 32-bit was 'real' HDR, while NV40/G70 can only use 16-Bit.

And the HDR in HL² is 8-Bit, so nowhere near 'real' HDR.

[phatosealpha]

Strictly speaking, doesn't 'real' HDR require a HDR display?

[Turnsky]

Originally posted by phatosealpha
Strictly speaking, doesn't 'real' HDR require a HDR display?

no, you're thinking of High-Definition Televisions..