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| 34. |
Re: RAGE Specs |
Sep 7, 2011, 07:03 |
Sho |
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Regarding the relatively low GPU requirements, even for recommended, it's related to the nature of the technology involved. id Tech 5, at least in the way it's been used in Rage, isn't a very ALU-intensive engine (meaning, it does relatively little in the way of shader-based number crunching compared to some other games) - keep in mind that it's also designed to run at 60 fps on a relatively slow system in terms of the available ALU compute power (the Xbox 360).
Rather, what id Tech 5 focusses on is mainly its unique texturing system, which is conceptually similar to the virtual memory systems you find in operating systems, in terms of having a multi-tiered caching architecture and paging stuff in on demand, etc. So what id Tech 5 does put a lot of pressure on is texture throughput and the video memory bus, but apparently even older PC cards manage to satisfy its demands there.
Edit: As for API, id Tech 5 is an OpenGL engine on the PC. On the consoles it doesn't really make sense to talk about "Direct3D", you go lower-level there, e.g. instead of making texture uploads through a hardware abstraction API like OpenGL or Direct3D you just get a pointer from the API and a pitch and a swizzle format and do the write directly.
Also, keep in mind that when you're a programmer on the level of Carmack, you don't really play this API fanboy game that gamers do. The API is something that's between you and the hardware; Carmack understands the problems he solves on the level of their fundamental computer science nature and the hardware used in solving them. What he really wants (especially lately, going by his comments) is less API and more direct hardware access, like on the consoles. The problem on the PC side with direct hardware access is that it requires the hardware makers to standardize more across their different products - really, the point to OpenGL and Direct3D is to abstract how different GPUs work internally.
So when he says that lately he's been liking Direct3D, he's in a way talking about how much the respective APIs get in his way, or how convenient they are for what he's trying to do, and it's probably usually related to basic operations like texturing and the render pipeline. What he doesn't really care about OTOH are the tentpole features that get marketed to consumers, like "DX has tesselation now" (he tends to make amused to disparaging comments about stuff like that), since he's more a broad-strokes engine systems guy ("I'm going to make all lighting dynamic", "I'm going to virtualize texturing") than focussed on bullet points like that.
This comment was edited on Sep 7, 2011, 07:15. |
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Subject |
Author |
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1. |
Sep 6, 20:49 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
beigemore |
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2. |
Sep 6, 21:00 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
Fion |
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3. |
Sep 6, 21:05 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
nin |
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4. |
Sep 6, 21:09 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
Pigeon |
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5. |
Sep 6, 21:19 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
Alamar |
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6. |
Sep 6, 21:44 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
Beelzebud |
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7. |
Sep 6, 21:46 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
Creston |
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8. |
Sep 6, 21:53 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
nin |
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9. |
Sep 6, 21:58 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
Creston |
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10. |
Sep 6, 22:02 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
nin |
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13. |
Sep 6, 22:17 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
Creston |
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11. |
Sep 6, 22:03 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
Nate |
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14. |
Sep 6, 22:42 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
Fion |
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15. |
Sep 6, 22:58 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
Agent.X7 |
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28. |
Sep 7, 03:49 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
Suddenly_Dead |
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29. |
Sep 7, 04:35 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
Jerykk |
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30. |
Sep 7, 04:53 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
InBlack |
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47. |
Sep 7, 13:34 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
^Drag0n^ |
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32. |
Sep 7, 05:08 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
peteham |
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33. |
Sep 7, 06:51 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
Overon |
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42. |
Sep 7, 10:45 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
Shineyguy |
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49. |
Sep 7, 15:28 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
Agent.X7 |
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20. |
Sep 7, 01:40 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
bhcompy |
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21. |
Sep 7, 01:44 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
Flo |
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25. |
Sep 7, 02:49 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
CeeJay |
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37. |
Sep 7, 08:51 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
everyone |
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50. |
Sep 7, 22:11 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
mag |
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51. |
Sep 8, 06:19 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
everyone |
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12. |
Sep 6, 22:11 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
Quboid |
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16. |
Sep 6, 23:36 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
DangerDog |
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17. |
Sep 7, 00:28 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
FreonTrip |
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18. |
Sep 7, 00:37 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
Cornholio |
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22. |
Sep 7, 01:53 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
Jerykk |
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23. |
Sep 7, 02:04 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
^Drag0n^ |
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27. |
Sep 7, 03:12 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
mag |
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31. |
Sep 7, 05:08 |
Re: Valve Single Player Clarification |
Optimaximal |
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48. |
Sep 7, 13:36 |
Re: Valve Single Player Clarification |
^Drag0n^ |
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19. |
Sep 7, 01:39 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
bhcompy |
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24. |
Sep 7, 02:21 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
ForgedReality |
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26. |
Sep 7, 03:11 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
ForgedReality |
| >> |
34. |
Sep 7, 07:03 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
Sho |
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35. |
Sep 7, 07:59 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
Rockn-Roll |
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38. |
Sep 7, 09:13 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
AndyMutz |
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41. |
Sep 7, 09:26 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
Verno |
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45. |
Sep 7, 12:14 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
Jerykk |
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39. |
Sep 7, 09:13 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
descender |
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40. |
Sep 7, 09:22 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
SpectralMeat |
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36. |
Sep 7, 08:39 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
Verno |
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43. |
Sep 7, 10:53 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
SirKnight |
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44. |
Sep 7, 11:27 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
EddieTheHack |
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46. |
Sep 7, 12:45 |
Re: RAGE Specs |
Verno |
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