GeForce 3 Demoed - Running DOOM 3

green pizza writes "Yesterday at Macworld Tokyo, Steve Jobs and John Carmack demoed the new nVidia GeForce 3 (73 GIGAFLOPS of power)... on a G4... running DOOM 3. Please excuse me while I pick my jaw up off the floor. You can get more details from MacNN." [michael adds: VoodooExtreme has screenshots of Doom 3 running on the new GeForce card; Shugashack has more. Looks like Doom 3 will be another game where the color palette is "shades of black". Sigh.]

Just as long

[tralfamador]

as it has crates. yeah lots of crates.
ooh, and barrels.

Running on...

[green pizza]

Mac OS X, no less. With GeForce 3 and drivers already sorta working, it looks like we won't have to worry much about OpenGL acceleration under Apple's new OS.

Video of Geforce in Action

[GoofyBoy]

There is a link on the right handside.

http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-201-4881105-0.htm l?tag=cd_mh [cnet.com]

Daaaaaaamn....

[InfinityWpi]

I guess it's soon time to get a new video card. I'm hoping Deus Ex 2 is gonna use that engine... that'd lend itself to sweet cinematics...

Not "shades of black"

[magic]

Remember: the game is running on GeForce3, which is currently Mac only. Mac's are automatically gamma corrected, so images created on a Mac look really dark on a PC (since PC's aren't usually corrected).

Yes, DOOM3 is dark, but probably not as dark as what you are seeing in the screenshots-- look at those shots on a Mac or SGI instead of a PC and you'll be surprised how bright they are.

magic

linux-friendly video

[wht]

a realplayer version of the video is available at CNet [cnet.com], so the rest of us can watch it...

Walter H. Trent "Muad'Dib"
Padishah Emperor of the Known Universe, IMHO

Fer cryin' out loud!!!

[Fesh]

Three targets slashdotted at once??? Is that some sort of record?

--Fesh

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

NVIDIA loses more points...

[Gendou]

Just a few things here. The article was pulled. NVIDIA is becoming more and more childish with it's business practices. Is this a result of being so closely tied to Microsoft? Also, a few things I've read indicate that their latest consumer chipset is DX8 optimized - and doesn't produce equal performance results with OpenGL. Obviously, they're running on MacOS X - which means OpenGL... but are they currently working to appease the company currently lining their pockets? I've got a bad feeling about this. I really hope NVIDIA doesn't become a big evil corporate entity made arrogant and stupid by its massive success.

Re:Misapplication of technology

[mewsenews]

God forbid people using technology to have fun.

Yow!

[Steve Gibson]

Well I guess this will be a nice workout of the new FreeBSD server. For the curious the screens.x script is PHP that works off a bunch of f_checks based on file and directory names to generate those screenshot pages. No database hits involved in serving up those DOOM images.

Oh yeah, and DOOM looks amazing. Too bad NVidia cant make up their mind about releasing more info on the GeForce3. They have changed their mind 3 times in the past 24hours.
-Steve Gibson

Shades of Black

[Urmane]

Well, it certainly speeds up the renderer if you just assign half the screen pixels to black ;-)

--

Re:NVIDIA loses more points...

[kurioszyn]

How is this arrogant to optimize your chip to perform best on systems run by about 90% of your users ?

Hrm, Holy Trinity?

[m00t]

Quake 3
Doom 3
Wolfenstein 3 (return to castle wolfenstein)
Geforce 3

I'd say Pentium 3 but 4's already out.
Does Duron count as the 3rd Athlon? (vanilla, thunderbird, Duron?)
Who else has a 3 coming out soon?

Is this the year of 3?

Re:I won't buy one on principle.

[znu]

There's nothing wrong with a product that dominates the market because it's just better than everything else. There are no artificial barriers to entry in this market; a competitor just needs to build a better card.

For a nice example of something similar, take a look at Photoshop. It totally owns its market, but only because nobody else can make anything as good.

--

Re:NVIDIA loses more points...

[be-fan]

You stupid jackass monkies. NVIDIA is NOT in with Microsoft! All they're doing is making a chip for the XBox. Think of all the things they've done *against* MS. They basically told them to shove DirectX and make a totally changed version for 8.0. They are comitted to supporting MacOS X, which takes away business from MS (especially 3D artists would rather use MacOS, but can't because the current state of HW-accel). They are helping SGI by making Linux drivers for their cards, which again takes business away from Windows2K (SGI used to ship NT workstations, now the low-end is Linux /w NVIDIA). They were the first good consumer graphics card company to come up with a solid OpenGL ICD, which again took business away from MS and made it possible for so many OpenGL titles to be out there. Quit trumping up phony charges.

Can't see a thing...

[ChristianBaekkelund]

1) I for one want some better screenshots made available! I can't see a damn thing on those very very dark screenshots at 306x234???
I mean, is this supposed to be meaningful in any way?: http://216.105.168.97/cgi-bin/image-o-matic.cgi?do om2k/11.jpg [216.105.168.97]
So close, but yet so far!...hehe...But this video clip [cnet.com] is kinda cool.

2) Anyone know any concrete scheduling info. on Doom3?

