Quote:Original post by OrangyTang
Aux buffers have been hardware supported since the GF6xxx and later (and equivilent ATi cards). Support is quite widespread now.
I apologize. Thank you for correcting me, I must admit it's quite a while I don't perform extensive testing on them.
Quote:Original post by OrangyTang
While malloc() does returns NULL when out of memory, new/new[] throw an exception (unless you explicitly use the no_throw version).
The point is that they simply bail out in a way or the other, how they do that it's basically irrelevant in this context.
Quote:theMachinimator
Well we can detect the presence of FBOs. We have a basic fixed-function GL path in our code for the situations where our cleverer code can't operate. It's not at all clear to me how many off-screen render target textures I can allocate though. Many graphics techniques pretty much require one on their own.
That's just better. AUX have nothing to do with FBOs. There's no theorical limit on FBO allocation although only a few can be used, depending on MRT functionality.
Quote:Original post by OrangyTang
Running till you can't run any more doesn't seem like a good strategy. We want to know what sort of facilities we can offer the user with their machine from the moment the code boots up.
Our product - Moviestorm - is a tool for creating machinima, virtual movies on your PC. Our users can be anyone from a teenager to a pro in the movie business. We have terabytes of assets and users are free to load as many as they like into a set. We offer effects like depth-of-field and shadows which require copious resources, and as I said, deferred rendering is there awaiting switch-on. Not all users will have access to all functionality, and we want to be able to work out what we can offer when the launcher app kicks in.
Unluckly this isn't the industry standard for a reason. Even the less-technical artist will think at this. In GL there's no real way to know. You know the tale of the target hardware and the issues in managing wide audiences... you'll hardly fit the most flexible architecture with the most performing and feature-rich.
Unfortunatly I had faced a similar problem about two years ago and I had to go for D3D that time. It's measurements are not 100% accurate but you can definetly trust them to a good degree.