Realtimeish graphics stuff

It has been a slow news month, although E3 sure did impress i thought i write a little about what i have been going for the last month or so.

You see a while ago gamedev.net aquired the rights to Neon Helium productions or NeHe for short.
And with that came the promise to revamp the website and lessons, this is now being done with the help of a handful of community regulars, and this includes me.
Currently we haven’t gotten that far as we are currently discussing things like writing standards and functional specifications of the base code to lesson 1, and on top of that our dev wiki apparently died a day ago, but i hope that soon we will start to get things together an actually produce something.

Now the new lessons won’t be like the previous ones (well ok, some will) but i think that they will rather follow the current developments in real time computer graphics, for instance vertex buffer objects are now on lesson45, this was fine like 5 years ago, but today most if not all software use vertex arrays and vertex buffer objects, so one person suggested that vertex arrays would be moved up to like lesson5 and VBO’s shortly thereafter, i agree on this.

Another thing to consider is the span of hardware people use, on the Nehe forums i have seen everything from the latest of the latest of the most powerful and hardware that was hardly top of the line during the voodoo days (as in 3DFX voodoo, not the religion, but it may as well be that since to run modern stuff on that stuff you will need some real magic).
Now this span is troublesome to game programmers and artists out there since you always want to use thee best of the best and still have as many players as possible, one great indicator of this is World of Warcraft, for all it’s greatness it is still the definition of low poly modeling, they could have done it better.
Instead game developers are now trying to add as many add on effects for people with the graphics power to turn on.
The new lessons will also reflect this need of graphics throttling, i am pretty sure that supersampling, true motion blur and FSAA tuts are needed, but we also need to make sure that whatever can adjust the quality/speed ratio should.
Along this the new lessons should teach the proper way to do things according to the strengths and weaknesses of modern graphics accelerators.

To tell you the truth, i am a bit exited about this, NeHe is a pretty popular place and whatever we produce it will have an impact on a lot of new openGL based software, in fact it will have a slight effect on how real time graphics are developing, this has an undeniably great coolness factor to it.
It would be cool if ATI and NVIDIA started to request custom lessons from us, or if the ARB asked us to write a new extension or two.

And on an related issue, tutorial 03 (HDR) is in the works, but don’t hold your breath just yet, i need to build and texture some custom geometry first to really show the power of normal mapping, tut 02 a-c will also get updated geometry, textures and normal map as soon as i complete the high def base mesh of around 10 million polygons.

H5N1: death from above

So this has been my week so far.
Within 24 hours of my last post i got the flu, or something worse, since my immune system is top notch it has to be something like H5N1 or possibly the Ebola virus
So the last week my body has felt like Peter Stormare just un-pimped my auto, and with auto i mean my body.

In other news conroe is released, and frankly its preformance shocked not only me but others to, anandtech.com had to redo the tests to be sure of the results they where getting, 20% more performance than AMD64 X2 with a clock speed about 133MHz higher, just wait until the 3GHz model comes, way to go Intel.

Also Nvidia regained the throne it lost to the x1900XTX(way to many x-es fore my taste) a few weeks ago with their new GF7900GTX, if ever so slightly though.
I still think the g80(or nv50 if you prefer) will be as much a revolution as the NV40 was, but we will just have to wait and see.

I have been thinking of putting a few advanced openGL tutorial series here, the first one will be about FBO, then possibly GLSlang shading.
But it has to wait to at least after my head stops feeling like i just had a lobotomy with a rusty nail.

And Finally, I don’t know how many times i and my peers will have to repeat this.
RIAA, MPAA, IFPI and all the other DRM-loving necrophiliacs i have one thing to say, DRM doesn’t work, it never has, never should and it never will.
Just because your eternally flawed DRM anti copying mechanisms can kill people doesn’t mean they should.

Ready, aim, fire

The US Army didn’t find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, it turns out they already had some a lot closer a hand, how about that Cheney incident, he is finally doing the right thing, shooting lawyers in the head with a shot gun.
But enough with the jesus freaks proving evolution to be a true.
Finally, a new season of Real time with Bill Maher is here, and it couldn’t have started any better, Cheney basically handed the main topic on a platter.
I don’t think it’s a secret that i kinda look up to Bill, i mean, he’s a funny guy and he has the guts to say what he really thinks, people like him are an endangered species in these days.
People today talk about values, ethics and morals, i don’t think people know what these are and i am frankly surprised that people think other people have low morals.
No they don’t have low morals, they just don’t know what their values are.
Bill knows what he values, i know what my values are (and they are a bit “special”), do you?

The last few weeks i have been busy with a couple of my own game projects (in between doing nothing that is), there are two of them, the first of them i was first written in 2002 and is about a war in the near (alternate) future against The US, but don’t worry it’s not the same US as we have today (or is it).
Well anyway, the second project is sort of a tie in, but not even close to the same story, or even the same game type, it’s a standard Starcraft like RTS with a few new cool things, and if you want to use them, well I’m always employable.

Saw the new Hellsing ova, see it, i command you, no, really, see it.
Same with the other series i mentioned last time.

And finally (i know i neglected this in the last few posts) it’s time to give some advice to somebody, to make it up i got two this time.
Cheney, next time you shoot a 78 year old lawyer in the head consider this.
1. A shotgun is more effective up close.
2. Make sure to finish it off with a second shot.
3. An assault rifle or a submachine gun is more effective on humanoid targets, might i suggest a P90, it’s light, compact and easy to shoot.

Petter(the idolized Swedish rapper, that i don’t like): you say you want to kill all who download your music, i do to, not because they download your music, but because the actually listen to it.
Please mister sucky rapstar, if you don’t want people do download your music you have two options.
1. Make music people actually want to buy.
2. Don’t make any music at all, and i would prefer this.

OpenGL wishlist

I know almost everything about openGL and real time 3d graphics, and i am proud of that, but sometimes there are a few wee bits that i feel is missing.
So what better place than here to bring it up, well ok i admit there are better places, but this is my place and here i reign supreme.

1. Fix the damn z buffer
This problem is a two parter, it’s simple but annoying.
a) 64 bit z buffer, it will reduce distance z fighting, that isn’t to much to ask for, is it?
b) Currently the way graphics accelerators calculate the z value is by interpolating the vertics z-values, this is fast and works well 99.99% of the time, but on the flip side it is the reason why z fighting appears in the first place.
Instead use a standard plane equation for the z values, this will force the z values into submission and in the process reduce the near plane z-fighting.

2. Virtual texturing.
Or full virtualisation of the texture memory as John Carmack put it, it will fix the damn batch problem and give all graphics artists more freedom to work with, all in one swift blow.

3. Increased parallelism.
Real time computer graphics is the champion of parallelism, but it is also it’s strongest opponent.
Everyone in the business knows that computer games rarely have any huge benefit of multiple processors, this is because the render pipeline is horribly linear.
I love to see a parallel capable graphics API/graphics accelerator but i just don’t see that happening in the near future, perhaps in 3-5 years, but not before that.
I know how it could be done, i know the benefits of doing so, but they more or less laughed at me for suggesting anything like that on the openGL forums.
I know i am right on this one, so give me my damn parallelism before i hurt someone.

4. layered rendering.
I know, this one is a bit of a stretch, but it will make everything look so much nicer.
Let me explain what i mean.
in layered rendering you have a special color and z buffer, they have 8 or more layers in them.
when a pixel is written to the buffer a layer is chosen for it to be written to, if it is opaque it is always clamped to the deepest layer, if it’s transparent it chooses a layer before that depending a little on depth.
If a a pixel needs to occupy the space between layers(since they all have a z value) it pushes (and merges if needed) all other pixels put of the way.
If you understood what this means in terms of what it can do, you will also understand that it is somewhat of a wet dream for game makers.
But i admit, it is a bit of a stretch.

5. Raytracing.
It’s time for a change, it’s time to bring out the heavy artillery (and not just because i did that in the army) it’s time to introduce raytracing as an realistic addition to real time computer graphics, it can be done, it’s relatively easy to implement in shader programs and it will kick ass.
Not to mention the relative jump in visual quality games will get.

Well that is that, if you know a member of the ARB or the core Nvidia dev team, let them know about this, please.