3) So, how much do people think that Apple paid nVidia for the whole "out on Apple first" deal?

I disagree

[John Jorsett]

NVidia are developing a worrying monopoloy, and are clearly miles ahead of the competition. [snip] Instead I shall buy from competitors, and urge others to help keep them afloat, until such time as the market is more equal.

In other words, shield the competitors from the feedback of the marketplace, letting them produce inferior products without suffering the consequences for so doing. Even if enough people were willing to do this, it wouldn't produce a 'more equal' market. It would simply keep second-rate products coming. Only by allowing the market to signal an organization that it's putting out stuff that people won't buy will the situation improve.

Shades of black

[alleria]

is the fault of the artists, of course, not the engine. I mean, look at Alice -- nice bright colors, very pretty and vivid.

The contrast is not the issue, as others have argued. No matter how I turn up the contrast on my monitor or video card, I suspect I will only see dark blue, brown, and black.

IMHO, it's probably because American McGee left. I seem to remember Doom being a lot more colorful without losing any moodiness, and it wasn't because the levels were lit like bad 80s disco clubs either...

Re:I won't buy one on principle.

[GrenDel Fuego]

I agree with the first part of your argument... but the second part is rather circular in it's logic.

What software was designed for hardware accellerated 3d before there was hardware accellerated 3d cards?

I could very easily see games taking full advantage of full 3d sound once it was available. Although I was under the impression that it already was...

You expected Doom to look like Super Mario?

[tjwhaynes]

Yes, DOOM3 is dark, but probably not as dark as what you are seeing in the screenshots-- look at those shots on a Mac or SGI instead of a PC and you'll be surprised how bright they are.

Cranking the Gamma on this monitor improved the movie no-end, so I expect the game will be the same. Think of the Quake3TeamArena demo level - with the gamma slider at the lowest setting you could barely see anything.

I'm amazed at the number of people who seem to think that DOOM3 should be some multicoloured bright-light party. Thats what Nintendo games are for. Doom's legacy demands dark rooms, illuminated by flickering flourescent lights, monsters which appear out of the shadows or drop on the player from the ceiling.

And seriously, looking at the video footage of Doom 3, this is going to be a game to give you nightmares. The characters are going to be closer to realistic images than ever before - those Maya-produced animations are pushing several thousand polys when up close (I assume that the meshes will have Level-Of-Detail) - playing this is going to be like starring in a good (or maybe even a bad :-) ) horror movie. I fully expect to see some Army Of Darkness mods based on this engine :-)

Don't expect Doom3 to be a game for kids. This one will earn a 'Mature' rating almost straight off the bat.

Cheers,

Toby Haynes

The actual apple video

[magic]

The actual video of the event is at: http://video.cnet.com/cnet_news/template/ramgen.cg i?cpcode=674&asset=http://cnetnews.download.akamai .com/674/t022101_2200hi.rm&start=2166&end=506966&x tn=.ram [cnet.com].

Doom3 just looks amazing. Even these early tech demo scenes make it clear that they have reached the photorealistic level. Say whatever you want about NVidia, but Carmack made that card fly...

-magic

Re:Shades of Grey

[2nd Post!]

You know, there's another term for that; color calibration, monitor calibration, gamma correction. All Apple machines automatically do that, it's built into the software. The monitors are also shipped calibrated. The video cards all support it as well. On the PC world it wasn't really a feature until a few years ago, and a lot of people have no idea that it exists. There are reasons why Apple still sells big in the publishing industry, because they want this feature; what they see in a brochure is identical to what they scan is identical to what they print is identical to what they email to their partners in the UK is identical to what is printed at the bookshop in Singapore is identical to what they see in their heads.

Geek dating! [bunnyhop.com]

Re:Doom 3, do we really need this?

[MarkLR]

Living in a world where the ARM controls all technology, censors history and operates in secert is not my idea of utopia.

Without the misfits who studied banned history texts and read about war the Earth would have fallen to the Kiniz (sp?). Most likely they played video games also.

What are you talking about?

[DeeKayWon]

Microsoft is the only supplier of Windows, and Creative is the only supplier of Sound Blaster-compatible sound cards. nVidia, on the other hand, is by no means the only supplier of OpenGL and Direct3D accelerators.

Really, what does nVidia have that no one else is theoretically capable of matching?

I don't see any kind of proprietary API that only runs on nVidia hardware. I only see them supporting OpenGL and Direct3D - two APIs that anyone else can use just as well. The only way they've brought themselves into such a powerful position is simply good products and good business. Ever since the TNT they've been aggressively pushing new features like 32-bit colour and hardware geometry acceleration. It's not they're preventing other companies from adding new features, so tell me, what egregious tactics have they used to shut out competitors?

Damn. I *hate* shades of black

[jvmatthe]

You know nothing in shades of black is ever good.

Like Citizen Kane. What is that? CRAP!

Or The Maltese Falcon. That's crap too.

Or the original Gameboy. Shades of black on the screen. Ergo crap.

Or even that asshole M. C. Escher. Lots of shades of black there. And it was craptacular.

sigh

Re:Misapplication of technology

[GoofyBoy]

I contend that things like this actually make things easier for scientific research.

