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Mattias Welander
Trandoshan
Joined: 27 Sep 2003
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 Posted: Dec 03, 2003 19:01 Post subject: |
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Nottheking wrote:
[ps/vs 3.0] But if there aren't any cards that can support it yet, then why is it there? Is software rendering used for it, or is it just out there so that applications can be waiting for the cards when they DO come?
I can think of several reasons why it's there. First of all, the DX9 reference rasterizer (for those of you who aren't DX programmers, that's an emulated graphics card that runs on the main CPU, and supports everything) does support ps/vs 3.0 already, so if you're prepared for low framerates you can run ps/vs 3.0 already. That means, game programmers can learn ps/vs 3.0 today, so they are prepared to release game with such support the day hardware with ps/vs 3.0 support is out.
Another reason is that DirectX Next is going to contain some pretty big changes compared to many earlier DX versions. Thus, it seems likely MS planned ahead in DX9 so they could spend more time working on DX Next.
So to answer your question, both your proposed reasons are true.
Nottheking wrote:
Amazingly enough, my pathetic Radeon 7000 supports anisotropic filtering.
My even more pathetic NVidia Riva TNT2U supports anisotropic filtering.
Nottheking wrote:
does that mean I actually got the spelling right?
I'm pretty sure you got the spelling right, yes, though I've never seen it with a big A in the middle of a Sentence before. 
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Mattias Welander
Trandoshan
Joined: 27 Sep 2003
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| Posted: Dec 03, 2003 21:15 Post subject: |
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Since not everyone knows what features are supported by what DX version, I thought I should give you a short (incomplete) version of how Direct3D have evolved, so you can look up your cards and see what they support, even if you don't want to run any diagnostic tools.
DirectX 1
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DirectX 2
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DirectX 3
Execute buffers
Software lighting
Palettes
Depth fog
Single texturing
Triangle rasterization
Flat and gouraud shading
Specular shading
Alpha and color keyed transparency
Triangle strips and fans
Lines
Ramp software rasterizer
RGB software rasterizer
HAL hardware rasterizer
Z-buffers
Perspective correction
Antialiasing
Mip-mapping
Trilinear filtering
Alpha blending
Dithering
Subpixel accuracy
DirectX 5
DrawPrimitive
Edge antialiasing
Independent UV texture wrapping
Mip-map LOD bias
Z-bias
Anisotropic filtering
Range fog
Multiple render targets
DirectX 6
Multitexturing
Bump mapping
Flexible vertex formats
Vertex buffers
W-buffering
Stencil buffers
Reference software driver
Texture compression
DirectX 7
Hardware accelerated transform and lighting
Environment mapping
Matrix skinning
Device state blocks
MMX software rasterizer
DirectX 8
Pixel Shader 1.0, 1.1
Vertex Shader 1.0, 1.1
Parallell vertex streams
Full scene antialiasing
Multisample rendering
Point sprites
Volymetric textures
Indexed vertex blending
High-order primitives
DirectX 8.1
Pixel Shader 1.2, 1.3, 1.4
DirectX 9
Pixel Shader 2.0, 3.0
Vertex Shader 2.0, 3.0
HLSL (High Level Shading Language)
Floating point textures
Line antialiasing
Scissor testing
Displacement mapping
Gamma correction
Multihead displays
Two-sided stencil support
DirectX Next
Pixel Shader 4.0
Vertex Shader 4.0
Integer instruction set
Hardware topology modification
Mesh instancing
Unlimited resources
General I/O model
One pass render-to-cubemap
Hardware shadow volume projection
Hardware fur fin extraction
1D surfaces
Frame buffer access
IEEE math
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Mattias Welander
Trandoshan
Joined: 27 Sep 2003
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Nottheking
Kell Dragon
Joined: 29 Sep 2003
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| Posted: Dec 04, 2003 22:21 Post subject: |
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Mattias Welander wrote:
I can think of several reasons why it's there. First of all, the DX9 reference rasterizer (for those of you who aren't DX programmers, that's an emulated graphics card that runs on the main CPU, and supports everything) does support ps/vs 3.0 already, so if you're prepared for low framerates you can run ps/vs 3.0 already. That means, game programmers can learn ps/vs 3.0 today, so they are prepared to release game with such support the day hardware with ps/vs 3.0 support is out.
Another reason is that DirectX Next is going to contain some pretty big changes compared to many earlier DX versions. Thus, it seems likely MS planned ahead in DX9 so they could spend more time working on DX Next.
So to answer your question, both your proposed reasons are true.
Thank you for clearing that up.
Mattias Welander wrote:
My even more pathetic NVidia Riva TNT2U supports anisotropic filtering.
I see from your list that it was added as early as DX5... I thought it was newer than that, judging by there's no controls for it inside of all of the games I've seen... Only controls for isotropic filtering.
Mattias Welander wrote:
I'm pretty sure you got the spelling right, yes, though I've never seen it with a big A in the middle of a Sentence before.
Oops. Forgot about the capitalization... 
Mattias Welander wrote:
Since not everyone knows what features are supported by what DX version, I thought I should give you a short (incomplete) version of how Direct3D have evolved, so you can look up your cards and see what they support, even if you don't want to run any diagnostic tools.
I presume that, since DX3's D3D included trilinear filtering, it also added bilinear filtering?
Also, although I don't remember what game it was, the only texture filtering option was to TURN ON bilinear filtering. If it doesn't use that, then what does it do? That has had me scratching my head every time I thought about that.
Mattias Welander wrote:
Rumor has it the configuration .ini file is by error set to read-only mode. Change the flag and it should work.
