QuoteOriginally posted by r21vo
I'm happy for you and i still can't imagine how swShader could make money..

It absolutely can. Some game developers would like their software to run on practically any system. Laptops and such still lack adequate 3D rendering capabilities. I even have competition, Pixomatic, which sells for 10,000 $ per license and is being used in Unreal Tournament 2004. swShader actually has more features, and the performance could become similar in the next months. It's also interesting for DirectX developers who would like to experiment with technology that would require expensive graphics cards, or things that are not even implemented in hardware yet.

QuoteYeah, nvidia keeps everything in secret.. Can you tell how did you got in?

It could possible damage the company if I told in detail what I worked on. Ok, that chance is small but still I'd rather not risk it.

I got in contact because of a demo which I presented on a game development forum. They e-mailed me, I had three small interviews, and they offered me a summer internship. I had some problems getting a visa for the summer of 2003, but last summer everything went smooth. It was a great experience working there and I'll never regret it.

QuoteOfficialy 3dfx didn't release driver sources, but there was a leak, so sources are available. At present there are some enhusiasts which build new drivers, for example Amigamerlin, SFFT, Raziel64 and some others. They haven't opened their sources to public, but I guess cooperation always is possible Frankly i don't know about dx9 and 0gl support in detail, all i know that most of features which could be done in hardware were made. Some tricks are implemented, something is done in software I guess, this question could answer those who make drivers..

Ok, I'll check that information after my exams!

QuoteOriginally posted by r21vo

I understand you, in your place I'd do the same
humm, is that a secret or you can tell more about opportunity you got?

No contract has been signed yet, but that could happen in a few days really. There will be some public announcement so I'll keep you updated if you like.

QuoteAlso i found in your site that you've worked for nvidia last summer, can you tell us in what project were you in?

If NVIDIA had no competition I'd love to share that information. It's closely related to next-generation DirectX features, that's about all I can say. But frankly, it has very little relevance for a public discussion. Anyway, my internship was a fantastic experience and I hope to go back once I graduate!

QuoteReleasing software pixel shader support for 3dfx videocards would be really awesome

I don't know much about 3Dfx technology actually. Does it have open-source drivers? How well is DirectX 9 and OpenGL 2.0 supported (aside from what the hardware actually supports)?

QuoteOriginally posted by r21vo
commecial quality? you mean earning money with this project?

Yes. If it were possible to keep it non-commercial (not earning money with it), I would. I really love doing it and I don't need money to motivate me. But unfortunately I'm a broke student who has to pay rent and eat something more than bread crumbs. I've spend a lot of time on this software, and I got an opportunity to earn money with it so I'm taking it.

Anyway, I'm definitely not excluding the possibility of keeping it partially free. For example the 3Dfx cards just lack some pixel shader support so I might release that component in the open-source part of the project.

QuoteOriginally posted by perer

Are you thinking of using the same technique Gigapixel/PowerVR used for overdraw??? Because if you use these overdraw tecniques you'd could be looking at a increase of 2-3x, dependant of the situation the game is in.

I intend to use a hierarchical depth buffer technique to significally reduce overdraw at a low cost. It's based on a new rasterizer that can work in blocks: http://sw-shader.sourceforge.net/rasterizer.html This appears to be the most succesful approach, but if you have other idea's please share!

QuoteOriginally posted by r21vo

i'm glad to hear that seems that you are the only developer of swShader, right?

Yes, I've started working on swShader in 2003, and worked on it in all my free time. It's finally starting to take shape and I truely believe this year it will reach commercial quality.

QuoteOriginally posted by r21vo

whoo, you have optimized swShader very much! actually a little bit sad, because what still can be done to make swShader run faster?

Actually a lot. At the moment I'm focussing on supporting every DirectX 9 feature, while performance comes second. So even though I already use quite advanced technology, it's not tweaked for best performance yet. I also currently have nothing for overdraw reduction or early culling. So things could become quite a lot faster for future versions.

QuoteOriginally posted by r21vo
I would like to know how much optimized shShader is (how much optimizations could be done) - is there any mmx/sse/3dnow optimzations? Or maybe something is done in asm?

It's full of assembly code. This page should give you an introduction to the used technologies: http://sw-shader.sourceforge.net/technology.html

QuoteOriginally posted by r21vo
I would like to ask you is it easy for you to make some of 3d oparations use gfx power? I mean making option where you can select which one do you wan to use - software of hardware for some certain 3d operation.

It brings some inefficiencies to switch between software and hardware processing several times per frame. Every time I need to access the color buffer, I have to 'lock' it so nothing else is drawing while I'm working with it. So this means I have to wait for the hardware to finish its operations before I can do some software rendering. Also, the hardware requires some setup time to start rendering, so these delays can become quite significant. Exactly how bad it is I don't know, but knowledgable people have told me it can decimate performance severely.

Another option would be to do the software rendering in a separate buffer and blend that with the hardware rendered part, so the hardware never has to be interrupted.

Either way, it's not easy to support. It's already very hard to manage everything in software, so mixing with some hardware processing is going to be even harder. But if you have some suggestion to make this simpler please let me know!

QuoteOriginally posted by r21vo

found out why.. :

Quotehttp://www.tommti-systems.de/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=82&highlight=sources

No. It's to dangerous, because it could be used as a cheating tool for benchmarks, which would bring Futuremark and other benchmark companies into trouble and also as an cheating tool for multiplayer games if you create something like a wall hack....

That's nonsense really. Benchmarks can't be influenced this way because graphics card drivers already have access to all software and hardware processing. And the code for a 'wall hack' is really trivial anyway...

Hi all,

I'm the developer of swShader. It's great to see your interest for my software!

I'd like to add that swShader is still under heavy development. Quite recently I managed to run Unreal Tournament 2004 completely in software. But the performance is not yet optimal. I will first add all features, including programmable shaders, and make sure they run very fast. I still have tons of ideas to make it faster but I can't risk the trouble of optimizing too soon.

Anyway, with processors getting more powerful every day, I see a nice future for this technology...