Archive for September, 2008

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3D Engine: Irrlicht 1.4.2 Available

Read more…

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Batman’s Graphics Card

This card called Dark Knight is the new product of ASUS. This is a GeForce 9800 GTX+ with a four heatpipe Dark Knight cooler.

[source]

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Win a GeForce GTX 280 With NVIDIA PhysX Survey

NVIDIA launches a survey in order to improve the next generation of PhysX tools and SDKs. Survey respondents will be able to win a GeForce GTX 280.

More info here: Physics Developer Survey.

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EVGA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked Review

EVGA’s GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 is the new version of the GeForce GTX 260. This version adds 24 shader processors to the existing 192 (192+24=216).

The Geforce GTX 260 core 216 is in fact a GeForce GTX 280, with a small chunk of memory missing, and one shader cluster with 24 shader cores disabled. Other then that, there is just no difference whatsoever.
…
So in general the Core 216 edition cards offer a small small step in performance over the regular GTX 260 products, but the faster clocked Core 216 products, darn it, that’s where value starts kicking in for sure.

Read the complete review here: EVGA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked review.

More news about GTX 260: GeForce GTX 260 @ Geeks3D

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Load All Your Game-Relevant 3D Scene Data From Various File Formats With ASSIMP

The Open Asset Import library, or ASSIMP in short, is a C++ library which loads game-relevant 3D scene data from various file formats and returns it in a common in-memory structure. The library also offers several post processing steps commonly used in realtime 3D rendering which can be applied to the imported data. Assimp supports the following file formats: .3ds, .ase, .obj, .ms3d, .ply, .dxf, .nff, .lwo, .smd, .vta, .mdl, .md2, .md3, .md5, .mdc, .mdr, .x, .mdl, .hmp.

Assimp’s homepage: assimp.sourceforge.net

[source]

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GPU-Z 0.2.8 Available

GPU-Z is a lightweight utility designed to give you information about your video card and GPU.

Download: TechPowerUp GPU-Z v0.2.8

Changlog:
* Added logging of sensor data to file
* Added option to disable polling for individual sensors
* Added support for AMD RV730
* Added clock reading support for Catalyst 8.9 on RV770 and RV730
* Added support for NVIDIA 9400 GT, 9500 GT, 9600 GS, 9800M GS, 9600M GS, 9300M GS, 9200M GE
* Added support for AMD R580 Stream Processor, RV730 and one M88 variant
* Fixed PCI subvendor ID 1787 to be ATI AIB
* Fixed readings and added monitoring support for ATI M88
* Fixed fan speed readings on ADT7473 sensor
* Added support for ADT7473 sensor chip on ATI
* Added release dates for several NVIDIA mobile GPUs

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Photoshop CS4 with GPU Acceleration

The new version of Photoshop will be released soon. Among the new things, Photoshop CS4 will support the GPU acceleration. But this hardware acceleration will be limited to canvas rotating and zooming. Photoshop CS4 GPU acceleration will use OpenGL and will require a graphics card with at least 128Mb of graphics memory.

[source]

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CPU Scaling with the GeForce GTX 280

Legion Hardware has tested a range of CPUs with the GeForce GTX 280, to try and determine what kind of processing power is required to power NVIDIA’s flagship graphics card.

The test shows that with high end graphics cards such as GeForce GTX 280, one has to buy a powerful CPU in order to feed sufficiently the GPU with graphics data.

we suggest for those buying high-end graphics cards, such as the GeForce GTX 280, pick up a Core 2 Quad processor while the Core 2 Duo’s are a perfect match for mid-range graphics cards.

Read the complete test here: CPU Scaling with the GeForce GTX 280

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Next-Gen Physics Presentation

Another NVIDIA’s presentation has been released about PhysX:
NVISION 2008 Next-Gen Physics Deep Dive

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Demoscene: Nazca by cocoon

Demo released at Intel Demo Competition 2008. Ranked: 3rd. Nazca is a Direct3D 9 demo and needs a pixel shader 3.0 graphics card. The sound system uses Fmod.

PouetLink: www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=50865
Cocoon website: cocoon.planet-d.net

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Linux, Catalyst 8.9 and Four ATI FireGL V5600 = 8 Monitors

Here is a video that shows OpenGL acceleration on 8 monitors. The system runs Ubuntu 8.04, and four ATI FireGL V5600 graphics cards with Catalyst 8.9. Each FireGL V5600 has 2 DVI ports.

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Parallels 4 Will Support DirectX 9 and OpenGL 2.0

The upcoming version of Parallels Desktop, the virtual machine for MacOS, will add the support of DirectX 9 and OpenGL 2.0. Parallels allows to run Windows on a Mac.

More information on Parallels: www.parallels.com.

[source]

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Far Cry 2: New Videos

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NVIDIA PhysX Presentation

NVIDIA has published a new presentation about PhysX. This 62-page paper includes a presentation of PhysX as well as an overview of APEX (Adaptive Physics EXtensions) a library built on top of the PhysX SDK. The paper talks also about the license fees: PC Binary SDK Free for both Commercial AND Non-Commercial use. This is a good news for Demoniak3D

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ShaderMap 1.1 – 3D Map Conversion Tool

ShaderMap is a small tool to convert photographic textures to height, ambient occlusion, normal, dudv, and specular maps. The free version is in command line and makes it a powerful tool to convert large amount of maps!

Okay guys, no more to tell, I’ve tried and it works well. The following images show the color map that has been used to produce the normal and ambient occlusion maps. I think this tool can be useful for your real time demos you code with GeeXLab.