Game Development Community

TSE's Terrain

by Wex · in Torque Game Engine Advanced · 08/09/2006 (10:18 am) · 4 replies

Is it possible to use the new terrian system 'Atlas' without hardware shader support?

We're developing for pretty low-end systems, though the TGE terrain system isn't big/flexible/good enough for what we're doing. Any info on how manageable/readable/commented Atlas's code is would also be helpful in making a purchase descision.

If it is all in shaders, what's the potential for moving it to software?

Cheers
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Torque Owner Kevin Johnson
#1
08/10/2006 (9:13 am)
Yah, you could remove the shader code from atlas (if you wanted to),

Atlas and ALOT of the NEW GFX layer is VERY well documented.

But the shaders for atlas have fallbacks to ps1.1

Even the most low end systems video cards have support for ps1.1

anything made after nvidia Geforce 3 (2001) should have at least ps1.1 support

anything made after ATI Radeon 8500 (2001) should have at least ps1.1 support

Torque 3D Owner Stephen Zepp
#2
08/10/2006 (12:07 pm)
As it stands, removing the shader support will most likely bring Atlas to it's knees.

The entire system is built around the concept of using shaders to allow the GPU to do most of the grunt work, and without that capability things will start bogging down quite quickly.

Ben can probably provide more insight, but Atlas (along with TSE in general) is looking forward in hardware/target market systems, not backwards--and that limits how useful it can be on older systems.

Torque 3D Owner Jacob Dankovchik
#3
08/11/2006 (6:50 am)
If someone has a computer that can't even run 1.1 shaders.. I think its time to buy a much needed $30 upgrade...

Torque Owner Wex
#4
08/13/2006 (6:53 am)
:) Thanks guys.