I hadn't thought about that... Come to think of that, that'd be a rather simple error, rather embarasing on the side of the makers...
_________________
Wake up, George Lucas... The Matrix has you.. |
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Mattias Welander
Trandoshan
Joined: 27 Sep 2003
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| Posted: Dec 04, 2003 22:38 Post subject: |
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Nottheking wrote:
I see from your list that it was added as early as DX5... I thought it was newer than that, judging by there's no controls for it inside of all of the games I've seen...
Trust me, it was there. I programmed against it myself in those days.
Nottheking wrote:
I presume that, since DX3's D3D included trilinear filtering, it also added bilinear filtering?
You're correct, since bilinear filtering is a subset of trilinear filtering.
Nottheking wrote:
Also, although I don't remember what game it was, the only texture filtering option was to TURN ON bilinear filtering. If it doesn't use that, then what does it do?
Nearest point filtering.
Nottheking wrote:
[read-only configuration]...rather embarasing on the side of the makers...
Very embarrassing, had it been the full game. In a demo, it's merely annoying. Still, it is most certainly a bug.
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Nottheking
Kell Dragon
Joined: 29 Sep 2003
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| Posted: Dec 04, 2003 22:46 Post subject: |
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Mattias Welander wrote:
Trust me, it was there. I programmed against it myself in those days.
I believe you... so it just recieved a lot of opposition?
Mattias Welander wrote:
You're correct, since bilinear filtering is a subset of trilinear filtering.
Okay.
Mattias Welander wrote:
Very embarrassing, had it been the full game. In a demo, it's merely annoying. Still, it is most certainly a bug.
I had forgoten that he was talking about the demo! Imagine the laugh that we would have gotten had it made it into the full version... ("The year's game to avoid", the programmers AND the testers REALLY missed things here!)
_________________
Wake up, George Lucas... The Matrix has you.. |
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Mattias Welander
Trandoshan
Joined: 27 Sep 2003
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| Posted: Dec 04, 2003 23:21 Post subject: |
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Nottheking wrote:
I believe you... so it just recieved a lot of opposition?
I'm afraid I'm not sure what you mean?
Actually, the reason you didn't see anisotropic filtering options exported in the menus of those old games is probably that the cards of that time usually didn't support more than 2x or at most 4x (meaning, it didn't do that much to improve the look) anisotropic filtering, that couldn't be combined with trilinear filtering, and still came with a 50% performance penalty. Still, I think the developers of that time should have exported the option so their games could take advantage of future hardware.
Nottheking wrote:
Imagine the laugh that we would have gotten had it made it into the full version... ("The year's game to avoid", the programmers AND the testers REALLY missed things here!)
Well... I'd say they'd be in good company. KotOR isn't much better... on quite a large number of machines, you can't play it with sound. The developers claim the "just" forgot to test the game on Pentium 4s, but I'm not sure I believe the problem is limited to a "few" Pentium 4s, since a lot of people with other processors report the same problem. That has to be the largest bug I've ever seen a retail game released with.
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Nottheking
Kell Dragon
Joined: 29 Sep 2003
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| Posted: Dec 05, 2003 18:44 Post subject: |
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Well, thanks to your analysing program, I now know what's inside my university library's public computers! I'll send you the log if you want... The hardware is has is:Pentium IV running at 1.4Ghz
~512 MB RAM
Radeon 7200 w/64 MB
I'm guessing on what the log file says, given my lack of knowledge in video memory allocation. Of course, this setup is compatable with just about anything, save for ps/vs.
I'll run it at home later on, but I'll have to install DX9 first...
_________________
Wake up, George Lucas... The Matrix has you.. |
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Mattias Welander
Trandoshan
Joined: 27 Sep 2003
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| Posted: Dec 06, 2003 00:18 Post subject: |
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Actually, I would like to have that log, because I don't have one from the Radeon 7200. Having that would help me with future compatibility testing.
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Nottheking
Kell Dragon
Joined: 29 Sep 2003
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| Posted: Dec 08, 2003 15:47 Post subject: |
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Okay, then I'll send it to you.
_________________
Wake up, George Lucas... The Matrix has you.. |
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Nottheking
Kell Dragon
Joined: 29 Sep 2003
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| Posted: Dec 12, 2003 18:07 Post subject: |
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I finally installed DX9 on my home machine... and the log file produced by your diagnostic tool had some interesting results... would you care to have it?
My setup is:-AMD K6 III(?) >500Mhz
-192MB of PC 133 SDR RAM
-ATI Radeon 7000 w/64MB DDR RAM
-Windows ME For some reason, the integated graphics chip, a Silicon Integrated Systems 545 (or something like that), refuses to let go of 1MB of the main memory, thus yielding a resulty of 191MB.
Also, no two tprograms have given the same definition of the procesor. For most applications where it is classified as a "Pentium Compatable", it is assigned a clock speed of between 512 and 528Mhz. Also, I've never heard of a "AMD K6 III". I thought the series only went up to "K6 II 3DNOW!", as it is listed by the log file.
Of course, it seems to support everything short of hardware T&L, and ps/vs.
_________________
Wake up, George Lucas... The Matrix has you.. |
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Mattias Welander
Trandoshan
Joined: 27 Sep 2003
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| Posted: Dec 12, 2003 18:44 Post subject: |
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My log file collection lacks the Radeon 7000, so yes, I would very much like to have that file, please.
I have also updated the diagnostic utility to more closely match how my current Direct3D library works. The result is more detailed and more accurate information about your system. If possible, I would like to ask you to run this new version and send me that log file instead.
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