One thing I'd like to get everyone's view on is the changes occuring in Tiger from Panther. We're all using knowledge of Panther in relation to Doom 3 play. Does Core Video increase playability? What about OpenGL 2? Is Tiger going to be far better suited to handle these graphics intensive games? Will Tiger boost performance of these seemingly mediocre GPU's? I know that few people have access to Tiger so it'll be those people with information regarding this, but it's worth discussing. Perhaps Apple tested the new iMac using a build of Tiger and saw a huge performance boost that wouldn't occur using Panther or lesser version of OS X? These are questions that I think need to be addressed if we're going to argue the playability factor on Mac's. Perhaps Tiger will change everything in a very good way. Please post if you have any information regarding Tiger and it's likely effect on Doom 3 play. Thanks in advance.
One thing I'd like to get everyone's view on is the changes occuring in Tiger from Panther. We're all using knowledge of Panther in relation to Doom 3 play. Does Core Video increase playability? [snip]
All I can tell you is that Core Video won't do anything for Doom 3.
"The version of OpenGL that will ship with Tiger will include better support for pixel buffers, which lets developers perform offscreen rendering with OpenGL. For example, developers could create a pixel buffer to store a texture that may be applied to hundreds of different objects in a video game, though the texture would only be processed once."
Will this mean that games will receive a performance boost under Tiger?
The statement about having no Mac publisher was a few weeks ago. It may not hold true today. Remember, a lot of times the Mac publishers won't announce that they received the rights to a game until sometime afterwards. So it's quite possible that Doom 3 has a publisher now but no one's ready to announce it for whatever reason.
Will Tiger boost performance of these seemingly mediocre GPU's?
Doom 3's bottleneck is primarily fillrate. The stencil shadows and multi-layered textures (difuse, normal map, specular, opacity, decal etc) really hit GPUs hard. And once you up the res to something reasonable, you tax even more modern chips such as the 9800 Pro to their limits.
The OS won't be able to help there. You just need a faster GPU with more fillrate.
Doom 3's bottleneck is primarily fillrate. The stencil shadows and multi-layered textures (difuse, normal map, specular, opacity, decal etc) really hit GPUs hard. And once you up the res to something reasonable, you tax even more modern chips such as the 9800 Pro to their limits.
The OS won't be able to help there. You just need a faster GPU with more fillrate.
I thought that the Doom3 shadows were dynamically lit, unlike the more common stencils found in other games like BF1942 and Halo. Shadows are cast bigger when the light source is closer, which as far as I know is an attribute of dynamic lighting. Also, when the shadows are closely looked at, there aren't any telltale jaggedness on the edges; the shadows are as sharp as the pixels on the screen.
I thought that the Doom3 shadows were dynamically lit, unlike the more common stencils found in other games like BF1942 and Halo. Shadows are cast bigger when the light source is closer, which as far as I know is an attribute of dynamic lighting. Also, when the shadows are closely looked at, there aren't any telltale jaggedness on the edges; the shadows are as sharp as the pixels on the screen.
Battlefield and Halo use precalculated lightmap shadows. The processing is done offline and the results stored as simple bitmaps which are rendered at the same time as the difuse map. As there is no actual shadow projection (other than from the characters, and even that is done in a cheaty way) it's really quick and uses little fillrate. The downside is that they're not realtime and so cannot move.
Doom 3 uses stencil shadows. Imagine a character stood in the middle of the screen, the ground below him. Now position the sun top left, then trace down the lines from the character to the ground. The large triangular projection you get is all rendered when using this shadow method, you just don't see it, only the intersections with other polygons. Now imagine the massive projections you will get from the scenery, and you can see how the fillrate costs on Doom are huge. Plus each surface has at least 4 different maps on it, including expensive effects such as normal mapping.
Do all that at a high resolution and it will smoke all but the quickest of video cards.
Battlefield and Halo use precalculated lightmap shadows. The processing is done offline and the results stored as simple bitmaps which are rendered at the same time as the difuse map. As there is no actual shadow projection (other than from the characters, and even that is done in a cheaty way) it's really quick and uses little fillrate. The downside is that they're not realtime and so cannot move.
Doom 3 uses stencil shadows. Imagine a character stood in the middle of the screen, the ground below him. Now position the sun top left, then trace down the lines from the character to the ground. The large triangular projection you get is all rendered when using this shadow method, you just don't see it, only the intersections with other polygons. Now imagine the massive projections you will get from the scenery, and you can see how the fillrate costs on Doom are huge. Plus each surface has at least 4 different maps on it, including expensive effects such as normal mapping.
