Carmack Doom III and the current generation of video cards

[Whizzy]

I found this very interesting article at voodooextreme, i went completely dumb reading the article coz I didn't understand much but :



<< The ideal card for DOOM hasn't shipped yet, but there are a couple good candidates just over the horizon. The existing cards stack up like this:

Nvidia GeForce[2]: We are using these as our primary development platform. I play some tricks with the register combiners to get a bit better quality than would be possible with a generic dual texture accelerator.

ATI Radeon: All features work properly, but I needed to disable some things in the driver. I will be working with ATI to make sure everything works as well as possible. The third texture unit will allow the general lighting path to operate a bit more efficiently than on a GeForce. Lacking the extra math of the register combiners, the specular highlights don't look as good as on a GeForce. >>




Hmm... still not enough features for DOOM III

I want that game badly

The link to the article

 

[Sunner]

Lets see, da man says Quake3 doesnt look good, cause the engine is focused on speed, yet it looks much better than UT which is clearly not focused on speed.
Cant wait to see what the Doom III engine will look like, using all the current vid card features, plus a bunch of new ones, and not being focused on speed, but eye candy

 

[Doctorweir]

Hmmm...I don't agree Q3 looks nicer than UT. Every engine has its advantages and disadvantages (the explosions in UT e.g. are unbeatable).
However a firend just mailed to me that on his new Geforce2 MX (Guillemot) UT is pretty slow and ugly...perhaps Glide is the only acceptable solution for UT
But let's wait for Doom 3 and see...

 

[BenSkywalker]

Can't wait to see what more he had to say in the next installment. GF based boards are looking better then Radeons, hmmm.

Doctorweir-

&quot;However a firend just mailed to me that on his new Geforce2 MX (Guillemot) UT is pretty slow and ugly...perhaps Glide is the only acceptable solution for UT&quot;

As of right now, UT is much better looking on a GF2MX then a V5, honestly. You just need to enable S3TC under OpenGL using the &quot;hacked&quot; patch that has been released. Not only is it significantly better looking then D3D UT, it also runs quite a bit faster.

 

[RoboTECH]

Ben, the problem is that you have to use the 402 &quot;patch&quot;, which is not able to play most mods, and will be problematic online at many servers.

B-/

and you forget, the 5500 can do OGL too.

 

[IvoryGrail]

<< and you forget, the 5500 can do OGL too. >>



but not very good

 

[hans007]

i think the q3a engine is nicer &quot;looking&quot; than the UT one. but IDs art people dont know how to make art or something, because the game is pretty bland compared to most UT or counterstrike levels.

 

[JellyBaby]

All of this is fine and well but Doom III should not be made. It can't possibly compare to the experience of the first two games.

 

[BFG10K]

I can't wait for this game. Just look what a superb 3D engine Quake 3 turned out to have: gorgeous graphics at high speeds. UT runs like a lethargic turtle compared to Quake 3.

Lacking the extra math of the register combiners, the specular highlights don't look as good as on a GeForce

I am *very* interested in hearing more about this. I hope Carmack starts putting out detailed .plan files like he did with Quake 3.

 

[RoboTECH]

I just can't wait to see this beyotch come out

what is the timeframe? I know, &quot;when it's done&quot;, heh....

 

[jpprod]

Doom III won't be out until late 2001, so exact feature set needed to get the most of it might still change. I find it very interesting that Doom III renderer requires an accelerator with stencil buffering capabilities. Carmack mentioned that accelerators without it won't even display the game properly. A question arises: what is he using stencil for? If it was just to draw those hacked-looking realtime shadows (referring to sorting problems with transparent surfaces, at least in Q3), it wouldn't be a requirement. No, he's doing something quite different this time, perhaps something associated with clipping or some essential volumetric effects?

From the bit at the Voodooextreme, I also found JC's definite bump mapping support comment relieving - finally a potential title supporting the feature in full instead of just lamely showing off a card's capabilities. Perhaps we'll see fully bump mapped wall and ground textures for the first time, maybe even with procedural bumps!

and you forget, the 5500 can do OGL too.

Not with S3TC

 

[RoboTECH]

jpprod:

&quot;and you forget, the 5500 can do OGL too.

Not with S3TC &quot;

indeed it can. It just converts the S3TC calls to FXT1 calls. at least that's how it works in Q3.

 

[jpprod]

Robotech: Yes it works on Quake III, because the game doesn't specify what compression to use. But what 3dfx is doing is GL extension emulation, and doesn't work if textures are pre-compressed using S3TC algorithms.

 

[Shudder]

Wow, can't wait to get a new video card for ONE game.

Someday, hopefully soon, the PC might reach &quot;console&quot; status. The majority of gamers won't be able to support a Geforce 2 DDR Gig Ath/P3 just to run the game well. It's understandable to have a p233 and get shut out of the market, but when Athlon 600's are having a rough time, it's time to take some time to optimize the game a bit.