Instead of building 10 amazing computer componets for $1M each they can build 100 000 amazing computer componets for $100 each. It makes it cheaper for those who want to do scientific stuff.

People buy faster computers for games and less so for office applications.

OT: somebody set up you the bomb!

[m00t]

It's from an old (sega genesis?) game. Badly translated. It is called Zero Wing.

For some reason people thought it was funny enough to spam everywhere.

Someone went so far as to make a small flash movie of it... http://www.detonate.net/newsitems/01021601/ayb.swf [detonate.net]
It's quite amusing actually.

Hope you get paid well ...

[SuperRob]

If you're going to buy the card just to run a game, well, I hope you have a lot of disposable income. Price Tag is $600. It'll probably hit the channel for about $500-550, but that's still cost prohibitive for most of us.

Still, that card's feature-set is certainly a force to be reckoned with. I'll stick with the X-Box for now.

More than just the GeForce3 at MacWorld

[imac.usr]

Since it doesn't appear that there will be a separate story talking about the other new announcements at MacWorld Expo, here are some of the highlights most interesting to Slashdot readers:

- The Power Macs were subtly altered. The former build-to-order dual 533 MHz model is now a standard configuration [apple.com] from the Apple Store (which means retailers will start carrying it as well), and there's an option to purchase a 733 MHz model with a CD burner in place of the DVD-R/CD-RW combo unit (saving $400 in the process).

- Those wild new iMacs have at least upped the specs [apple.com] slightly for the graphics chipset; still Rage 128-based, but at least there's more memory (16 MB) on board. Plus, the 500 and 600 MHz models are the new G3 chip with the full-speed onboard 256K cache.

- The Cube now offers [apple.com] the GeForce2 MX card as a build-to-order option (standard w/ CD burner on the high-end model). Guess ATi's still on Apple's shit list to some extent.

- Fellow Mac users should try running Software Update and see if they get CarbonLib 1.2.5.

- The $49.95 5-pack of DVD-R disks is finally available from the Apple Store, but the estimated ship time is 45 days.

Now, if I could only get a Flower Power G4 Cube..... mmmmmmm....

The Mac forums are blazing with commentary on the new iMac colors. Personally, I kind of like them, and hope they do a good job of stimulating interest in a highly overlooked demographic; women computer users. Anything that brings computing power to a wider audience can't be a bad thing. Besides, the effect is supposed to be slightly 3Dish, with the pattern all the way through the case instead of merely stuck onto the surface. I can't wait to see one in person.


--

Id Software has the same schedule as always...

[Ted V]

"It'll be out in 2 weeks!" Of course, it's always 2 weeks from the present point in time... No wonder nothing ever gets release! :)

-Ted

Re:I won't buy one on principle.

[phaze3000]

Creative soundcards are only adequate. There is no competition, and as a result there have been no really great developments. I would like to see soundcards with support for proper 3dimensional sound - this would do for sound what 3d graphics cards have done for graphics, add a whole extra dimension.
Sounds like you want a Creative SB Live! [creative.com] card, which has support for Dolby Digital.
Creative make good card with GPL'd drivers, and as such I have no problem in buying their products. nVidia make products that might be good, but with binary-only drivers I don't intend to find out. My 16mb Matrox G400 does me fine, good 3D performance (Quake3 runs very well)and proper open-source drivers. I don't intend to buy an nVidia card unless they change their driver release policy.

--

Re:Shades of Black

[chancycat]

And when you play the un-lit sewer levels on the moon-less night setting, armed with your shades-of-darkness--death-cannon, I bet you'll get, maybe 200+ fps.

I'd show you a screen shot, but we can save bandwidth if you just look at your screen with your eyes closed for a bit.

Steve: "All your GeForce 3 are belong to us"

[Wesley Felter]

Or at least that's what The Register says. :-)

Well of COURSE the demo is going to be dark...

[Chris Pimlott]

This isn't just a demo of Doom, it's to show off the GeForce3. What better way to make all the dynamic light look the most impressive than to have the levels full of dark areas, shadows, etc...

Re:Doom 3, do we really need this?

[bmajik]

Humanity will always have conflict. People will always have agression.

Any book that talks about giving people drugs to treat their "Aggressive emotions or tendancies" had better do so in the style of a satirical vonnegut novel. I like my feelings just the way they are, thank you.

Fwiw, I'd much rather juice someone into a puff of red mist in a video game and laugh about how nasty it looked than do it in real life and spend the rest of my days grabbing the bars while i get porked from the rear.

While we're at it, as long as people are at home playing video games, they're not out raping someone i care about. Thats fine by me.

Re:Doom 3, do we really need this?

[banky]

Although its offtopic... its Kzinti, the "ratcats".

And, don't forget: In "Madness Has Its Place", the ones re-arming humanity (with lasers used to launch slowboats, powered by the Sun) were crazies who went off their meds, not "misfits".

Re:Hrm, Holy Trinity?

[Raptor CK]

Well, today's the 22nd.

So, that's 2/22/2001
Three two's in the day (without the year)
2+0+0+1=3
2222001, or 222*3 = 666!

We're all doomed!!!!

