First Look: NVIDIA GeForce 3 (3/6) High Order Surfaces
With High Order Surfaces, NVIDIA introduces the use of splines. When using splines, only the defining points of a curve are transferred. The other points and the triangles are then automatically interpolated by the chip (tesselation). This is especially advantageous when zooming in on an object, since the level of detail can be adjusted relative to the viewing distance. 3D modelling software like Maya and 3D Studio Max (Nurbs) has been using these kinds of surfaces for a long time. The drawback to this technique is that it only works for organic objects and surfaces, like characters or terrain. Angular objects like houses would be quite hard to create, however. It's hard to judge how fast the GeForce 3 will really be able to calculate High Order Surfaces. An emulation using the CPU and a GeForce 2 would probably be nothing more than a slide-show. NVIDIA has done some preperatory work, though, and is offering tools to make 3D spline models of current applications usable with the GPU. |
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Copyright: 27.02.2001 -
RIVA
Station 2001 - Lars Weinand Translation by Benjamin Kraft URL of this Article: www.rivastation.com/gf3_e.htm - If you want to link to it, please use this URL! :-) |
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Complex 3D models consist of a large number of smaller triangles
(polygons). The more polygons a 3D artist uses, the more realistic an object will look.
Since every polygon needs to be sent over the AGP bus, you're bound to hit a limit sooner
or later. While the chip itself would have no trouble handling all those polygons, the
trouble is that the chip would be waiting for the data which would get stuck on the bus.
