True or false?

In reference to gimmegimmegames.com/2013/01/creator-of-fxaa-gives-his-2-cents-on-th...:

�If PS4 has a real-time OS, with a libGCM style low level access to the GPU, then the PS4 1st party games will be years ahead of the PC simply because it opens up what is possible on the GPU. Note this won�t happen right away on launch, but once developers tool up for the platform, this will be the case.

As a PC guy who knows hardware to the metal, I spend most of my days in frustration knowing damn well what I could do with the hardware, but what I cannot do because Microsoft and IHVs wont provide low-level GPU access in PC APIs. One simple example, drawcalls on PC have easily 10x to 100x the overhead of a console with a libGCM style API.�

Key word: "If"

Let me put that in bold: If

Now lets capitalise that: IF

And now an underline for effect: IF

Game devs have been crying for lower level access for years, and each generation of console there is a claim they will get as close to as possible access. Yes you've guessed it, it's all a load of hype and tosh.

I'm no coder so can you explain a bit more?

Sorry...EXPLAIN


Edit: underlined it

Edited by mrnelster (Sat 26-Jan-13 10:29:10)

All this talk about low level api = they want to be able to call every single process by hand.

What happens at the moment is you feed it some information, and the renderer goes away looking at it and then determines how best to display it.

This is where graphics devs want the power to only demand what they want from the hardware.

Simple issue really, but do you really think think Sony/Microsoft/AMD/Nvidia will let some any idiot damage their image with a poorly produced product that runs so bad through the net (when they do QA, they don't test graphic quality as far as I know).

So as console manufacturers see them as muti media products (even more so next gen) a certain amount of access will always be reserved for other things?

Also, I was always under the impression it is only a small amount of developers which want this low level access? Because it makes it much more difficult and time consuming to develop the game.

The problem with low level access is that any variation in the hardware (whether it's through upgrades, changes in design, imperfections etc) could render the program unusable or for it to crash.

Developers would end up having to code stuff for different revisions, hardware and whatnot - which would be like going back to MS-DOS days...

API are designed to protect against these sort of problems...

Thanks for the explanation.

Yeah i understood every word .

Dont care what is under the hood as long as if its a major improvement over todays ageing consoles.

Theirs no doubt that you will see a improvement, if we dont see anything at E3 this year then its unlikely that the new consoles will come this year.