What are your thoughts on video captures?
category: general [glöplog]
To be fair, i've probably only booted into windows a couple of times in the past year to watch demos (dunno if it's me getting lazy or lack of good demos to motivate me :/ )
smash: how does the compiler work out with d3d then? I assume different cards are going to need at the very least different optimisation, if not totally different code. That's surely best done at driver level, so is DX creating some standardised output that the drivers actually optimise + compile? I guess that would make a lot more sense than glsl's way.
smash: how does the compiler work out with d3d then? I assume different cards are going to need at the very least different optimisation, if not totally different code. That's surely best done at driver level, so is DX creating some standardised output that the drivers actually optimise + compile? I guess that would make a lot more sense than glsl's way.
Psonice: It's not only the shader compilers, it's the rest of the driver too. As far as my experience goes, especially NVidia have a habit of breaking and repairing the simplest driver features all the time. You would be surprised how often eg. the set of supported texture formats is changing every time a new driver version comes out, and if you come from a console background like me, you've got the annoying tendency to put those formats to actual use instead of relying on only A8R8G8B8 and DXT like PC guys (add your favourite HDR format if you want)... so whenever eg. I say "try the latest driver version" what I really, really mean is "let's hope the current version is one that accidentally works". :)
/me fondly recalls the trip to the NVIDIA campus where Temis was introducing the venue saying "there's the hardware development section, over there is the marketing, that's our demoteam", and upon the question "...and where's the driver development team?", paused a bit and said "...in a safe place."
kb: no, I wouldn't be surprised. It's no different on osx, even though there's no drivers to download.. they just stick a new driver in each os update, and yeah, things break and get repaired and then break again regularly.
I had major issues with using a sampler in vertex shaders a while back that would cause nasty crashes, wrote a workaround, then in the next version found my workaround crashed on some cards, wasn't necessary on others, and was still needed on others. I gave up at that point ;)
I had major issues with using a sampler in vertex shaders a while back that would cause nasty crashes, wrote a workaround, then in the next version found my workaround crashed on some cards, wasn't necessary on others, and was still needed on others. I gave up at that point ;)
psonice: d3d's hlsl compiler compiles to bytecode. that compiler lives in the d3dx dll, not in your vendor's gfx drivers. the bytecode gets turned into proper hardware-dependent shader code by the driver.
while there's still some room for error there, it means you dont get issues in high level code parsing like ati failing to compile "1" instead of "1.0f". :)
kb: ive had a lot more problems with ati than nvidia recently actually.. :)
while there's still some room for error there, it means you dont get issues in high level code parsing like ati failing to compile "1" instead of "1.0f". :)
kb: ive had a lot more problems with ati than nvidia recently actually.. :)
and nvidia drivers come thru windows update these days too yes. it's not really up to date.. more like once every servicepack, but hey :D
also, try to install windows7 and have a laugh at how desperately Microsoft tries to *HINT* that installing windows7 is as easy as blinking your eyes ... at least i read it as some kind of 'we're not as worksome as mac zealots make you believe.. honest!!'-statement :P
also, try to install windows7 and have a laugh at how desperately Microsoft tries to *HINT* that installing windows7 is as easy as blinking your eyes ... at least i read it as some kind of 'we're not as worksome as mac zealots make you believe.. honest!!'-statement :P
smash: that's a better system then. With glsl the best option seems to be to write on an ati box, as it's more likely to work on nvidia than if you do it the other way round, but it's a pretty shitty way to work.
