3 ms·
Per-pixel lighting (with a normal map) is generally more expensive than per-vertex lighting (without). But when using normal maps, you've usually got less verti
by bluescrn 4y ago
Per-pixel lighting (with a normal map) is generally more expensive than per-vertex lighting (without). But when using normal maps, you've usually got less vertices to deal with, which helps.
And modern GPUs are plenty fast enough to do quite a bit of work per pixel, at least until the pixel count gets silly (resolutions of 4K and beyond), hence all the work going into AI upscaling systems.
(But the first coin image is from Super Mario Galaxy, a Wii game, and the Wii had a rather more limited GPU with a fixed-function pipeline rather than fully-programmable shaders)
- mewse 4y agoThe Wii (like the GameCube) was weird. It was more than fixed-function, but less than fully-programmable; you'd basically assemble a simple "pixel shader" by clicking together up to 16 operations from a hardcoded list, using up to 8 textures. ('TEV Stages' is the term to Google if you want the gory technical details) If you were coming to it from the PS2 (like I was), it was super-freeing and amazing and so much more flexible and powerful than anything you were used to. But if you were coming to it from the Xbox (like many of my co-workers were) it was more like suddenly being handcuffed.
- royjacobs 4y agoThis reminds me of very early pixel shaders, which could only consist of about 6 assembly instructions.