Or something.
Raptor

jesus christ

[Phexro]

y'know, i wasn't so sure about this "doom 3" thing. i was an avid player of the original doom series (imo, the best way to play it was in a dark room at 2 a.m. with a pc conneted to a big set of speakers, which are cranked all the way up) and i just wasn't sure that id could recapture that spooky atmosphere it had.

however, since i cheked out those screenshots, i have had my faith in id restored. id will be forgiven it's past transgressions (quake 2, hexen, heretic, no more commander keen games, etc) if this game is half as good as it looks.

i also seem to have something wet in my pants. excuse me.
--

They're just screenshots

[TheInternet]

Great, another first person shoot em up that adds nothing innovative to the world of gaming. More blood, more splatter, more gore, nothing new.

You're right, it's really easily to extract gameplay elements from the screenshots.

- Scott

--
Scott Stevenson
WildTofu [wildtofu.com]

Re:Video of Geforce in Action

[myster0n]

You can download a zipped version (around 13Mb) of the ASF file (sorry, not my fault) from http://mirrors.pandora.be/games/newdoomengine.zip [pandora.be]

Pictures may be nice, but seeing it in motion is ... WOW .... sweeeeet.

Re:VA Linux Systems Cuts 25% Of Its Workforce

[Bill Currie]

Slashdot posted news about it the other day [slashdot.org]. I believe it's long past time you got over VA and SourceForge.

Bill - aka taniwha
--

Re:The actual apple video

[DanThe1Man]

Damit John Carmack, move your mouse pointer to the side of the screen when you do a demo.

_ _ _
I was working on a flat tax proposal and I accidentally proved there's no god.

Doom 3 Mac for OSX only

[TheInternet]

Running on... Mac OS X, no less

The Mac version of Doom 3 will be for Mac OS X only. Mac OS 9 and earlier will not be able to run it.

- Scott
--
Scott Stevenson
WildTofu [wildtofu.com]

Video

[Frijoles]

There's a video of the event showing some of Doom 3 (as well as other info about the new card) on Cnet. I followed the link from bluesnews.com [bluesnews.com]. I'd paste it here but the URL is quite large. Anyway, very impressive.

Re:Damn. I *hate* shades of black

[otis wildflower]

Three words:

Smell The Glove.

Your Working Boy,
- Otis (LICQ: 85110864)

Re:Doom 3, do we really need this?

[IronChef]

Niven a pacifist? No way. A pacifist would never write stories with themes like, "but sometimes you just have to fight anyway." That is exactly the theme that is presented in the short story "The Warriors," where pacifist golden-age-of-no-violence humans first meet the Kzinti and STILL kick their furry asses.

I know, I know, I shouldn't feed the troll. But I hate to see someone slander Niven that way. Well, go ahead and slander his last few years of work, but the classic Known Space stuff is still some of the best SF ever, IMHO.

Re:I won't buy one on principle.

[Rombuu]

I think there is a real danger that NVidia will do to the graphics card market what Creative did to the sound card market.

What? Make a pretty decent product at a reasonable price? Yeah, that would be horrible...

Re:What are you talking about?

[DeeKayWon]

1) Creative wasn't the only supplier of "SoundBlaster-compatible" cards. They used to have some sort of certfication program where you could licence the SoundBlaster name. IBM and others marketed SoundBlaster-compatible" cards (such as the MWave).

That's true. However, getting most games to actually work right with anything but a genuine Creative board was often a real pain in the ass. As a result, most people went out and bought Creative boards not because they were better (they weren't) but because they just wanted sound to work right.

Re:More than just the GeForce3 at MacWorld

[the_tsi]

How about the $1000 lower price tag on the cinema display?

Very important news for all geeks. :)

-Chris
...More Powerful than Otto Preminger...

Damn right

[toofast]

... and I'll be the first to flaunt that some software (i.e. DOOM 3) was released for Linux before its WIndoze counterpart.

For Mac, this is HUGE!

Re:Hope you get paid well ...

[Jeff DeMaagd]

The difference here, as I presume you are referring to the Sony PS2, is that you can get an entire functioning console /w a DVD player for $300. That's actually not a bad deal, IMO, particulary to get a game console with component outs.

Of course, I don't own any nVidea or Playstation related products.

Re:Shades of Black

[Hormonal]

The original Doom did have bunny rabbits. At the end, they had the beautiful scene of bunnies frolicking in a field. Of course, as the scene scrolled to the right, you saw the burning remains of a city, with severed bunny heads on a stake.

Still, I found Doom to be an excessively dark game (even with gamma correction), but I respect the artists' decision to go with a dark-themed game. I just probably won't play it.

Re:Can't see a thing...

[iso]

3) So, how much do people think that Apple paid nVidia for the whole "out on Apple first" deal?

honestly i don't think they needed to pay them much at all. think about it: NVidia's new chip will only be available in small quantities before they ramp up production anyhow. Apple is providing them a high-profile easy distribution channel for their first few lots.

from NVidia's point of view by going with this "exclusive" deal they win over the support of the Mac market, they get to announce their new chip with a big fanfare at a high-profile event at no cost to them, and they have a guaranteed sales channel for their low-volume parts. not to mention the fact that they can justify charging exorbinant ($600!) amounts of money because it's bundled with a computer that's already several thousand! sounds like a pretty good deal to me!

as far as i can see it, it's a win-win for Apple and NVidia.

