[tie]

At http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/Graphics/...anium_Mac.html , he says

I wish the Nvidia GF3 and GF4Ti cards had Mac driver support for features like pixel/vertex shaders, FSAA, etc. as they do on the PC.

Do Mac drivers really not support vertex shaders, or pixel shaders? That seems crazy to me.

Originally posted by tie:
<STRONG>At http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/Graphics/...anium_Mac.html , he says Do Mac drivers really not support vertex shaders, or pixel shaders? That seems crazy to me.</STRONG>

It isn't crazy-talk...I believe Apple wrote the GeForce drivers. We're missing bump-mapping, vertex/pixel shading, and anti-aliasing (I think). I'm glad I didn't buy my Mac a GeForce 3...what a waste of money. Apple won't be getting my money for an upgrade from my GeForce 2 MX until the drivers take full advantage of the GeForce 4 Ti.

[iamnid]

You didn't finish the quote:

wish the Nvidia GF3 and GF4Ti cards had Mac driver support for features like pixel/vertex shaders, FSAA, etc. as they do on the PC. (I hear rumors that shader support will be added in a future update to Mac OpenGL.)

Those features are not yet written into OpenGL -- once OpenGL allows for them we'll see them used in games-- not Nvidia or ATI's fault.

Although you CAN rag on Nvidia for not taking advantage of FSAA and technologies similar to truform -- give ATI a hand for doing so.

[iamnid]

Just wanted to clarify my last post -- some Nvidia cards can do FSAA but Nvidia hasn't written the drivers to allow for it.

[xyber233]

The ATi Radeon 8500 supports full features the PC has right? The 8500 is my favorite and I hope to buy one when I get a new machine.

TRUFORM™ technology makes characters and objects more rounded and natural
SMARTSHADER™ technology enables custom vertex and pixel shader programs for complex geometry, texture and lighting effects in real time
SMOOTHVISION™, ATI's advanced anti-aliasing feature eliminates distracting visual artifacts for smoother-looking images
CHARISMA ENGINE™ II supports full Transformation, Clipping and Lighting (T&L) at 62.5 million triangles/second peak processing capability
PIXEL TAPESTRY™ II, the RADEON™ 8500 3D rendering engine, powers an incredible 2.4 gigatexels/second for superior fill rates in 32-bit at high resolutions

[tie]

Originally posted by iamnid:
<STRONG>You didn't finish the quote:


Those features are not yet written into OpenGL -- once OpenGL allows for them we'll see them used in games-- not Nvidia or ATI's fault.

Although you CAN rag on Nvidia for not taking advantage of FSAA and technologies similar to truform -- give ATI a hand for doing so.</STRONG>

afaik, this is incorrect. Shaders are in opengl as vendor extensions. opengl 2 will have some standardized support for shaders, but won't be out for at least a year, or so. I don't know whose fault it is, but shaders are the major feature of these graphics cards, for me at least. All the cool demos on nvidia's site use shaders. And PC drivers support shaders *now*.

[Edit: I realize that you must have meant Mac opengl, not opengl2]

[ 05-17-2002: Message edited by: tie ]

[P]

Originally posted by tie:
<STRONG>

afaik, this is incorrect. Shaders are in opengl as vendor extensions. opengl 2 will have some standardized support for shaders, but won't be out for at least a year, or so. I don't know whose fault it is, but shaders are the major feature of these graphics cards, for me at least. All the cool demos on nvidia's site use shaders. And PC drivers support shaders *now*.

[Edit: I realize that you must have meant Mac opengl, not opengl2]

[ 05-17-2002: Message edited by: tie ]</STRONG>

Custom shaders are indeed supported by vendor extensions in OpenGL. The documentation for nVidia's extensions is almost twice the size of the main OpenGL documentation - needless to say, noone uses them.

As for support in Windows, that is in DirectX. DirectX 8.0 supports nVidia's boards, and 8.1 supports ATI Radeon - but no longer supports nVidia. Translation: Just the same thing as vendor extensions, because there is not one call that is used by both custom shaders.

The reason this doesn't work is that both nVidia and ATI did it backwards: They looked at what feature's they had in the hardware and made an API fom that - of course they're not compatible! The _sensible_ way to do this is to write an API that's easy to use for the programmer and leave it to ATI and nVidia to write drivers for whatever hardware they have - the way the rest of OpenGL has always worked! This is what's happening in OpenGL 2.0, and most likely what MS will do in DirectX 9 as well.

As for TruForm and nVidia's version of the same thing, to render higher order polygons (don't remember the stupid brand name!), that requires that the models be remade and will only work on newer games.

They should both support FSAA on the Mac, though, but that's the only real oversight.

[echoes]

Yeah, the driver situation needs to improve. There isn't much point to the Ti4200 - 4600 if you can't take advantage of 4xs FSAA or see the cool pixel shader, vertex shader and bump mapping effects in games like Giants.