Do all that at a high resolution and it will smoke all but the quickest of video cards.
Even the quickest of video cards don't perform like champs with Doom 3 unless you set a low resolution.
That's why I'm not to worried about Doom 3 coming late to Mac. I think I'll wait for next gen vid cards and a PCI-e Mac before I buy Doom 3.
People not playing Doom 3 with all the effects turned on, high res, and a good sound system are missing out.
I'm not surprised some people think Doom 3 sucks. They must have played in on a sub-par computer.
I played Doom 3 on a 3200 Athlon, Radeon 9800 pro. The game ran smooth at high settings 1024x768, however the res doesn't really matter with this game as it does on others. The game is dissapointing, there's nothing to it, ok some bits are 'cool' but overall it's repetitive and predictable. It's basically a tech demo.
It has good graphics however I'm waiting for Half Life 2, which from what I've seen so far the character models and animation seem superior, plus you can see where you're going...
I played Doom 3 on a 3200 Athlon, Radeon 9800 pro. The game ran smooth at high settings 1024x768, however the res doesn't really matter with this game as it does on others. The game is dissapointing, there's nothing to it, ok some bits are 'cool' but overall it's repetitive and predictable. It's basically a tech demo.
It has good graphics however I'm waiting for Half Life 2, which from what I've seen so far the character models and animation seem superior, plus you can see where you're going...
I think that's grossly unfair. It should be obvious that id put their hearts and souls into Doom 3. The thing is lovingly crafted, every polygon perfectly textured, and the creature and environment designs are superb.
Play the game more and you will see how it develops, how they ratchet up the fear and horror. The final stages are outstanding.
I think Doom 3 is an excellent FPS, one of the best I've played. No you can't talk to the creatures, buy food or level up your gun. That's not what Doom is about, it's a pure shooter with the best atmosphere ever created in a video game. Play it with the lights out and the sound up and there's nothing like it.
A tech demo is a bump mapped cube spinning round while coloured lights circle it endlessly. Doom 3 is a great game.
True they get the fear factor going up throughout the levels, however, you never get caught out, as you always get stocked up on ammo or get a new weapon whenever there's a mass of monsters or a new one being introduced. The graphics are very good, I was really impressed with the outdoor sections when you're on the train...
Doom 3 is good from the point where you get guns and you shoot monsters - very straight forward no nonsense approach, this works in it's favour. However there were no surprises as you could basically guess how the entire game was going to pan out. One thing annoyed me, whenever you get to a part that is supposed to scare you (such as the monster behind the stairs) you can't get harmed. I've played the game the whole way through, it's a fun game but there's nothing to come back to after that.
Comments
Originally posted by MarcUK
I thought VPC7 (just released?) ran the 3d API's
Please see my post about "runnable" and "playable", because it's the same deal.
Originally posted by Placebo
Please see my post about "runnable" and "playable", because it's the same deal.
Im well aware, I just wondered if anyone had done it for kicks.
Originally posted by Brian Green
One thing I'd like to get everyone's view on is the changes occuring in Tiger from Panther. We're all using knowledge of Panther in relation to Doom 3 play. Does Core Video increase playability? [snip]
All I can tell you is that Core Video won't do anything for Doom 3.
"The version of OpenGL that will ship with Tiger will include better support for pixel buffers, which lets developers perform offscreen rendering with OpenGL. For example, developers could create a pixel buffer to store a texture that may be applied to hundreds of different objects in a video game, though the texture would only be processed once."
Will this mean that games will receive a performance boost under Tiger?
Originally posted by Ra
It sounds like games would have to be written specifically to take advantage of it... so they could get a performance boost, but not automatically.
Expect a patch a month after Tiger comes out, perhaps. Like they did for the G4 processor.
Originally posted by Brian Green
Will Tiger boost performance of these seemingly mediocre GPU's?
Doom 3's bottleneck is primarily fillrate. The stencil shadows and multi-layered textures (difuse, normal map, specular, opacity, decal etc) really hit GPUs hard. And once you up the res to something reasonable, you tax even more modern chips such as the 9800 Pro to their limits.
The OS won't be able to help there. You just need a faster GPU with more fillrate.
Originally posted by kotatsu
Doom 3's bottleneck is primarily fillrate. The stencil shadows and multi-layered textures (difuse, normal map, specular, opacity, decal etc) really hit GPUs hard. And once you up the res to something reasonable, you tax even more modern chips such as the 9800 Pro to their limits.