- j

Downloadable .rm of the video? [slightly OT]

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

Does anyone have an URL for a "download and THEN watch" version of the video, or an equivalent to "wget" for rtsp streams?

I'd really like to get the whole thing and then watch it full-size, rather than trying to cram it through my slow internet connection and losing most of the detail...

---
"They have strategic air commands, nuclear submarines, and John Wayne. We have this"

Re:Downloadable .rm of the video? [slightly OT]

[scan0-]

Try nextdoom.com for a load of download links.

Re:NVIDIA loses more points...

[Temporal]

"Optimized for Direct3D" does not mean that it isn't also "Optimized for OpenGL". And if NVidia is so closely tied to Microsoft, then why are they releasing the GeForce 3 for the Mac first [apple.com]?

------

Re:More than just the GeForce3 at MacWorld

[steveha]

What I want to know is whether you will be able to order a G4 Cube with 64MB of memory and a GeForce3 card. Then your system memory and your video memory will be equal... I've never had a computer like that!

When the GeForce4 comes out with 128MB of memory, do you think Apple will still be selling G4 computers with 64MB? That would be even funnier.

steveha

Lol

[Fervent]

This was fresh news when I posted it a few minutes after the show last night. lol

Moral of this story: never post any stories to Slashdot on time. Ever. :)

Re:Shades of black?

[phaze3000]

Actually, Commander Keen was by ID. Nice way to disprove you're own argument.. :)

--

Re:More than just the GeForce3 at MacWorld

[maggard]

Why not, it's all /. folks ever natter on about.

"I'd never buy a fruity-colored computer"

"Steve Jobs is (insert some random extreme opinion) and should I ever meet him I'll give him a dirty look".

"Only lam3r d00dz uze 1-button m1ce".

C'mon, frankly the level of discussion on /. regarding the existing biggest commercial competition to MS & the soon to be largest unix vender is reliably sophmoric.

Apple is an independent billion-dollar corporation that has reliably innovated and is moving unix into the consumer market faster then anyone else yet all we hear is the same whining crap from /.'ers repeating the same urban-legends about Xerox PARC and Apple not giving away QuickTime yadda yadda yadda.

Is talking about the floral-prints any different?

GeForce 3 Press Release

[antdude]

From Blue's News [bluesnews.com]

Re:Downloadable .rm of the video? [slightly OT]

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

The problem is, it looks like all of the "nextdoom.com" links are to .asf files, which as far as I know I still can't play on Linux...I was hoping for a downloadable .rm (realvideo) file to work with.
---
"They have strategic air commands, nuclear submarines, and John Wayne. We have this"

Re:More than just the GeForce3 at MacWorld

[mihalis]

My NeXT Cube has 32MB system memory and 32MB video ram on the NeXT Dimension graphics board - nice and balanced!

Think Different

[2nd Post!]

Yes indeedy, it is very much about Thinking Different.

The techy PC market is saturated. People have sated themselves on cheap ram, cheap CPUs, cheap storage, and cheap video cards. There's no reason for PC growth to grow.

So now Apple is probably targetting the *non* techy market. Coincindentally that also happens to be the female market. Girls. The ones who don't know or care about the iMac's increased graphics memory or CPU speed, or video chipset speed.

The ones who buy new pairs of shoes to match their new dresses to match their new handbags etc.

If they can hook these girls even once, Apple can almost guarantee multiple resells as a fashion industry. Basic black with chrome highlights. Iridescent green with transparent blue panels. Etc.

Geek dating! [bunnyhop.com]

Re:Listen to yourself!

[2nd Post!]

How much more can you add to a sound card?

I thought I listed a whole bunch of improvements for you already...

• 3d sound acceleration (like a video card's).
• Digital sound acceleration (for USB speakers and devices)
• MP3 encoding acceleration (for higher bitrate encoding, take away some CPU load)
• Transparent 5.1 channel sound support (For DVDs, movies, Quicktime, etc)
• Hardware acceleration for voice recognition/synthesis

Geek dating! [bunnyhop.com]

Re:More than just the GeForce3 at MacWorld

[nosferatu-man]

And they don't try and take credit for the BSD layer, dumbass. Mac OS X is so much more, and so much better, than any other Unix-based desktop, that the BSD core is hardly the most crucial thing about it.

Take, for example, the unified configuration management system. Or Quartz. Or Netinfo. Or the simple fact that I'll finally be able to run applications that don't suck (like Photoshop) next to a native windowing Emacs and CMUCL. No other Unix allows anything like the usability of Mac OS X.

(jfb)

California can thank Seti@home

[SethJohnson]

I don't agree with your description of seti@home as a worthy application of resources. I suspect that distributed computing projects like seti@home encourage people to leave their computers running unused while they're asleep and at work. The effect is a distributed energy consumption monster.

Seth

What use are better sound cards?

[2nd Post!]

To generalize your question, what software is used that sound cards could accelerate?

How about digital USB speaker output? Right now that sucks up CPU resources that a good sound card should be able to handle.