Whoosh

It’s time again for another update on my wonderful blog, and for the first time i have nothing to write about but I’ll think i will do ok.

First, finally the showreel is going on line, i only have one more page to translate, it contains things i have done and basically consists of a lot of screenshots and rendered images, not all images though, a lot of the images i have produced are “not work safe” and some are just test or texture renders, silly me, making geometry without rendering it in all it’s full glory.
Naturally i will add on this at the rate i can do more stuff.

Moving on.
The Internet problem in my last post turned out to be mostly the routers fault, and while i may have to reboot it every week or so, it is well worth the effort.
And speaking of downloading stuff, i got a list of anime you should try and download.

Pani poni dash < more insane than azumanga, 100x the speed.
Black cat
Solty rei
Ichigo mashimaro < translates into “strawberry marshmallows” and is about as sweet as that.
FMP – TSR < a must, get the whole series, i command you, you will never regret it.
Bokusatsu Tenshi Dokuro-chan < gives a new meaning to ka-splat.

Hmm… maybe i will make a post or two later on about the anime that i love so much and why i kinda smile about the fact that the only anime the Swedish (state owned politically correct publicservice) kids channel (SVT Barnkanalen) show is Card captor Sakura.

witch brings us to japan, i got a friend who is studying there for a year and he got a (Swedish)blog up about this “experience” at http://johanijapan.blogspot.com/.
(ok i admit, he only basically writes about getting drunk all the time and partying a lot)

Ok, all the time i have today, i have to get cracking on that last page translation, but before we end i have to offer my advice to someone.
Bill,i know you want to rule the world, but making your future minions go trough a hard time with your software, your questionable licenses, the undead horde of lawyers and other miscellaneous crap, isn’t good for morale.
So as a megalomaniac evil genius to another, consult me before the invasion.
And Steve Balmer has gotta go, he is not god for anything

Um, yea and also, I’m still unemployed, i want this state fixed, and now.

Lol microsoft

Just saw this on slashdot “Microsoft Invents A ‘Play-Once Only’ DVD”.
Apparently Microsoft has in a stroke of genius invented a dvd that can only be played once, OMG i say, totally cool i say….. NOT!

1. it has been done at least 2 times before. the first one was called DIVX, and the other one was made from a polymer that destroyed the disks after a week or so.

2.
One play = one read
One read = one rip
One rip = play forever

3. if you play it and power goes out after like 5 min then your not gonna get to watch the movie

4. the darn thing needs special hardware

This thing won’t work, it never has and never will, and just the laughable notion that microsoft thinks this will help stop piracy, HA!
If you can watch it, it can be copied.
If you can hear it, it can be copied.
If you can read it, it can be copied.
So the only ones that will benefit from this product is… no, wait, no one will.
Microsoft spent lot’s and lot’s of millions on this stuff, and they will probably never get that back.
Hollywood will not get much money since no one will ever use it, they will just spend money on a bunch of discs no one will buy.
The pirates will ignore this, there are always other ways of getting the data, and remember “One play = play forever”.
The customers will need to get a new dvd player that is crippled beyond recognition + they need to buy a new disk for every time they watch it witch means that after like 5 views it’s starting to get more expensive than regular DVD’s and finally all those problems related to the one play nature of the disc, there will be crying kids (will someone think of the children).

No this technology is going the same way as the food you eat, right down the crapper (alternatively in the garbage bin or down the porcelain bus depending on how well it tastes).
This however does not scare Microsoft, the new DVD players will start arriving early next year and you can bet that Microsoft has strongarmed/bribed all manufacturers to support this format, shame and here i was hoping that the new generation of DVD players would start supporting ogg, ogm, matroska and png files.

So here is a small advice to Microsoft, before you start spending money on things like this, clear it with someone like me first, you might save a couple of millions here and there.

LOL indeed.

Edit: It appears that the original article was a fake, and Microsoft does not have any play once DVDs, but it doesn’t matter really, one play or limited play DVDs are still a bad idea, they will never work and never has.
And what i don’t understand is why they are so rabidly interested in protecting something that is unprotectable by nature, the only way to protect it from being pirated is to never make it in the first place.