Pixomatic

[ZoFreX]

For those of you who don't know, pixomatic is a software renderer by our friends, rad game tools. Unlike most software renderers, it's damn fast, and offers tons of features. My point? This means it is now possible to run Quake on supercomputers.. so technically if we wired a few crappy pc's together, they could run modern games!

 

[FictiousWill]

I'm not sure you know what you're talking about.

 

[galoot3000]

umm...... why is this in rumors and specs???

 

[Hazar]

That didn't make much sense.

 

[Bicka]

Rad game tools ran over my cat....they're no friends of mine.

 

[Mechagodzilla]

Rad game tools ran over my cat....they're no friends of mine.

Cat got no keys, newb!

Seriously though, what is this thread about and why is it here?
And can't most any computer run Quake?
And wouldn't it be cheaper to buy one good PC instead of several crap ones?

*brainmelt*

 

[ZoFreX]

Oh dear, this is what happens when I post at 1 in the morning, I get all muddled. Pixomatic is a nice alternative to built-in software renderers, and can run quake 3 at 27fps on a pentium 3 700 mhz, which is impressive. But I don't care about that. This just demonstrates that software rendering can be feature-rich - pixomatic fulfills everything necessary for DX7 compatability. But why would anyone in their right mind want to use software rendering? Well, you could use distributed computing with software rendering. That would be fast, and that's what I meant by supercomputers playing games - they can't normally, because for obvious reasons they don't have 9800's packing heat in there.

This leads nicely to:
a) Apparently the playstation 3 does not have a graphics card, everything is done by the central processor
b) this new type of "cell" processor is actually lots of little processors working together, essentially a very small supercomputer
c) Is software rendering going to make a comeback, in any real-time application?

Yay, speculation and rumours. Curse me for posting late at night, apologies to all confused.

 

[galoot3000]

ahhh, thanks for clearing it up. (i still think it should be in off topic but i dont care) where did your find that the ps3 has no graphics card, i would like to read about that?