How about MP3 encoding/decoding? Right now it's a trivial 2% of my system, but if I up the bitrate, the number of channels, and the 'effects', I can start soaking up CPU. Why not have a soundcard accelerate it the same way video cards accelerate 3d graphics?

How about voice recognition software? Hardware accelerate that!

3d sound: Anything that uses a 3d library should be able to use 3d sound. Imagine Quake3. If the soundcard could access the level data, the walls, the enemy placement, the weapon type, etc, it could actually do occlusions, echoes, reverbs, damping, amplification, cancelation, etc.

Geek dating! [bunnyhop.com]

Re:Not "shades of black"

[Foss_Eats_Sod's_Meat]

The correct term is "boxes".

Not only will use of this word in place of the non-existant/redundant word "boxen" stop people from laughing at you when you say it out loud, it will reduce the intense feeling of unjustified intellectual superiority that is severely limiting your social life.

Re:Looks like another Id Classic

[(void*)]

If you do play Quake, you should know that one trick to light up a room is to do exactly that - fire a Plasma Rifle shot.

Uninitiated

[SubtleNuance]

Ok - Someone please help here: Is the geforce3 also the "NV20" i hear about? Is this the final product this 'code word' will ship as?

Re:Not "shades of black"

[update()]

Oh yeah? I just went up to that goddess who works down the hall from me, told her about how I've already updated my boxes to the 2.4.2 kernel (making sure to emphasize the word boxes) and asked if her if she'd go out with me. She still laughed and said no.

Shows how much you know! Probably I need to get a better graphics card. Then I'll get some, for sure.

(Just kidding - I applaud your efforts. Could you also try to get people to stop saying "fsck" instead of "fuck?" And "sheeple" and "BZZT! Wrong!")

GeForce 3 On Mac ONLY?

[citizenc]

I'm not sure if I read this right.. it can't be true.. I WILL be able to get a GeForce 3 for my PC/Linux box, right? RIGHT?

-- Doesn't know anything about Macs, please excuse my ignorance.

------------
CitizenC

Re:More than just the GeForce3 at MacWorld

[SubtleNuance]

largest unix vender is reliably sophmoric

Yes, the largest right behind Sun, SGI, HP, IBM and GNU/Linux.

Re:Not "shades of black"

[Voltara]

The same thing can be said about the nonexistent word "non-existant". Get over it.

Re:NVIDIA loses more points...

[tswinzig]

How can you, as a BeOS fan, stick up for nVidia after they've given BeOS the ding-a-ling dinner* for so long?

They provide binary-only support for Linux, no support for BeOS, and they've entered into a deal with Mac to artificially release their GeForce 3 on Mac first. (I say "artificially," since you know damn well they have more people in the PC world that want the technology.)

nVidia blows goats. I have proof.

-thomas

* Ding-a-ling dinner. Translation: Telling someone to "blow you." AKA "kiss my ass."

Re:Just as long

[Judas96']

Well, I am really supposed to keep my mouth shut, but I will tell you one thing. Don't tell anyone else, ok? ...Not only does the new Doom have barrels *and* crates, but it has radioactive and explosive barrels *and* crates! You can tell by my blatent overuse of bold and italics that these two technologies combined obviously represent a tremedous leap forward in how we play computer games ! I wish the blinking tag worked so I could explain this better :-( Liscencing fees for the BC technology will start with the sale of your soul and go up from there.

Re:Misapplication of technology

[jovlinger]

I've always been fascinated by codecs that allow you to trade CPU time for compression efficiency.
An example of this was Iterated System's fractal codec, where you could spend literally days of 33 Mhz i486 CPU time searching for a better compression, or be satisfied with the compression you got from a few minute's search.

Are there any modern codecs like that? So that a powerful machine can really crank the compression up, but a slower machine had better have a fat pipe, 'cause it isn't going to have time to get much compression done.

I guess it'd have to be a codec whose compressed representation was almost turing complete (I guess we could just send a program, but the halting problem seems intractable.)

Re:John.. Say something.. please :(

[Xenex]

Should I spent money on Xbox or should I buy Geforce3 and Doom3 (kinda rhymes..dont you think so.)?

An Evil Empire's new piece of hardware being released to jam themselves into a new market to further twist there .net into the home using the force of the game API from their desktop OS monopoly to achive it...

or

A friggin' fast piece of hardware from a company that has been fairly good to the 'alternate' worlds in Computer Land, and a piece of game software that will be friggin' excellent, just like everything out of it's makers doors, that will at least have binaries released for 'alternate GNU OS using people', if not a box set.

Personally, I'd buy a GeForce 3, Doom 3, and a GameCube, but for the love of god don't let Microsoft get a foot in the door!

Re:Shades of Grey

[MobyDisk]

I'll save everyone the hassle of going over to a Mac to try to view the pictures. The detail isn't there - the images are just dark, there is no secret hidden detail in them. If you aren't convinced, open Photoshop or something and apply a Gamma. Black becomes gray, but no details.

Re:More than just the GeForce3 at MacWorld

[maggard]

Right, MacOS X hasn't shipped yet. On the other hand the installed base of Macs is greater then those listed in toto so it stands to reason as (if) users move to MacOS X it'll become larger.

