When you look at the track in front of you in a racing sim and you
can see the curves at the edge of the track are a series of straight
lines...
will the new anti-aliasing 3dfx t-buffer technology improve this or is this
inherent in the way the track is mathematically modelled. They were making
a big deal of proper arches and stuff in Quake 3 and there was a
performance hit
involved... t-buffer won't give proper arches/curves will it? but it should
improve
the look of the game if you are going to buy a voodoo 4 with t-buffer.
Thanks
Steve
>When you look at the track in front of you in a racing sim and you
> can see the curves at the edge of the track are a series of straight
>lines...
>will the new anti-aliasing 3dfx t-buffer technology improve this or is this
> inherent in the way the track is mathematically modelled.
It will not improve that.. the curves are not really 'mathematically'
modelled, they are modelled by hand as a series of straight lines, as
you said, which approximate a curve. At least in all of the racing
sims I've tried. You can see this clearly in GPL for example in the
Mexico hairpin.. it has distinct straight line segments.
The T-buffer would improve stuff like 'broken' lines at distance, when
you look further up the track, some lines, like the track markings or
the white line on the edge of the track will get broken (due to
resolution and lack of anti-alias). With T-buffer anti-aliasing, the
lines will look solid even at greater distances and the overall look
of the rendered scene will improve.
The T-buffer can also do other nice eye-candy for the games, like
motion blur. There are some good links to T-buffer tech talk at
www.voodooextreme.com and www.combatsim.com
I think the curves in Q3 are real curves, but I'm not sure about that.
Generally things should look better with a voodoo4, but we'll see when
the card is actually released :-)
-Juha
--
Exactly. The graphics engine of a racing game would have to implement
bezier curves, ala Q3A, to get smooth and flowing track lines.
Try also www.sharkyextreme.com
Yup, Q3 uses bezier curves to implement curving surfaces in Q3. Generally
things will look better on the "next-gen" cards, but how much so its anyone
guess until they actually ship. :)
