New Shader Model 3.0 for eq2 :) - Page 3

firamas · 06-23-2009, 03:56 PM

I saw a TSO ad on Penny Arcade yesterday. I was like "woo, finally".

Zalbard · 06-23-2009, 05:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Morara

It's going to look better because we'll be able to finally run the game maxed out on hardware that can technically run 12 copies of games with that detail level and a decent engine.

PS 3.0 aren't magic pixies, unless they rewrite all their shader code down to use GPUs it'll be still taxing your CPU. I'm assuming they are rewriting some, but how much of it? Simple transaction from 2.0 to 3.0 will give EQ2 nothing. They simply don't have uber long shaders to find a use for SM 3.0... It offers effect complexity but not performance. They could as well rewrite their 2.0 code to work on GPUs correctly but guess wording "we finally made our shit work correctly" isn't really attractive so you get a different wording with SM 3.0 and all these boosts of performance it supposedly gives...

Diknak · 06-23-2009, 06:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zalbard

PS 3.0 aren't magic pixies, unless they rewrite all their shader code down to use GPUs it'll be still taxing your CPU. I'm assuming they are rewriting some, but how much of it? Simple transaction from 2.0 to 3.0 will give EQ2 nothing. They simply don't have uber long shaders to find a use for SM 3.0... It offers effect complexity but not performance. They could as well rewrite their 2.0 code to work on GPUs correctly but guess wording "we finally made our shit work correctly" isn't really attractive so you get a different wording with SM 3.0 and all these boosts of performance it supposedly gives...

Aren't the shaders already on the GPU? I know the 'Complex Shader Distance' setting is on the GPU, so the detailed shaders are already on the GPU, so I would assume all shaders are.

Edwin Ahe · 06-23-2009, 06:21 PM

Quote:

Simple transaction from 2.0 to 3.0

And when they started using SM2.0? Last time I checked EQ2 used SM1.0/1.1

Zalbard · 06-23-2009, 06:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Edwin Ahe

And when they started using SM2.0? Last time I checked EQ2 used SM1.0/1.1

At least they are in the official system requirements...
Installation - EQ2i, the EverQuest 2 Wiki - Quests, guides, mobs, npcs, and more
No one knows for sure what EQ2 uses tbh, shaders aren't supposed to be processed by CPU anyway.

ZaiTh · 06-23-2009, 06:45 PM

I dont know how many of you played when the game came out but I was on the tech boards quite a bit. Another huge selling point that SOE used was NVidia logo's everywhere blah blah blah. A matter of fact, it did not matter what kind of maker you used...Nvidia/ATi.

As for SM, somoneone quoted SM1.0/1.1 That is correct, they also have SM2.0 to some degree. That was per one of the mods back in late 2004/early 2005. I dont remember to what degree but it was almost negligible. A lot of people were upset that they spent money on $500 Nvidia cards for no good reason.

There was a player by the name of Chris (I forget what company/site he was from) that put a lot of test data out there and he pretty much made Sony put a lid on it because he was able to dispute a lot of what they were saying and they could not disprove him. Was an interesting read and funny at the same time.

I really only think that the only way they are going to seriously increase performance is to re-write the code to utilize GPU's. They did it for EQ1, who knows what will happen.

Zalbard · 06-23-2009, 07:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Diknak

Aren't the shaders already on the GPU? I know the 'Complex Shader Distance' setting is on the GPU, so the detailed shaders are already on the GPU, so I would assume all shaders are.

Yeah, sure. Just some stuff isn't being done using GPU and shaders.
Well, in fact I think you can probably emulate early versions of shaders using CPU (1.0, less likely 1.1), but pretty sure it's not being done due to the complexity of the task, so it doesn't really belong to the topic.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ZaiTh

I really only think that the only way they are going to seriously increase performance is to re-write the code to utilize GPU's. They did it for EQ1, who knows what will happen.

Well, in fact I think this is what they are about to do if you're lucky. Just depends on how much code they are going to rewrite.

Sulan · 06-23-2009, 08:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ZaiTh

I dont know how many of you played when the game came out but I was on the tech boards quite a bit. Another huge selling point that SOE used was NVidia logo's everywhere blah blah blah. A matter of fact, it did not matter what kind of maker you used...Nvidia/ATi.

As for SM, somoneone quoted SM1.0/1.1 That is correct, they also have SM2.0 to some degree. That was per one of the mods back in late 2004/early 2005. I dont remember to what degree but it was almost negligible. A lot of people were upset that they spent money on $500 Nvidia cards for no good reason.

There was a player by the name of Chris (I forget what company/site he was from) that put a lot of test data out there and he pretty much made Sony put a lid on it because he was able to dispute a lot of what they were saying and they could not disprove him. Was an interesting read and funny at the same time.

I really only think that the only way they are going to seriously increase performance is to re-write the code to utilize GPU's. They did it for EQ1, who knows what will happen.

I can't bring up the video at work to watch again, but I'm fairly certain that's what Brenlo said they were doing. I remember they hired a graphics programmer a while back specifically for stuff like this. I'm glad to finally see some return from it.

Filth · 06-23-2009, 10:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zalbard

PS 3.0 aren't magic pixies, unless they rewrite all their shader code down to use GPUs it'll be still taxing your CPU. I'm assuming they are rewriting some, but how much of it? Simple transaction from 2.0 to 3.0 will give EQ2 nothing. They simply don't have uber long shaders to find a use for SM 3.0... It offers effect complexity but not performance. They could as well rewrite their 2.0 code to work on GPUs correctly but guess wording "we finally made our shit work correctly" isn't really attractive so you get a different wording with SM 3.0 and all these boosts of performance it supposedly gives...

Short sightedness ftl. It will allow them to redo all the old spell fx and introduce a hell of a lot of other new systems. PFX take all of 5 minuets to create once you have the textures. Give me an editor and I could prolly redo all the PFX in the game with new tech in a few days. The first thing I would add is soft(er) and ocean particles, particle shadows and lighting and physics. Some better heat shimmer via alpha chans would be very nice to. I would also start using larger sized textures in the PFX since video cards all have so much more VRAM now days.

The spells in this game could look fking bomb with SM3.0

firamas · 06-24-2009, 12:36 AM

Yeah, because what we need is more particle clutter on raids.