No, I was actually talking about X-Box

[SuperRob]

When I said "X-Box" I actually meant it. Instead of a GeForce3, I'll just get the X-Box in June and get pretty much the same experience. $600 for a videocard is ridiculous unless you are actually doing high-end renders.

Re:More than just the GeForce3 at MacWorld

[Refrag]

I can't believe they got rid of the Sage iMac. It is the only color iMac other than the original Bondi Blue iMac that I'd consider putting in my house.


Refrag

Re:You expected Doom to look like Super Mario?

[imaginate]

Seems obvious that, as they have always done, ID is trying to amplify the amount of cinema and drama in their games by using the same techniques as any good filmmaker. They are limiting what you can see so that your imagination fills in the rest, or tries to, which is why the original doom was scary. The emphasis on lighting fx instead of color has been an id trademark since doom, and it seems to me that the graphics look better in doom 3 *because* you can't see everything. In other words, have a little imagination...

Re:Shades of Grey

[John Carmack]

Unfortunately, the giant projector screens are not color calibrated the same way at all.

The colors did get rather washed out on the big screen.

John Carmack

Re:More than just the GeForce3 at MacWorld

[TWR]

Right, MacOS X hasn't shipped yet.

Well, Apple has shipped around 50,000 copies of the public beta, which are Unix-based. And there is Mac OS X Server, which has been out for nearly two years now. I figure Apple must have sold one or two of those.

At this point, Apple has probably shipped more copies of a Unix-based OS than several of the aforementioned companies.

-jon

Re:More than just the GeForce3 at MacWorld

[maggard]

I take the heat for that - I did.

Actually I believe it was soon-to-be but close enough. If one looks at the number of active Macs out there (they have a lifetime longer then most PCs & price only seems part of the reason) and compare it to their other unix brethren you'll see that there are more.

Presuming some large number switch over to MacOS X then yes, it'll have the largest installed base of unix boxes.

Of course MacOS X has yet to ship so we'll see it's reception but back to the original posting; many /.'ers seem stuck in their disdain of all things Apple which is ironic considering what Apple is doing and how it's affecting the industry.

Re:Shades of Grey

[CaseyB]

Yeah, the engine was terribly misrepresented by an inadaquate display during that demo.

If only there were a way we could see images generated directly from the source...

Re:More than just the GeForce3 at MacWorld

[maggard]

And they don't try and take credit for the BSD layer, dumbass. Mac OS X is so much more, and so much better, than any other Unix-based desktop, that the BSD core is hardly the most crucial thing about it.

Take, for example, the unified configuration management system. Or Quartz. Or Netinfo. Or the simple fact that I'll finally be able to run applications that don't suck (like Photoshop) next to a native windowing Emacs and CMUCL. No other Unix allows anything like the usability of Mac OS X.

(jfb)

A: How to make yourself into a no-life looser - go name calling on /.

B:"...next to a native windowing Emacs" - Have you seen this? Is there really a native port of Emacs to MacOS X or are you just blowing hot air? By native I mean running within Aqua using PDF-based cut-n-paste and all of the other MacOS X-specific technologies.

Re:Misapplication of technology

[TWR]

I saw this movie once. It was about a guy whose father was murdered by his uncle, and the uncle then marries his mother. The guy, in his quest for revenge, kills the father of his girlfriend, the brother of his girfriend, sends two of his friends off to their deaths, and then kills his uncle. Oh, he and his mom are poisoned and the girlfriend goes mad and commits suicide. Gory, gory stuff.

You'd probably think something like this is very dangerous stuff. I bet you want to burn all evidence of its existence. Other people would consider Hamlet a classic of literature, stage, and screen. Different tastes, I guess.

-jon

Re:More than just the GeForce3 at MacWorld

[feldsteins]

I totally agree. I've been lurking in the /. forums for a while now and I'm absolutely astonished at the idiocy that spews forth whenever Apple is mentioned.

And yes, apple *is* going to be the largest distributor of a UNIX based operating system in the world. Why do some here feel the need to undermine that fact? One might begin to suspect that they don't *want* UNIX in any form to become a mainstream desktop os.

Frankly I'm sure that the BSD guys don't know whether to laugh or cry at the fact that Apple is going to be the largest distributor of it. I myself think it's great.

Scott
--

A question, John?

[Anonymous Shepherd]

Okay, so this is totally off topic, but I just ordered a Titanium PB, I'm going to get Mac OS X the minute I hear the PB has shipped, and I have a hobbiest's interest in gaming.

Prelude aside, I haven' been able to find much in terms of cross platform programming on Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows 2000, three of the least popular gaming platforms out there behind PSX, Gameboy, and Windows 98. Though I suppose what with the DX 8/7 support in W2k, Windows 2000 isn't a problem.

I *really* want to learn and use Objective C, the Cocoa libraries, and OpenGL. I know that's not a problem with the Mac, given that Apple has made them all first class citizens of Mac OSX; is there any chance of being cross platform?

Or do you just code straight C for the game (and thus target every platform on the planet I guess), with platform specific code for the input and display handling?

I really wish someone had a book published, using iD as the case study, on cross platform development. IDEs, compilers, best practices, optimization techniques, workarounds, etc.

