Will Torque Support Cg

#1 Would it even be worth the effort? Cg only works with nVidia shader extenstions udner GL. If Torque were more Direct3D firendly, sure. But it seems silly to support Cg for nVidia cards and then have to fall back on assembler style for ATI. (And worse, nothing for everything else.)

Better to spend the time on a non-vendor specific shading library.

#2 If nVidia are going to do it, and it becomes popular then I am sure ATI will pick it up. They've always tried to be very good with OpenGL stuffs (Supporting glsetup for one thing).

#3 It would seem to me that a general answer for just about every "Will Torque support Feature X?" question is "Will you be adding it?"

I can't wait to work with stuff like Cg (it bears a remarkable resemblance to 3DLabs' OpenGL 2.0 shader spec), but if it's a card-specific technology I'm not going to waste my time. I don't even have an NVIDIA card.

#4 My thoughts this morning are....

I'm certainly interested in it and I've already had some great results. My primary reason for using it is that we use the high-end nVidia chipset at work and are starting to utilise the power of shaders there using OpenGL. Unfortunately, only vertex programs are available for OpenGL at the moment, damn.

Cg is perfect within this environment but I certainly share the concern as to whether other manufacturers will adopt it. If you watch the videos then you would think it's the best thing since sliced bread but for the moment I simply consider it a stop-gap until we start seeing OpenGL2.0 support on the shelfs.

DirectX is out for us as some of our systems still run under NT4 and Windows2000 driver support for third-party equipment we using is slow to appear.

The fact that microsoft is partnering this technology is good but I would of been more happy with a press release that had ATI, 3D-Labs or Matrox alongside it.

We shall see, but in the meantime this has come along at a perfect time for my day-job so I guess I'm going to get to grips with it anyway.

If it appears that others are adopting it over the coming year then I should be in a position to implement it within Torque but I guess by then we should have a more mature OpenGL2.0 spec just around the corner so who knows?

- Melv.

#5 From the little time I spent reading about it so far, Cg seems to be fairly vendor agnostic. Its really about the "language" than the low level card support.

If I read it correctly, this is meant to be an "open" spec, which is cross API (i.e. supported with DX and OGL) and in this case, also cross vendor (although obviously no other vendors come out in favour yet).

I'm not entirely certain wether its going to go in the direction we all need, but I'm pretty certain I'll be hacking support in for it at some stage, because its just too close a match to one of my own goals (shader support in torque) to not at least give it a go.

Phil.

#6 Yes, Cg is fairly vendor agnostic, and the word on the street is Nvidia will be happy if other vendors pick it up for their own hardware. If you're doing D3D rendering, it will already work across cards since the asm language for DX is standardized across vendors. Its not too surprising NVidia didn't put in ATI support on the OpenGL side since ATI's extention mechanism is different than NVidia's. If ATI picks it up and runs with it..great. Excellent stop-gap measure from now until DX9 and OGL 2.0

#7 I wouldn't hold my breath for GL2. I had the chance to talk with a member of the ARB a couple of months ago and he mentioned that the final spec is a looooong way off, let alone any implementations. Just think about how slow all these organizations are at moving forward, then realize that all they have at this point are whitepapers.

So this in mind, I welcome this attempt from NVidia. It does look to be fairly portable across different cards (and even APIs). Anything to get things moving re making vertex programs more available and accessable.

#8 I've got quite a few friends at 3DLabs and that's the kind of noise I'm hearing from their corner.

This will do for now as long as Cg OpenGL texture shaders are implemented soon.

- Melv.

#9 Sadly, 3DLabs was the only company that defined the 1st draft of OpenGL 2.0 standard. Noises like these are quite close to what is happenning regarding OGL2.0

#10 Cg is very cool, definitely the most developer friendly solution presented so far. I really wish nVidia had decided to support other venders OpenGL shader extensions though.

As far as Torque shader support goes, it’s when, not if. Right now we have several companies fighting for control of the shader arena: Microsoft with DirectX, nVidia with Cg, proprietary OpenGL 1.0 extensions and a unified OpenGL 2.0 specification being promoted by 3D-Labs. Who’s going to win? Will ATI, or Matrox, or Intel join the battle with their own solution? If anyone had an edge I’d regretfully have to say it is the 900 pound gorilla in Seattle, they always come out on top no matter what happens -- doesn’t matter if they are right or wrong.

I think the answer for the Torque today is: sit back and enjoy the fight! When the dust settles later this year the path will be much clearer and we’ll have a lot more consumers with shader enabled cards. I would encourage everyone to experiment will all the available api’s and post your experiences here. We do have close relationships with the big card manufacturers and our voice is heard.

--Rick

#11 I do agree Rick that it's probably best to sit back and wait this one out. By the end of the year we should hopefully have a well defined shader path to follow (be led?).

Unfortunately I've got to come up with a solution for work right now. The good thing that will come out of the work now is that I should be able to bring alot of practical knowledge to the Torque-table later in the year.

- Melv.

#12 Read the article people its not gpu specific nor api specific. It even said that in the article on the website.

#13 Yes, but it remains to be seen if it will be used solely by Nvidia.

#14 David,

"The proof is in the pudding".

I read the article correctly. It's just that my experience tells me to be cautious when dealing with products such as this.

I know this is a little cynical but it pays. ATI support would of completely removed any cynicism I have.

Either way I'm interested in the technology for my professional work.

- Melv.

#15 I think NVidia deserves the benefit of the doubt considering how supportive they've been of open APIs thus far. They've said they will make part of the technology available in open source format so other vendors can use it as well. I have no reason to doubt them.

Anyway, you can use Cg on ATI cards, just not under OpenGL. I don't think you can fault NVidia for no ATI support under OpenGL. Should NVidia be responsible for supporting every vendor's shader extentions?

Since my current project is Direct3D based, I don't even worry about it. I've recently integrated Cg into my engine and its working great. Its a nice technology to have for now while waiting for DX9, and/or OpenGL 2.0 (wouldn't hold my breath for OGL2, though...Design by committee of companies with competing interests doesn't usually breed quick results.)

#16 If Nvidia is so open about their API, they should have let ATI/anyone_else use their OpenGL shader extension long time ago in the ARB meeting. Now thatshader on OpenGL is totally divided along the vendor line, all of sudden, they become "oh so open about their API". ironic?

#17 Finally got around to looking at Cg today. The 1.0 release peaked my interest. Nice stuff, though I am out of touch with current graphics API politics. I haven't installed DX9 runtime, much less the SDK... blah...

I briefly surveyed hooking up Cg support to the Torque TS system and art pipeline(interiors, terrains, and water are a bit of a special case). It really didn't appear overly difficult. I actually had quite an urge to do it... Unfortunately, I am a bit overextended at the moment :)

I would be curious to hear of anyone working towards such a goal... or perhaps there is a superior path then Cg?

-J

#18 Well, OpenGL 2 will have Slang (a high level shader language somewhat similar to Cg). Might be something to look for.

#19 Well I want to implement Cg in torque and I'm going to start soon with implementing it in HEAD. I'm probably going to be in over my head but until I get my game idea fleshed out I'm going to work on this.

#20 The TA folks have told us over on the TEP boards that they have Cg support and dot3 working and will be releasing them both as resources soonish...