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Where are the high end demos?

category: general [glöplog]
go knos :D
added on the 2003-03-08 11:07:03 by superplek superplek
Quote:
They are demos that feature PS 1.4, SMARTSHADER


SMARTSHADER is ATi's marketing-term for their ps1.4 yes, and now SMARTSHADER 2.0/2.1 for the new ps2.0/ps2.1 on R300/R350...

Quote:
TRUEFORM


It's called TRUFORM, and that's ATi's marketing-term for n-patches.

Biggest problem with both ps1.4+ and n-patches is that ATi is the only only one supporting them (okay, GeForce FX has ps1.4/ps2.0 support now, it's just not very available yet... still no n-patches though).

So anyway, most sceners don't HAVE ps1.4+ and n-patches, and in most compo's it's not even allowed (we've had this discussion here before). Makes it rather hard to write demos using them, right?
(I don't think that n-patches would add anything very spectacular to a demo anyway, but hey).

I'm sure that when ps1.4+ gets more mainstream, that compo's will start allowing the use, and that coders will start coding on them. I will anyway.

If I would use your logic against you, I could say: "Well in 1997, we had Voodoo 3d accelerators, why didn't Jizz, and all those other prods that you mentioned, use these 3d accelerators, and instead use ugly slow lores software rendering?"
Consistency is a bitch aye? :)
added on the 2003-03-08 12:36:32 by Scali Scali
Anyhow,

ok Scali........ If you need for me to make a spelling mistake like TRU(E)FORM to jump on me like a madcow...

I might as well start quoting you, and this would get really silly, because I usually don't quote people. Like, at first you mentionned there wasn't any 3D accelerators in 1997, and now you're talking about voodoo cards in 1997. Yes I agree, why not? And while we're talking about that, why demos in 1997 weren't using ATI graphics accelerators also like 3D Rage? Yes, you're right, that's true....

But for example, how many games used hardware rendering in 1997? Practically none, right?

BTW Scali, all along I tought you were the lame ass Skarab, for some reason. Scali - Skarab... Oh well.

But you have to understand something mr Scali, most of the sceners in 1995...1996... didn't believe in 3D acceleration. They didn't even believe in WIN32 until finally people like TBL decided some day to figure out a way to adapt their production to WIN32 and then make a tutorial on how to write a demo in Windows, and that was a major step.

Quoting everything I say will never get you anywhere, unless you understand exactly what I am saying.

It is an intelligent choice for demo makers to learn the advanced features of shaders, no matter what.
added on the 2003-03-08 18:48:43 by 33 33
Quote:
at first you mentionned there wasn't any 3D accelerators in 1997


Correction: I mentioned that hardly anyone OWNED a 3d accelerator in 1997. Just like hardly anyone OWNS an R300 now. In both cases they were available though.

Quote:
But for example, how many games used hardware rendering in 1997? Practically none, right?


I'm not too sure about that. Eg. Tombraider 1 dates from 1996, and it has support for Voodoo, PowerVR, Matrox Mystique, and probably some other accelerators. I think in 1997-1998, Voodoo-support was quite standard for games already (1997 was also the year of release for Final Reality).
Anyway, that is not relevant, since we were discussing demos, not games.

Quote:
But you have to understand something mr Scali, most of the sceners in 1995...1996... didn't believe in 3D acceleration. They didn't even believe in WIN32 until finally people like TBL decided some day to figure out a way to adapt their production to WIN32 and then make a tutorial on how to write a demo in Windows, and that was a major step.


What makes you think I don't understand it?
By the way, it was Cubic, with their port of Lasse Reinbong to Windows, that showed the potential of Windows as a demo-platform, this was well before TBL did any Windows-productions, if memory serves me.

Quote:
Quoting everything I say will never get you anywhere, unless you understand exactly what I am saying.


I kept asking you to explain the parts that weren't clear to me, but you ignored that completely.

Quote:
It is an intelligent choice for demo makers to learn the advanced features of shaders, no matter what.


What makes you think that demo makers have to learn these features?
I'm quite sure that a lot of them are already familiar with them. I don't think you understand the current situation.
added on the 2003-03-08 19:32:09 by Scali Scali
would you please STOP feeding the troll over and over again?
added on the 2003-03-08 19:37:10 by tomaes tomaes
Leave me alone Tomaes, I'm bored, and enjoying this :)
added on the 2003-03-08 19:41:52 by Scali Scali
"But you have to understand something mr Scali, most of the sceners in 1995...1996... didn't believe in 3D acceleration. They didn't even believe in WIN32 until finally people like TBL decided some day to figure out a way to adapt their production to WIN32 and then make a tutorial on how to write a demo in Windows, and that was a major step."

cubic team was first. revise your resources, asshole.
added on the 2003-03-08 20:22:10 by superplek superplek
he is just a TBL groupie, let's hear what more TBL trivia this guy can tell us... =D
What can you tell me about Specs? I have heard that they are alternative to MIPS but I don't fucking know what do they mean and which benchmarks can count on them. Gimme some infos, it's interesting for me...

