5 ms·

Timothy Lottes (FXAA) on the new PlayStation and Xbox specs

41 points by kmfrk 14y ago

duskwuff 14y ago
I don't know about the PlayStation, but there's reason to suspect that the XBox leak was fake: http://x-surface.tumblr.com/post/41282771026/x-surface-dont-believe-everything-you-read http://x-surface.tumblr.com/post/41282771026/x-surface-dont-...
- varelse 14y ago
  A long long time ago back in the 64-bit era, a bunch of fellow conspirators got some of the videogaming news sites to wax poetic about the impending arrival of Super Multi-Uniform Rational F-Splines... The more things change, the more they stay the same...
- Tuna-Fish 14y ago
  That's not the xbox leak that the present specs are from. I've managed to confirm the newest leak (8 Jaguar cores, 4MB L2, 12 GCN CU, 8GB DDR3, 32MB fast local pool) from a guy who works on a game for it and who I trust.
jiggy2011 14y ago
If they did decide to ditch real time and low level control on the next Xbox is there any reason it couldn't just be type of Windows RT device? Basically turning the xbox into an alternative to a desktop PC?
prawn 14y ago
For anyone else that had no idea: Wikipedia: "Fast Approximate Anti-Aliasing (FXAA) is an anti-aliasing algorithm created by Timothy Lottes under NVIDIA. It was first used on several games such as The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim."
henrikschroder 14y ago
Interesting, but he mentions all these techniques that are available if you have low-level access to the GPU. But on a PC, you never have that because of DirectX and OpenGL, so why do the GPUs have all these hardware functions that are never going to be used by any PC gamer?
- coolnow 14y ago
  I would think future updates to OpenGL/DX could allow more features of the cards to be used by devs. Otherwise, to use all the features of a card, the game would need to be heavily optimised which increases development time and costs, and then only supports a certain configuration which would be such a small amount of people that all that development wouldn't be worth it.
- kevingadd 14y ago
  Many of these features are no doubt used by the driver author(s) to implement cool stuff in GL extensions. One particularly crazy example: https://developer.nvidia.com/nv-path-rendering https://developer.nvidia.com/nv-path-rendering
- pandaman 14y ago
  For the same reason a modern CPU has capabilities far beyond what's exposed through Javascript or Ruby: it's easier to build a simple general purpose device and then implement any API through a software layer than to make hardware implementation of every complex API.
- stewie2 14y ago
  It's not because of opengl or directx, it's because of the operating system layer.
trendnet 14y ago
Can anybody help to find some other interesting blogs by graphics programmers like this?
- corysama 14y ago
  A wonderful feature of Timothy Lottes' blog is a continuously updated list of blog articles from other graphics programmers down the right side. http://blog.selfshadow.com/ http://blog.selfshadow.com/ has several great articles and a great blogroll. Meanwhile, here are a few favorites: http://fgiesen.wordpress.com/ http://fgiesen.wordpress.com/ http://directtovideo.wordpress.com/ http://directtovideo.wordpress.com/ http://www.iquilezles.org/ http://www.iquilezles.org/ http://0fps.wordpress.com/ http://0fps.wordpress.com/

41 points by kmfrk 14y ago

I don't know about the PlayStation, but there's reason to suspect that the XBox leak was fake: http://x-surface.tumblr.com/post/41282771026/x-surface-dont-believe-everything-you-read http://x-surface.tumblr.com/post/41282771026/x-surface-dont-...

varelse 14y ago
A long long time ago back in the 64-bit era, a bunch of fellow conspirators got some of the videogaming news sites to wax poetic about the impending arrival of Super Multi-Uniform Rational F-Splines... The more things change, the more they stay the same...
Tuna-Fish 14y ago
That's not the xbox leak that the present specs are from. I've managed to confirm the newest leak (8 Jaguar cores, 4MB L2, 12 GCN CU, 8GB DDR3, 32MB fast local pool) from a guy who works on a game for it and who I trust.

jiggy2011 14y ago

If they did decide to ditch real time and low level control on the next Xbox is there any reason it couldn't just be type of Windows RT device? Basically turning the xbox into an alternative to a desktop PC?

prawn 14y ago

For anyone else that had no idea: Wikipedia: "Fast Approximate Anti-Aliasing (FXAA) is an anti-aliasing algorithm created by Timothy Lottes under NVIDIA. It was first used on several games such as The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim."

henrikschroder 14y ago

Interesting, but he mentions all these techniques that are available if you have low-level access to the GPU. But on a PC, you never have that because of DirectX and OpenGL, so why do the GPUs have all these hardware functions that are never going to be used by any PC gamer?

coolnow 14y ago
I would think future updates to OpenGL/DX could allow more features of the cards to be used by devs. Otherwise, to use all the features of a card, the game would need to be heavily optimised which increases development time and costs, and then only supports a certain configuration which would be such a small amount of people that all that development wouldn't be worth it.
kevingadd 14y ago
Many of these features are no doubt used by the driver author(s) to implement cool stuff in GL extensions. One particularly crazy example: https://developer.nvidia.com/nv-path-rendering https://developer.nvidia.com/nv-path-rendering
pandaman 14y ago
For the same reason a modern CPU has capabilities far beyond what's exposed through Javascript or Ruby: it's easier to build a simple general purpose device and then implement any API through a software layer than to make hardware implementation of every complex API.
stewie2 14y ago
It's not because of opengl or directx, it's because of the operating system layer.

trendnet 14y ago

Can anybody help to find some other interesting blogs by graphics programmers like this?

corysama 14y ago
A wonderful feature of Timothy Lottes' blog is a continuously updated list of blog articles from other graphics programmers down the right side. http://blog.selfshadow.com/ http://blog.selfshadow.com/ has several great articles and a great blogroll. Meanwhile, here are a few favorites: http://fgiesen.wordpress.com/ http://fgiesen.wordpress.com/ http://directtovideo.wordpress.com/ http://directtovideo.wordpress.com/ http://www.iquilezles.org/ http://www.iquilezles.org/ http://0fps.wordpress.com/ http://0fps.wordpress.com/