Gamasutra (site voor game developers) heeft een artikeltje in elkaar gekwakt over de Siggraph '99 beurs, die van 8 t/m 12 augustus in Los Angeles werd gehouden. In het artikel vind je o.a. info over SGI (nVidia deal en overstap van Irix naar Linux), Mikrosoft (Fahrenheit API), nVidia (NV10) en 3dfx (T-Buffer). Over de T-Buffer technologie van de 3dfx Voodoo4 heb je hier een stukje:
When asked, 3dfx's executives say we can expect higher color depth (32 bits, maybe?) and higher texture sizes (512x512 at least), putting the V4 in a competitive position with the NV10.I know it may be premature, but I think 3dfx may be heading in the wrong direction with all this T-buffer stuff, and may well be trying to hype this feature to differentiate itself from competitors like Nvidia. The trend in consumer graphics chips today is the integration of geometry processing into the pipeline. On-chip transform and lighting are on the way, and on-chip culling, clipping, and vertex storage are already in sight. The accelerator market is basically following the path marked some years ago by SGI architectures. Grab the specs of an SGI InfiniteReality machine, and you'll see similarities with today's consumer designs. So, the geometry step is an obvious one. 3DLabs realized that some time ago, and its Oxygen product family already marked this phase in hardware. Nvidia seems headed in the same direction. By focusing on T-buffers, 3dfx is making a different move.
And let's not forget that a T-buffer can be emulated in software. On the other hand, 32-bit rendering can't, and large texture sets are also impossible.
