With the numerous changes to the graphics pipeline we've seen over the past few years what elements have most interested you and what do you believe will have the most impact in games in the future? What changes would you like to see in the future?
Nick: Well I think the shaders are, and will be, the biggest step forward in real-time 3D. In other words, more programmability and flexibility. When the shaders were introduced in DirectX8.0, it was already clear that they will have a great impact on future games and vastly improve the visual quality of special effects (such as water etc) and lighting. When we released 3DMark2001 introducing the Nature game test, many were awed by the water effect which was something completely new in real-time 3D. The shader effect didn’t get unnoticed, and pretty soon games started to have similar looking water effects. When we designed 3DMark03 we took the water-effect one step further, and since the SM2.0 gives a much better result than SM1.x, the water shader we created for 3DMark03 was again awed by many. Shaders have made it possible to create very real-life looking materials / effects, and in the future it will only get better! I am very excited to see what other developers will be releasing within the next couple of years. The early screenshots and tech demos I have seen on future game-engines (for example UE3) are simply amazing! They are still work-in-progress, so I am sure that the final result will be even more dazzling!
Patric: I’d just like to add that shaders are not just for special effects like a water surface. This seems to be a common belief, since also games still use shaders mostly only for some special materials. I believe, and I’m sure the forward looking game developers agree, that shaders are here to replace the old fixed function vertex processing and multi-texturing. In the future all games will use shaders for all vertex and pixel processing. There may be fallbacks for pre-shader cards still doing multi-texturing etc, but the day will come when the first PC game is released that _requires_ powerful shader hardware and offers no fixed function fallback.
Finally, will there be any cows featured in the latest 3DMark?
Nick: You will have to wait and see...! :)