The OS won't be able to help there. You just need a faster GPU with more fillrate.
I thought that the Doom3 shadows were dynamically lit, unlike the more common stencils found in other games like BF1942 and Halo. Shadows are cast bigger when the light source is closer, which as far as I know is an attribute of dynamic lighting. Also, when the shadows are closely looked at, there aren't any telltale jaggedness on the edges; the shadows are as sharp as the pixels on the screen.
Originally posted by Placebo
I thought that the Doom3 shadows were dynamically lit, unlike the more common stencils found in other games like BF1942 and Halo. Shadows are cast bigger when the light source is closer, which as far as I know is an attribute of dynamic lighting. Also, when the shadows are closely looked at, there aren't any telltale jaggedness on the edges; the shadows are as sharp as the pixels on the screen.
Battlefield and Halo use precalculated lightmap shadows. The processing is done offline and the results stored as simple bitmaps which are rendered at the same time as the difuse map. As there is no actual shadow projection (other than from the characters, and even that is done in a cheaty way) it's really quick and uses little fillrate. The downside is that they're not realtime and so cannot move.
Doom 3 uses stencil shadows. Imagine a character stood in the middle of the screen, the ground below him. Now position the sun top left, then trace down the lines from the character to the ground. The large triangular projection you get is all rendered when using this shadow method, you just don't see it, only the intersections with other polygons. Now imagine the massive projections you will get from the scenery, and you can see how the fillrate costs on Doom are huge. Plus each surface has at least 4 different maps on it, including expensive effects such as normal mapping.
Do all that at a high resolution and it will smoke all but the quickest of video cards.
Originally posted by kotatsu
Battlefield and Halo use precalculated lightmap shadows. The processing is done offline and the results stored as simple bitmaps which are rendered at the same time as the difuse map. As there is no actual shadow projection (other than from the characters, and even that is done in a cheaty way) it's really quick and uses little fillrate. The downside is that they're not realtime and so cannot move.
Doom 3 uses stencil shadows. Imagine a character stood in the middle of the screen, the ground below him. Now position the sun top left, then trace down the lines from the character to the ground. The large triangular projection you get is all rendered when using this shadow method, you just don't see it, only the intersections with other polygons. Now imagine the massive projections you will get from the scenery, and you can see how the fillrate costs on Doom are huge. Plus each surface has at least 4 different maps on it, including expensive effects such as normal mapping.
Do all that at a high resolution and it will smoke all but the quickest of video cards.
Even the quickest of video cards don't perform like champs with Doom 3 unless you set a low resolution.
That's why I'm not to worried about Doom 3 coming late to Mac. I think I'll wait for next gen vid cards and a PCI-e Mac before I buy Doom 3.
People not playing Doom 3 with all the effects turned on, high res, and a good sound system are missing out.
I'm not surprised some people think Doom 3 sucks. They must have played in on a sub-par computer.
It has good graphics however I'm waiting for Half Life 2, which from what I've seen so far the character models and animation seem superior, plus you can see where you're going...
Originally posted by mattyj
I played Doom 3 on a 3200 Athlon, Radeon 9800 pro. The game ran smooth at high settings 1024x768, however the res doesn't really matter with this game as it does on others. The game is dissapointing, there's nothing to it, ok some bits are 'cool' but overall it's repetitive and predictable. It's basically a tech demo.
It has good graphics however I'm waiting for Half Life 2, which from what I've seen so far the character models and animation seem superior, plus you can see where you're going...
I think that's grossly unfair. It should be obvious that id put their hearts and souls into Doom 3. The thing is lovingly crafted, every polygon perfectly textured, and the creature and environment designs are superb.
Play the game more and you will see how it develops, how they ratchet up the fear and horror. The final stages are outstanding.
I think Doom 3 is an excellent FPS, one of the best I've played. No you can't talk to the creatures, buy food or level up your gun. That's not what Doom is about, it's a pure shooter with the best atmosphere ever created in a video game. Play it with the lights out and the sound up and there's nothing like it.
A tech demo is a bump mapped cube spinning round while coloured lights circle it endlessly. Doom 3 is a great game.
Doom 3 is good from the point where you get guns and you shoot monsters - very straight forward no nonsense approach, this works in it's favour. However there were no surprises as you could basically guess how the entire game was going to pan out. One thing annoyed me, whenever you get to a part that is supposed to scare you (such as the monster behind the stairs) you can't get harmed. I've played the game the whole way through, it's a fun game but there's nothing to come back to after that.