The Ideal gaming PC's? was RE: [geeks] Re: Help me convert a computer illiterate to an iMac!

[Joshua D Boyd]

On Tue, Jan 07, 2003 at 12:58:38AM -0700, Chris Byrne wrote:

> Of course what I'd REALLY love to see is a video card that can do
> realtime film quality 3d rendering (24-32 FPS at DVD resolutions lets
> say, not really film resolution). If that is what you mean by "worth it"
> then sign me up brother, but somehow I don't think it is. 

The GeforceFX seems like it will be coming kinda close to Shrek quality
under certain cases.  If you recal the Fairy demo, that is good, but I
doubt it has the power to drive several characters with the same level
of detail at once.

Also, I noticed the screen shots appeared to have depth of field, but I
don't know if that is really being processed properly, or if it is just
a hack done by blurring the background.  And I didn't see any reference
to motion blur.  I don't know if anyone is doing it by pixel shaders yet
or not.  But these two items would be easy to add if the card just
added a hardware accumulation buffer (which they show no signs of
doing). 

As to the frame rate, even though cinema is 24fps, I don't think we
really want that for games.  In my opinion, a constant 72hz is desirable
for games.  Faster is fine also.

But, on the up side, I believe that none of the rather spiffy demos
people are showing are at DVD resolution.  They are all far higher.  So,
if we dropped the resolution, that would free up a lot of power for more
complex pixel shaders to add things like DOF or motion blur.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd