Hi, I''d like you to test my demo, mainly to see if it actually works with the graphic cards it''s supossed to work. The demo requires a Pixel Shader 1.4 capable graphic card, so it should run on a Radeon 8500 or higher or a GeForce FX 5200 or higher. You can download the demo here. The downloadable file is a 3.68MB 7-zip self extracting exe. Here is an screenshot of the demo in action: Thanks for your time, please reply saying whether it works, and stating your graphic card. ------------------------------------------------------ Cuando miras al abismo el abismo te devuelve la mirada. F. Nietzsche

works fine on my comp (with FX 5900 U), but the text doesn''t display properly, only flat shaded quads, no font textures...

with default options

athlon xp 1900
512MB
Radeon 9800 w/128MB

59fps

Nice to see it working with cards other than mine

sBibi: Weird, I have no idea what can be causing the alpha channel of the font texture not to show, because it works with the reference device. I'll have to look onto it, perhaps it's a driver bug.

JoriathLionfort: Me alegro de que te guste y te funcione.

CGameProgrammer: I didn't expect it to be slow on a Radeon 9600. What resolution were you running it at ? (The config dialog defaults to the highest res your monitor/graphic card combo supports), at 1024x768x32 on my Radeon 9100 I get 60 FPS (with Vsync on) nearly all the time.

My engine is using an hybrid continuous/discrete LOD working at shading level, not at geometry level. The chunks of terrain are rendered with two shaders (pvpl.ddl & pvlfade.dll in the shaders folder) the first one is used when the chunk is close, it computes both per-vertex and per-pixel diffuse lighting and interpolates between the two based on distance, the second shader is used when the chunk is far, it computes per-vertex lighting and fades the mesh based on distance. Since the demo is fillrate limited I don´t see the point in using LOD at geometry level (besides, i dislike the popping in the discrete approach, and the wobbliness in the continuous one). I think that the best optimization I could apply right now would be occlussion culling.

cyn: Nice, it seems to be behaving well on the Radeon cards.

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Cuando miras al abismo el abismo te devuelve la mirada.
F. Nietzsche

[edited by - Abominacion on January 22, 2004 8:29:43 PM]

CGameProgrammer:

quote:the clipping distance (where the fog starts) is pretty nearby in the test landscape

That''s done on purpose, since the terrain is quite small (it''s a mesh created from a 513x513 heightmap) if I increased the viewing distance & the distance it starts fading away accordingly, you''d be able to see the whole landscape with no fading at all. Being fillrate limited, the demo can get away with pushing a lot more tris, given that those tris don''t mean painting lots of pixels, of course.

Anyway, you''ve got a point in using geometric LOD for far away meshes, since it''s an waste to put tris that are going to be rendered as just one pixel or even less.

quote:From what I understand, Radeon 8500 == GeForce 3. Radeon 9000 == GeForce FX 5200

Nope, both the Radeon 8500 & 9000 support VS 1.1 & PS 1.4; the GeForce 3 supports VS 1.1 & PS 1.1; the GeForce FX 5200 supports VS 2.0 & PS 2.0.

I recommed you check this site whenever you need to know the caps of a graphic card.

Uhfgood: Oh, but you can, in the unbearably slow reference mode, of course .
Jokes aside, this demo could be done using PS 1.1, the only shader that really requires PS 1.4 is the clouds shader (in PS 1.1 it''d require two passes).




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Cuando miras al abismo el abismo te devuelve la mirada.
F. Nietzsche