MaximumPC 2007 01

 MAXIMUMPC JANUARY 2007

R

TS games have lagged in visual qual-

ity compared to fi rst-person shooters

because the games must render so many

objects. Developers must choose between

limiting the number of units onscreen at any

one moment or rendering lots that look nearly

identical. Boring.

In Gas Powered Games’ Supreme Commander,

you’ll be able to deploy hundreds of very differ-

ent units all at one time, thanks to DirectX 10’s

improved instancing routines. First introduced with

DirectX 9, instancing enables developers to create

one object model and have it drawn many times

using just one “draw” call; however, each object’s

movement and orientation were similar. DirectX

10 liberates programmers from the restriction of

simple cloning by allowing them to assign each

instanced object with a texture selected from a tex-

ture array. And to ensure that each object behaves

as well as looks different, DirectX 10 supports a

large palette of animation routines.

And Now: The Eye Candy

Now that we’ve seen how fast the first DirectX 10 videocard can be with current-generation games, let’s take a look at what

we can expect from next-gen titles. We selected each of these screenshots to represent one new visual effect that’s not cur-

rently achievable with DirectX 9.

SIGNIFICANTLY IMPROVED INSTANCING

Increases the number and diversity of objects in games such as Supreme Commander

D

irectX 9 supports procedurally generated effects,

but all objects must be based on pre-fabricated

vertex or texture data. The presence of a geometry

shader in DirectX 10 allows the GPU to generate new

data, which enables developers to create visual effects

based on real-time calculations.

In this Nvidia-provided demo, a column of rock

continuously “grows” from the top of the screen.

Waterfalls can emerge from any point on the column

and cascade down its face, forming pools on fl at

surfaces. Vines crawl across its face, thicken and

branch out over time, and gradually decay until they

disappear. Pixel-shader routines, meanwhile, give the

object its rich texture and high defi nition.

Note the glistening textures indicating where

water has moved across the surface. In the demo,

these slowly fade to a duller fi nish as the waterfall

dries up and ceases to fl ow. Procedurally generated

effects should be a boon to games like Will Wright’s

upcoming Spore.

PROCEDURALLY GENERATED EFFECTS

Real-time geometry creation simulates nature

SUPREME COMMANDER

NVIDIA’S WATERFALL DEMO

NEXT-GEN GAMING