Ook Riva Extreme heeft een preview van de nVidia GeForce 256 online gezet. Eén van de unieke features van de GeForce is Cube Environment Mapping (CEM), waarover je hier een stukje hebt:
This is one of the most compelling features of CEM - dynamic environments. Imagine walking through a huge field, with trees on each side. The terrain in front, behind, above and below you doesn't change that much, but the trees may change into a town, or mountains... the possibilities are endless. Now, instead of uploading an entirely new 'environment' texture, you can just change the textures on the two sides - making world transitions much more accurate and up to date. The sun? Well, just have that part of the top texture still, and move it across the +y (top) texture or have a large texture that your program 'pans' across (to send to the card). There are so many more possibilities for developers that you'll undoubtedly see a huge jump in gaming technology. Another benefit from CEM that I think is an impressive realism-enhancing feature is Fresnel Refraction. A perfect example of this is water. Here's a picture from the 'wave demo': You can see that as the viewing angle gets steeper, the more reflection you get and the less bottom you can see. This is a real-life situation that is performed extremely well by cube mapping, and will make the gaming experience better without you really noticing it.
