Unigine Heaven Linux Release Pushed Back

[Svartalf]

Actually, that's incorrect. To the best of my knowledge, the first cards that sported tessellation hardware were Ati's R200 series. This feature was moved to software in R300 and finally removed completely at some point during the R500 lifetime, only to be reintroduced in Xenos (the Xbox360 GPU).

I stand corrected on the earliest that it was done in hardware- I'd actually forgotten about the R200 having TrueForm as a feature. Do note, though, that the tessellation you refer to isn't the same tessellation process we're talking about now. At it's basics, it is, but in usage, etc. it's not.

I used to play Morrowing with tessellation enabled, and the increase in visual quality was astonishing. Ok, the decrease in performance was astonishing, too (it was only with a X1950 that I was able to maintain fluid framerates with tessellation enabled), but I'm glad to see the feature back in full swing.

That's more because the tessellation done with TrueForm generated such vertex volume that it swamped the card quickly. The R500 card you referred to had more than enough muscle to handle the abuse well enough to make it playable (Heh...I'd have hoped that it was playable...that card had more muscle than any other card at the time it came out...and I had two of them at my disposal at one point in time...wish I had them now...). The stuff we're seeing now, though, is quite a bit more advanced and supports things like using a bump map to provide input into the tessellation process.

[BlackStar]

Tessellation's been a software feature set item for 10-15 years, but it's only been a hardware feature item since about the 360

Actually, that's incorrect. To the best of my knowledge, the first cards that sported tessellation hardware were Ati's R200 series. This feature was moved to software in R300 and finally removed completely at some point during the R500 lifetime, only to be reintroduced in Xenos (the Xbox360 GPU).

I used to play Morrowing with tessellation enabled, and the increase in visual quality was astonishing. Ok, the decrease in performance was astonishing, too (it was only with a X1950 that I was able to maintain fluid framerates with tessellation enabled), but I'm glad to see the feature back in full swing.

[Kano]

Did you try it with ATI cards yet via opengl?

[Svartalf]

Hmm, tesellation has been out for quite some time and game consoles
like the Xbox 360 are capable of this feature. A lot of technology
like tesellation has been around for quite some time, like 10-15 years, but not part of the CORE API feature set.

Tessellation's been a software feature set item for 10-15 years, but it's only been a hardware feature item since about the 360 as it's the first one to expose a hardware accelerated version as part of it's "core" API set. Moreover, the one being used is a superset of the 360's, if they're using it fully here (no telling, haven't seen the demo...)- and the 360 can't do all of what is specified in the DX11 or OGL3.2 specs.

All in all, it's a fairly cool detail item to have going forward.

[BlackStar]

Am I the only one who doesn't like the demo? It all looks very exaggerated to me. Almost as if they thought, now here's a cool feature lets abuse it to the max.

Nope, you are not the only one.

The tessellation effect is indeed overwhelming (you cannot walk on a stone path with stones jutting out like this), but I guess that's necessary for the wow factor. This is similar to older effects like relief/parallax mapping, per-pixel lighting (normal/bump mapping) or even lens flares when they were first introduced. Once the novelty wears off, we'll see much more convincing implementations.

[monraaf]

Am I the only one who doesn't like the demo? It all looks very exaggerated to me. Almost as if they thought, now here's a cool feature lets abuse it to the max.

[indezign]

Nvidia is already testing out fermi cards with Unigine Heaven in windows. I don't know about linux, but I would assume the same is true. I'm sure ATI and NVidia have the most up to date code Unigine has available to test hardware.

The tesellation is certainly the high point of the demo. The roof tiles, the stone walkway, the window frames, and the dragon look amazing. The lighting looks great on them as well. You can tell that they are actual geometry because the specular lighting and shadows that show up after they are tesellated highlight that fact.

Hmm, tesellation has been out for quite some time and game consoles
like the Xbox 360 are capable of this feature. A lot of technology
like tesellation has been around for quite some time, like 10-15 years, but not part of the CORE API feature set.

[deeceefar2]

They could release it anyway when it works with Nvidia, maybe Fermi test cards could work with Tesselation too.

Nvidia is already testing out fermi cards with Unigine Heaven in windows. I don't know about linux, but I would assume the same is true. I'm sure ATI and NVidia have the most up to date code Unigine has available to test hardware.

The tesellation is certainly the high point of the demo. The roof tiles, the stone walkway, the window frames, and the dragon look amazing. The lighting looks great on them as well. You can tell that they are actual geometry because the specular lighting and shadows that show up after they are tesellated highlight that fact.

It is interesting how tesellation bridges the gap in previous realtime rendering that occured when the camera would get real close to objects that had fake geometry. Things would perform grest and look great from far away; however, when you got close to the geometry the tricks became obvious. Rendering both far away and close geometry would be too much for the hardware. Now this provides a way to have an additional level of detail when you are close enough to see the flaws in the rendering. This just adds another level of realism to games. This is the feature that will set PC games apart from console for the next few years until a new generation of consoles emerge (if game companies target this high end feature).

[Kano]

They could release it anyway when it works with Nvidia, maybe Fermi test cards could work with Tesselation too.

[Michael]

There are a few other bugs too besides the tessellation problem, but those should be addressed with 9.12 though there still may be one or two other rendering defects I haven't checked to see if those were resolved in the 9.12 branch or not. But yes, tessellation support is the big one.