Hardware T&L in Quake III Arena???

[jackshit]

"At 640 x 480 x 32 there are two main video card related factors that are altering performance. Those factors are drivers and the presence of hardware T&L. Hardware T&L gives the two NVIDIA cards and the Radeon a noticeable lead over 3dfx, while a combination of solid drivers and a strong T&L engine gives NVIDIA the slight lead over ATI."

This is a quote from Anand's Geforce 2 Ultra article today.

I thought Q3 did not take advantage of hardware T&L. Has something changed in Q3? Did I miss something. Is it the demo Andand uses?

Please reply, I don't want to miss the boat as my card is T&L capable

 

[Noriaki]

Anything using OpenGL 1.2 is Hardware T&L capable, so yes Q3 is.

Q3 doesn't really take full advantage of it though, because it's got a fairly low polygon count, those polygons will be accelerated by the HW T&L engine, but it comes no where near the limits of the HWT&L, so we will really see the benefit when games come out with enough polys to stress SW T&L, so we need the HW acceleration.

But yes Q3 does support HW T&L.

It's just like GLQuake supported HW Rendering, but didn't really need it. We didn't really see major improvements until Quake2. There were some, but no whre near the night and day difference between SW and HW in Q2. It's the same thing now, Q3 has it, but doesn't really need it. In Q4 (or whatever) there will be a big difference in both quality and speed when running with and without HW T&L.

 

[rmblam]

I don't know jacksh!t ....lol.... sorry

 

[Strafe]

What about the tech demo map nvidia created for Q3, does that showcase T&L?

 

[jpprod]

Quake III uses OpenGL T&L routines to accelerate transformations, and if display hardware has support for T&L acceleration, it is utilized. Otherwise T&L is done via OpenGL's software routines. Reasons why Quake III really doesn't benefit very much from hardware T&L is because
1. lighting is not hardware-accelerated
2. Q3's polygon counts are low (albeit with hw T&L accelerator you can enable high geometry detail even with a lesser CPU)
3. the way Q3 handles geometry data is unlikely an optimal scheme for a hardware T&L engine. Nvidia's Q3 level really shows this - no accelerator exists which runs it smoothly (60FPS+).

 

[Noriaki]

Strafe: All the NV15demo does is pile on heavy polygons.

As jpprod and myself said Q3 has a low polygon count (compared to what a HWT&L engine can handle) NV15demo just cranks up the poly count.

But like jpprod, Q3A uses HWT&L but probably isn't exactly optimized for it.

 

[Shagga]

Many people are at a loss for a response when someone says "you don't know Jack Schitt". Now, you can handle the situation.

Jack is the only son of Awee Schitt. Awee Schitt, the fertilizer magnate, married O. Schitt, the owner of Knee-Deep Schitt, Inc.

In turn, Jack Schitt married Noe Schitt and the deeply religious couple produced 6 children; Holle Schitt, the twins (Deep Schitt and Dip Schitt), Fulla Schitt, Giva Schitt, and Bull Schitt, a high school dropout.

After being married for 15 years, Jack and Noe divorced. Noe later married Mr. Sherlock, and because her kids were living with them, she wanted to keep her previous name. She was known as Noe Schitt-Sherlock.

Dip Schitt married Loda Schitt and they produced a cowardly son, Chicken Schitt. Fulla Schitt and Giva Schitt were inseparable throughout childhood and consequently, married the Happens brothers in dual ceremony.

The Schitt-Happens children are Dawg, Byrd, and Horse. Bull Schitt, the prodigal son, left home to tour the world. He recently returned with his new bride, Pisa Schitt.

Now, when someone says you don't know Jack Schitt, you can correct them.

lol!!...funny as hell....haha!

 

[xtreme2k]

Quake3 doesnt use T&L fully

Transform - yes
Lighting - NO (quake3 uses lightmaps, not pixel lighting - light map arent part of TnL as far as I know, it is just another 'texture map' overlayed onto the textures)

Talking about transform, i think Nvidias Geforces DOES help quite a bit actually

i have a P3/700E at 868/124 and a Celeron 366 at 567/103

i have tested my GTS with both the CPU

what i find out is, with the Celeron 366 at 567, the power of the TnL unit shines and you get 'close to the P3' frame in Quake3 timedemos and 3Dmark2000 as long as you keep the resolution high