My opinion is we need both software and hardware renderers available. It switches to software when the hardware can''t hang. Like DirectX does with the HEL-HAL layers. This is needed for speed because some video cards support rotating bitmaps for instance while others don''t. Also high end effects that need to be in games as soon as possible like bump mapping and volumetric lighting would bring a computer to it''s knees if they are not hardware accelerated. Now that graphics cards are coming with multiple processers and plenty of ram I would hate to see that go to waste. Not trying to discourage the people writing their own renders though, I think that is very cool, I would just consider letting a api do some hardware acceleration for me in certain instances and when possible

I once attempted to make a software renderer, it helps you learn stuff. My renderer didn''t exactly WORK, but it still helped.

altair
altair734@yahoo.com
www.geocities.com/altair734

Instead of 4xVSA100 or 1 NV20 chip on a board, id much more prefer couple of crazy FPUs. That would let me do some ray/tracing in REAL time.
of course, nothing wrong with having such functions like NOISE, BLEND ,MATMUL and stuff being on FPU.
Does 3dNOW or SIMD have stuff like that ? ive never bothered to learn these. MMX is pretty good tho.

-kertropp

C:\Projects\rg_clue\ph_opt.c(185) : error C3142: 'PushAll' :bad idea
C:\Projects\rg_clue\ph_opt.c(207) : error C324: 'TryCnt': missing point

If you want to know a bit about SIMD ( SSE really ), check out optimisations corner on www.gamasutra.com.

Freaks me out to see them beating the DirectX software matrix and vector ops by a factor of 2 ;-)


#pragma DWIM // Do What I Mean!
~ Mad Keith ~

quote: Original post by FuMo
I think you will find that all but a few new computers on sale nowadays come with some sort of 3D accelerator built into the 2D graphics card.

You are assuming that everyone buys a new PC when they buy a game then? The average PC for sale is of a far higher specification than the average PC in the home. Most people have computers that are a year or two old, often even more than that.

quote:
I think you will find that all but a few new computers on sale nowadays come with some sort of 3D accelerator built into the 2D graphics card.

All but a few new computers. So there are new computers sold without 3D accelerators? So it justify writing a software rendering engine. And there are many computers that aren''t that new in the market.
My computer has a Voodoo Banshee. It''s (in my opinion) a decent accelerator. My sister''s comp has a S3 Trio DX. Has it a 3D accelerator? Yes, but just try to run Homeworld on it. I tested the software renderer and that wasn''t that much of a difference.

The bottom line: people need software renderers. Period.



-----------------
Microsoft''s X-BOX

"This game has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down. Press select+start+delete to restart. "

quote: Original post by Kylotan
You are assuming that everyone buys a new PC when they buy a game then?

quote: Original post by FuMo
you can get very good graphics cards (ie TNT2) for under £40 which is the price of a game

Well it is safe for me to say that I have never bought a game for more than £19.99. I wait a few months or so until games are on the budget list.