New technology is indeed a gateway to the previously impossible. As I think Siracusa says, Half-Life 2 without physics? C'mon. And Doom 3 without true dynamic lightning? No way.
I've been looking at Shader Model 4 and DirectX 10, and man... Talk about enabling the previously impossible. The Geometry Shader opens up for all kinds of previously almost-impossible GPU offloading, like massive ray-tracing (for the sake of graphics, physics or even sound).
And the Wii doesn't even have shaders at all? To me as a game programmer, that's very discouraging...
(Jose: I like the way you think! ;) A console with an FPGA... Maaan! That's close to insane... Insanely cool! Damn it, now I'll spend all day trying to find uses for an FPGA in a console :P)
by Joachim Bengtsson — Oct 23
I've been looking at Shader Model 4 and DirectX 10, and man... Talk about enabling the previously impossible. The Geometry Shader opens up for all kinds of previously almost-impossible GPU offloading, like massive ray-tracing (for the sake of graphics, physics or even sound).
And the Wii doesn't even have shaders at all? To me as a game programmer, that's very discouraging...
(Jose: I like the way you think! ;) A console with an FPGA... Maaan! That's close to insane... Insanely cool! Damn it, now I'll spend all day trying to find uses for an FPGA in a console :P)