Isn't the compiler supposed to assume '1' is an int though? I thought that was the case, in which case many 'nvidia only' drivers are kind of nvidia's fault for being a bit loose.. I'd suspect a cunning marketing ploy but it seems they've gone much stricter with cg, so who knows? :)
maali: i've tried the windows update video drivers in the past with xp, and they were seriously out of date. Like even old games woudn't work. If they've improved that, it can only be a good thing.. really, all drivers should get updated pretty often through windows update. And 3rd party apps too. That would fix a ton of security headaches and end a lot of messing around :)
Isn't the compiler supposed to assume '1' is an int though? I thought that was the case, in which case many 'nvidia only' drivers are kind of nvidia's fault for being a bit loose.. I'd suspect a cunning marketing ploy but it seems they've gone much stricter with cg, so who knows? :)
maali: i've tried the windows update video drivers in the past with xp, and they were seriously out of date. Like even old games woudn't work. If they've improved that, it can only be a good thing.. really, all drivers should get updated pretty often through windows update. And 3rd party apps too. That would fix a ton of security headaches and end a lot of messing around :)
if people have troubles cuz they are regularly updating drivers and stuff maybe the scene still is tech savvy, more and some people think..
I very rarely update any drivers. MAx every 6 months. And I also still use Firefox 1. And winXP sp2. (they removed the adress bar in sp3, and that sucks.) And DX .. well last update was 1 or 2 years ago, minimum.
I download d3dx_ stuff when required.
Still I'm able to run pretty much anything I want to. Updating is a hassle only if you care to update, really. And kb_ Ati has proven much worse for me in the past than nVidia, but it's not worth starting a religion debate.
About the old plateform is better than imposing youself a 'false' restriction: using an out of date machine no one longer use IS imposing yourself fasle constraints.
but anyhow, those constraints works! most outsiders i heard talking about the scene we simply impressed by 64/4k. Like last week, when Elevated got /.ed, a coworked came to me like "you know that shit? it,s incredible", and i say "indeed, here some links for more" and now he looked up about texture generation and stuff and he's willing to learn and do the same!
and for those about "video is cool cuz i'm only using a mac laptop": what hapened when ppl slowly switched over to amiga? and then to pc? they dropped the other scene and started doin demos on their new plateform! If there is no Mac demos, just pave the way and do some! it should be easier than ever with osx!
it seems easier than ever to watch demos, but i think it's easier than ever to consume, and generally waste time on the net. sure most people have grown up, got jobs, and have less time to code up shit. but how come they have time to troll and bitch? something tells me we got lazy and just want to be entertained without effort.
I very rarely update any drivers. MAx every 6 months. And I also still use Firefox 1. And winXP sp2. (they removed the adress bar in sp3, and that sucks.) And DX .. well last update was 1 or 2 years ago, minimum.
I download d3dx_ stuff when required.
Still I'm able to run pretty much anything I want to. Updating is a hassle only if you care to update, really. And kb_ Ati has proven much worse for me in the past than nVidia, but it's not worth starting a religion debate.
About the old plateform is better than imposing youself a 'false' restriction: using an out of date machine no one longer use IS imposing yourself fasle constraints.
but anyhow, those constraints works! most outsiders i heard talking about the scene we simply impressed by 64/4k. Like last week, when Elevated got /.ed, a coworked came to me like "you know that shit? it,s incredible", and i say "indeed, here some links for more" and now he looked up about texture generation and stuff and he's willing to learn and do the same!
and for those about "video is cool cuz i'm only using a mac laptop": what hapened when ppl slowly switched over to amiga? and then to pc? they dropped the other scene and started doin demos on their new plateform! If there is no Mac demos, just pave the way and do some! it should be easier than ever with osx!
it seems easier than ever to watch demos, but i think it's easier than ever to consume, and generally waste time on the net. sure most people have grown up, got jobs, and have less time to code up shit. but how come they have time to troll and bitch? something tells me we got lazy and just want to be entertained without effort.
Quote:
something tells me we got lazy and just want to be entertained without effort.
with his last paragraph, the guy hit the nail on the head so hard the nail broke.
Umm.. wasn't that the way it was supposed to be? Insert disk, watch demo. The effort is supposed to be spent making stuff :)
psionice: yes, glsl semantics specify that "1" is an int.
the nvidia *quadro* drivers are just as pedantic about GLSL semantics as the ati drivers, by the way. we ended up "hotfixing" a demo at bp because of this.
the nvidia *quadro* drivers are just as pedantic about GLSL semantics as the ati drivers, by the way. we ended up "hotfixing" a demo at bp because of this.