4 ms·

i'd argue that 3d-accelerated graphics from that era is still true 3d acceleration. of course, back then the pipelines were mostly fixed - nothing like programa

i'd argue that 3d-accelerated graphics from that era is still true 3d acceleration. of course, back then the pipelines were mostly fixed - nothing like programable shaders - but you're passing in 3d-coordinates, generating some matrices to determine the MVP, passing in some textures, and getting most of that "heavy lifting" of getting the pixels on the screen from the API & card. > they were basically very fast (for the time) 2D triangle renderers. that's still true of GPUs today :) in fact, with the exception of h264/265 encode/decode, and "AI" - that's all that graphics cards have ever done!

zozbot234 4y ago
The point is that the 3D-geometry portion of the pipeline is still done on CPU with these early cards. The API's may have been slightly broader, but the hardware accelerated part was limited to rasterization, i.e. painting 2D triangles.
- foxhill 4y ago
  indeed, and i agree - what i'm saying is that even today, the rasterization of triangles is still 2D :) (and necessarily will always be! well, as long as we use 2D displays..)
- rayiner 4y ago
  The triangles are in 3D space. Part of what the cards do is project them into 2D space. See pp. 18-20 of the Glide reference: https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=183AE8CEA600909EC4D1015607CDDB8A?doi=10.1.1.76.9506&rep=rep1&type=pdf https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=18...
  - iforgotpassword 4y ago
    It explicitly states that vertices are given as (x, y). Voodoo cards did not do projection in hardware.
    - rayiner 4y ago
      The GrVertex structure has z and w components too. But it’s a fair point that the x and y is specified in screen space, not world space. I had forgotten that. But the hardware does depth buffering based on the z component, so it’s still 3D.
      - iforgotpassword 4y ago
        Yeah, that's a nice "hack" the hardware offered. You can still shove in the depth after having done the screen projection so you don't need to worry about the order in which you draw the triangles. So maybe 2.5D? :-)
- codeflo 4y ago
  > rasterization, i.e. painting 2D triangles As I explained in a sister comment, there's a lot more going on with rasterization, even back then, than "painting 2D triangles" might imply. Yes, only the XY coordinates determine the screen location of a rendered pixel, but the Z coordinate even at that stage has a lot to do with its color (e.g. for perspective-correct texture lookup) and whether it is painted at all (Z buffering).
christkv 4y ago
The rendition GPU was a risc processors but alas way to early and underperforming

zozbot234 4y ago

The point is that the 3D-geometry portion of the pipeline is still done on CPU with these early cards. The API's may have been slightly broader, but the hardware accelerated part was limited to rasterization, i.e. painting 2D triangles.

foxhill 4y ago
indeed, and i agree - what i'm saying is that even today, the rasterization of triangles is still 2D :) (and necessarily will always be! well, as long as we use 2D displays..)
rayiner 4y ago
The triangles are in 3D space. Part of what the cards do is project them into 2D space. See pp. 18-20 of the Glide reference: https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=183AE8CEA600909EC4D1015607CDDB8A?doi=10.1.1.76.9506&rep=rep1&type=pdf https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=18...
- iforgotpassword 4y ago
  It explicitly states that vertices are given as (x, y). Voodoo cards did not do projection in hardware.
  - rayiner 4y ago
    The GrVertex structure has z and w components too. But it’s a fair point that the x and y is specified in screen space, not world space. I had forgotten that. But the hardware does depth buffering based on the z component, so it’s still 3D.
    - iforgotpassword 4y ago
      Yeah, that's a nice "hack" the hardware offered. You can still shove in the depth after having done the screen projection so you don't need to worry about the order in which you draw the triangles. So maybe 2.5D? :-)
codeflo 4y ago
> rasterization, i.e. painting 2D triangles As I explained in a sister comment, there's a lot more going on with rasterization, even back then, than "painting 2D triangles" might imply. Yes, only the XY coordinates determine the screen location of a rendered pixel, but the Z coordinate even at that stage has a lot to do with its color (e.g. for perspective-correct texture lookup) and whether it is painted at all (Z buffering).

christkv 4y ago

The rendition GPU was a risc processors but alas way to early and underperforming