[sldev] Sculpties: Vacuum-Forming, Skittering, Zone Linking

[Dzonatas]

Dale Mahalko wrote:
> If game companies could figure out a way to implement outline
> shapes/surfaces, then 3D games wouldn't becomes "dated" so quickly.
> The triangle density for an old game could progressively improve to
> match the capability of better and faster new hardware, without
> needing to go back and re-edit raw vertex models to manually add more
> triangle detail.
>   

This is the fear that game companies have that are dependent upon 
graphic cards as they have been. The new real-time raytracing hardware 
can do what you say. The triangular faced mesh does not need to exist in 
a ray-traced scene. LOD becomes more of critical prims to display in RT 
rather than re-sampled meshs.  Also, far distant meshs in non-RT are 
more computational then RT scenes. The graphic card companies have 
attempted to create special RT hardware as a hybrid move on the cards so 
they can capture the RT audience, but it still is not pure RT. The main 
factor for very dense RT scenes is the memory bandwidth. With even 
hybrid RT on the graphics card, it creates a demand to greatly increase 
memory on that card to make it even useful. People will start to ask, 
why can't the graphics card just use the main memory, so then I can just 
buy main memory and make it all useful for even non graphical apps?!?!?

One way to increase loading time is to get rid of the graphic card 
bandwidth bottleneck, and go with RT models on the main CPU where memory 
can be dynamically accessed faster.



-- 
Power to Change the Void