Of course, just saying all this out loud has given me a solution ^^; Code in C, abstract out the platform specific display, device, and input handling routines into a separate library, and use the 'best' software for each platform, whether that be Metrowerks, GCC, Visual Studio, etc.

Actually, I guess you could use Metrowerks for all the platforms, couldn't you? Is that what you do?

-AS

Re:NVIDIA loses more points...

[Temporal]

Yes, that explains why NVidia's GL drivers have always been faster than their D3D drivers.

NVidia implements their OpenGL drivers in hardware too. This is unlike other handware companies (*cough* 3dfx *cough*) whos GL drivers are simply wrappers around some other API (like GLIDE).

You will also notice that NVidia's GL drivers always support the newest features of their cards long before D3D does. For example, NVidia's GL drivers have had the "NV_vertex_program" extension (for programmable vertex shaders) since long before D3D8 was released. Similarily, when the GeForce was released, the GL drivers instantly supported T&L, while D3D users had to wait for Microsoft to released D3D7 for that support.

Might I remind you that NVidia employs several people like Mark J. Kilgard, the author of OpenGL Programming for the X Window System (the definative work on the subject), and the GL standard windowing library, GLUT? (If you have ever done any programming with OpenGL at all, you probably used GLUT to do it.) MJK is one of the biggest names in OpenGL on the planet, and I suspect he is part of the reason that NVidia has the best OpenGL implementation in existence.

Please make sure you know what you are talking about before you talk. Thank you.

------

Re:Running on...

[nomadic]

it looks like we won't have to worry much about OpenGL acceleration under Apple's new OS.

Yeah, worrying about that was keeping me up at night.
--

Re:Competitive clock speed???? Did I miss somethin

[John Carmack]

We did a ton of testing the last two weeks while we were putting the demo together.

The 733 G4 was not as fast as my 1 ghz PIII in any of the trouble areas.

Apple is doing a lot of good work, but the CPU's just aren't as fast as the x86 ones.

AltiVec can compensate in some cases, because it is way, way easier to program for than SSE, but it takes a very simple batched, computation intensive task for it to pay off in any noticable way. Amdahls law and all that.

We did a couple functions with AltiVec, but they didn't make much difference.

Video encoding and large image processing are two areas that it can pay off, because you may be spending 90%+ of your time in one page of code.

Even then, it takes a special balance to let a G4 come out ahead, because it has less memory bandwidthd than a high end x86 system.

John Carmack

Re:Doom 3, do we really need this?

[nathanh]

Spoiling the story for people who haven't read it yet is REALLY BAD FORM.

Re:A question, John?

[John Carmack]

We moved to C++ for the current game (which does not have an official full name yet).

I will probably do a .plan update about it, because it has definately had its pros and cons.

Jim Dose had inadvertantly used a few MS specific idioms that we had to weed out over the past couple weeks of the bring up on OS-X.

John Carmack

Re:Competitive clock speed???? Did I miss somethin

[iollmann]

The AltiVec unit requires a couple of things that you dont have to deal with in normal code. The data has to be nicely laid out all in one place, and you have to be willing/able to deal with it more than one element at a time. Most programs are not designed that way (or if they are it is only by chance) so usually it is hard at first to find ways to retrofit Altivec into existing code. Certain trends in programming (e.g. OOP) make it even less likely that you will see these kinds of data structures. So to make a long story short, to get pervasive use of AltiVec, you have to design around it. I cant speak about the Quake engine, but from John's comments that sounds a little bit like part of the problem.

This is not to say that AltiVec is useless for such apps. AltiVec more often than not just so happens to be very good at accelerating that 10% of the code that consumes 90% of the CPU time. So, a little bit of work often goes a long way.

What you learn working with it is that memory bandwidth is almost always the problem. The result is that certain common old-gen programming techniques for code optimization that rely on memory access to save CPU time (longer code, lookup tables, etc.) are about the last thing you would want to do with AltiVec. You only unroll loops as much as is necessary to get proper scheduling and stop there, for example. Almost everything, including constants are best calculated on the fly rather than loaded from memory. As John points out, you are better off with one big complicated function rather than a lot of simple ones. Accessing memory is so expensive that once you have the data you had better do a lot with it. You typically have about 30-40 cycles of time per 32 byte block of memory that is "spent for you" every time you load memory. If you dont do something worthwhile during that time, it is your loss.

AltiVec is also good for sound code. It is a great way to reduce the overhead associated with single sound channels so that you can have lots playing concurrently without having time spent at interrupt running amok.

Re:NVIDIA loses more points...

[be-fan]

Umm, MS got to be a monopoly by doing tricks like shafting OEMs for using alternate OSs. They got to be a monopoly by playing the API-of-the-day game with IBM. They got to be a monopoly by doing everything they could to get Netscape off of Windows. They got to be a monopoly by tieing vendors to the closed DirectX API.

NVIDIA cannot be a monopoly. Monopoly is more than just market share. NVIDIA, even if it gets 100% market share, cannot be a monopoly because it is based on open standards. They don't have anything like Glide to depend on. The minute somebody comes out with a faster card, they lose the top position. Simple as that.