Once in a blue moon he updates his column on Blues News (which features also other programmers), and gives his thoughts on current technology, and the current state of the title he is working on. Normally I can understand his columns, but today it is different I have no friggin clue what that guy is on about. Maybe it is because it is 05:00 a.m. and I should be in bed. Or maybe I am trying to come up with an excuse, to hide my obviously limited intelligence (compared too John Carmack's intelligence that is, not yours).
The general topic of his column is about the currently available graphics card NV30 GeforceFX vs R300 Radeon 9700, and their performance running Doom 3.
So he talks about this and that, stuff I am not willing to explain (actually I don't think I can explain it, even if I tried). His conclusion is that:
"The current NV30 cards do have some other disadvantages: They take up two slots, and when the cooling fan fires up they are VERY LOUD. I'm not usually one to care about fan noise, but the NV30 does annoy me."
Well John, I don't want to be a smart ass here (hey it is the only time I can be), but us gamers use headphones so we don't care if the damn thing is to noisy, I suggest you do the same (may I suggest some Sehhheiser's?).
He goes on to talk about how he uses the NV 30 because he believes that the Nvidia drivers are better, he notes however that the ATI drivers are constantly improving.
Nothing new here, ATI's Achilles heel has been the drivers ever since the Radeon 7500.
He continues to talk about the "phasing problems" between hardware and software. And the reason why he attends the Windows Graphics Summit:
"Trying to keep boneheaded-ideas-that-will-haunt-us-for-years
out of Direct-X is the primary reason I have been attending the Windows Graphics Summit for the past three years, even though I still code for OpenGL"
Imagine if he where programming the next windows OS, I am sure he could get rid of a lot of "boneheaded ideas" which have and are still currently haunting us :)
So if you are familiar with the following words/phrases:
Per-pixel reflection vector calculations
specular half-angle calculation
floating point framebuffers
Per-pixel environment mapping
complex fragment shaders
ARB_fragment_program
Or
You want to feel like a complete idiot (hey once in a while it is ok)
Then go ahead read the article, and maybe you can summarize it for me in lament's terms.
I will be grateful for any help.
Link: Blues News