And what do the programms who calculate MIPS, really calculate? Each opcode takes diferrent number of cycles. So,. on which of the opcodes are these MIPS counting benchmark based?
added on the 2003-03-08 21:32:51 by Optimus Optimus
Optimus: www.spec.org

Basically, it's a suite of programs, in C, which you have to compile on your CPU, and then run, to get a rating.
MIPS is the same, it's not actually the nr of instructions that you measure, but rather an index compared to the CPU that is defined as '1 MIPS', namely the VAX 11/780 (it scores 1757 dhrystones).
So well, you shouldn't take MIPS and FLOPS literally... They are not the actual number of instructions executed in practice, but just an index.

Sources for Dhrystone and Whetstone can be found with google, Spec costs money afaik.
added on the 2003-03-08 22:04:54 by Scali Scali
What I love about this shit is not that Dope, as pretty as it was, was a big fucking charade of pseudo-effects. It's that 33 actually BELIEVED that shit.

"7800 phong polys"

...Anyway, another fact that 33 probably hasn't come to terms with was that 3D accelerators just weren't worth the effort back in 1996/1997. Common cards were 3D Decelerators -anyone remeber the first 3D Blaster that came bundled with Quake? You'd be better off running it in software rendering instead.
added on the 2003-03-09 01:28:57 by Shifter Shifter
What I love about this shit is not that Dope, as pretty as it was, was a big fucking charade of pseudo-effects. It's that 33 actually BELIEVED that shit.

"7800 phong polys"

...Anyway, another fact that 33 probably hasn't come to terms with was that 3D accelerators just weren't worth the effort back in 1996/1997. Common cards were 3D Decelerators -anyone remeber the first 3D Blaster that came bundled with Quake? You'd be better off running it in software rendering instead.
added on the 2003-03-09 03:03:26 by Shifter Shifter
What I love about this shit is not that Dope, as pretty as it was, was a big fucking charade of pseudo-effects. It's that 33 actually BELIEVED that shit.

"7800 phong polys"

...Anyway, another fact that 33 probably hasn't come to terms with was that 3D accelerators just weren't worth the effort back in 1996/1997. Common cards were 3D Decelerators -anyone remeber the first 3D Blaster that came bundled with Quake? You'd be better off running it in software rendering instead.
added on the 2003-03-09 03:03:34 by Shifter Shifter
What I love about this shit is not that Dope, as pretty as it was, was a big fucking charade of pseudo-effects. It's that 33 actually BELIEVED that shit.

"7800 phong polys"

...Anyway, another fact that 33 probably hasn't come to terms with was that 3D accelerators just weren't worth the effort back in 1996/1997. Common cards were 3D Decelerators -anyone remeber the first 3D Blaster that came bundled with Quake? You'd be better off running it in software rendering instead.
added on the 2003-03-09 03:03:38 by Shifter Shifter
Well, since the 3D Blaster effectively blasts your 3D performance it wasn't an entire misnomer.
added on the 2003-03-09 13:34:05 by sagacity sagacity
fok sag, waarom toch :))
added on the 2003-03-09 13:42:15 by superplek superplek
Personally I don't think that the performance was the problem...
Some of the early 3d cards were way faster than the CPUs of that time (Voodoo or PowerVR vs a P133ish? Easy win for the 3d accelerator :), and quality was better aswell (highres was no problem, free bilinear filtering, mipmapping etc).

Personally I thought more along the lines of "If you use hardware + API, what is left of you? You're just using stuff that someone else made".
Ofcourse a good-looking, well-performing 3d engine was a big part of a good demo in those days...
I guess there were coders that shared my view here, and didn't see how you can make a 'demo' with 3d acceleration... What's there to code? :)

In a way we were right, accelerated demos are quite different from the non-accelerated demos back then... But in another way we were wrong... You can still make great demos with 3d accelerators, and there's plenty of room for good code, effects etc. it's just... different.
added on the 2003-03-09 16:07:18 by Scali Scali
have you ever made a demo btw?
(just wondering)
added on the 2003-03-09 16:18:04 by superplek superplek
I have never finished a demo. I could never find the right circumstances to do so.
Only small intros and tech-thingies so far.
Perhaps at Breakpoint.
added on the 2003-03-09 16:24:10 by Scali Scali
Now that I see that some of you can't afford to upgrade to a Radeon9700/9800 or Geforce FX, I wonder if any of you tried to contact nVidia or ATI and asked if they could donate a card for your development ?

Who knows, it worked with Gravis when GUS was popular.
added on the 2003-03-09 17:04:35 by front243 front243
ATi could possibly fall for that pitch, It's making an unprecidented push with its new cards right not. Besides, Gravis and ATi are both Canadian companies :-) (no pun intended).

On the other hand, the market is totally different now, and both ATi and nVIDIA are fighting ferociously a war (with lots of blasts under the belt) that will most probably be the end of one of them. Right now this is good for us, but it makes you wonder about the future...
added on the 2003-03-09 17:52:50 by moT moT
added on the 2003-04-05 02:09:39 by 33 33
33: and this is special, because....?
added on the 2003-04-05 02:24:52 by sagacity sagacity
...because it isn't out-of-spec and therefore not unfothamble how people could do this on currently existing hardware? :)

go with the times sag, people no longer care that demos meant 'thinking outside the box'.

</sarcasm>
added on the 2003-04-05 05:34:06 by Shifter Shifter
ah, thanks for clearing that up! now where is my wheelchair?
added on the 2003-04-05 15:05:11 by sagacity sagacity

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