Hi-res screenshots from NVIDIA DX11 tech demos

[MikeC]

NVIDIA Debuts New DirectX 11 Technology Demonstrations at GDC

NVIDIA demonstrated its next generation DirectX 11 graphics simulations at the Game Developers Conference last week in San Francisco. The new simulations include beautifully rendered hair and an island simulation with sunlight reflecting on photorealistic waves.

In the DirectX 11 hair demonstration, long flowing hair is realistically simulated, created and rendered on the GeForce GTX 480 using its unique parallel tessellation engines. By moving the model and applying a simulated breeze, the hair billows and cascades naturally with accurate physical properties. The demo shows how realistic hair will soon be possible in computer games.

Their DirectX 11 "Island" demo depicts a large scene that includes terrain and water with realistic, physically simulated waves. The terrain uses DirectX 11 tessellation and supports both static and dynamic tessellation. Very little data is sent to the GPU-with default settings the GPU creates 11 million primitives out of 20,000 that it gets from the application.

At maximum tessellation settings the simulation can draw nearly 1.6 billion triangles per second. The demo runs at over 40 frames per second on NVIDIA’s next-generation GeForce GTX 480 GPU.

The grass demonstration portrays up to 3.5 million blades of grass billowing and waving in the wind. Simulations like this put NVIDIA’s next-generation GPU to the test as it renders up to 48 million triangles in a single frame. This simulation also uses DirectX 11 tessellation to deliver more detail when viewing the grass up close.

These simulations illustrate the kind of scenes that can be depicted using the highly scalable tessellation engines in GeForce GTX 480. With NVIDIA’s newest GPU, game developers can incorporate an extraordinary level of geometric detail in their upcoming games.

All images captured on GeForce GTX 480.



Hair has been one of the most challenging objects to create in video games, due to the computational complexity of realistically rendering thousands of individual strands as they interact with light and each other. In this DirectX 11 technology simulation created by NVIDIA, long flowing hair is rendered in amazing detail with realistic physics properties in real time.





Island before and after: These two images show the dramatically enhanced details provided by DirectX 11 tessellation. The before view shows the minimal level of detail included in the actual simulation; the after view shows how DirectX 11 tessellation adds millions of triangles to make the simulation come to life with photorealistic water and non-repeating waves.



The NVIDIA DirectX 11 grass simulation depicts more than 3.5 million blades of grass waving and billowing in the wind. The physical properties of the grass are affected by objects placed upon them. Once again, DirectX 11 tessellation adds greater visual fidelity when viewing the grass close up.

[pkirby11]

Very nice! I don't deny they don't have the makings of a great card and I'm going to wait a little before I buy anything but I can't spend the price the rumors have been saying. I hope they are rumors cause I'd consider buying one but I may just wait until both ATI and NVIDIA's refresh.

[Enrico_be]

Freaking awesome !

That looks incredible, but what got my attention was the "non-repeating waves". I didn't know that would be a function of the card, not the software...or has the software just had to wait for hardware that can do it?

I can think of several scenarios where that little item can add so much to a game.

[Xion X2]

Bring on the realistic looking hair!! I'm sick of seeing these hair helmets that all these gaming characters wear.

[trivium nate]

woop T do who cares

[Muppet]

That is most impressive looking. Was there any indication how smooth they ran.

[CaptNKILL]

I wonder when we'll see truly realistic grass like that in some form in a game. Obviously it'd be scaled way back, but that'd be awesome to have characters running through a field and having it leave foot prints.

That's a long way off though. Hell, most games don't even show cheesy sprite-based grass past 50 feet right now, let alone have fully rendered 3D grass that reacts to physics.

[Redeemed]

Originally Posted by CaptNKILL

I wonder when we'll see truly realistic grass like that in some form in a game. Obviously it'd be scaled way back, but that'd be awesome to have characters running through a field and having it leave foot prints.

That's a long way off though. Hell, most games don't even show cheesy sprite-based grass past 50 feet right now, let alone have fully rendered 3D grass that reacts to physics.

You know- I often feel as though the golden years of PCs and gaming are behind us... the excitement about new technologies as each new one brings a noticeable leap in our computing capabilities. The excitement surrounding the latest DX or OGL and what it brings to the table, and anticipation over how ATi and nVidia will support it, and what the game devs will do with it and the hardware.

For the longest time it seemed like things would never pick up- that they'd always be slow and just get slower and slower unless you gamed on a console.

However, with DD Connect, DTS Live, PhsyX, 3D Gaming, tessellation, and true 64-bit and multi-threaded games it really seems like we may be entering yet another "golden era". At least as far as technology is concerned.

Now with Valve porting games to MacOS. This is great as they'll be using OpenGL, which means native support in Linux distros such as Ubuntu or Kubuntu. Which will boost competition for MS in regards to Windows.

I mean, you already have Office for the Mac, and then there is OpenOffice which works just fine. Now a major developer of PC Games is releasing software for MacOS- I'm really beginning to get excited as to what all this could mean in the future. It just seems like significantly increased competition is the only outcome.

I think MS will slowly loose market share, which means they'll be forced to become more competitive.

People rave over Windows 7? Well, when MacOS and Linux slowly steal some of Windows' thunder I'd imagine Windows 8 to be all that much more impressive.

Maybe I'm just being overly optimistic- I don't know. Just seems to me like things in the industry are picking up in a rather exciting way.

[Iruwen]

Originally Posted by Redeemed

People rave over Windows 7?

Do they? I think Windows 7 sales are very good, especially after the Vista desaster.

[Iruwen]

Originally Posted by grey_1

That looks incredible, but what got my attention was the "non-repeating waves". I didn't know that would be a function of the card, not the software...or has the software just had to wait for hardware that can do it?

I can think of several scenarios where that little item can add so much to a game.

Fluid volume simulations are an important aspect of DX11, this also covers smoke for example. I guess Cryostasis was one of the first games that used it excessively (which made it almost unplayable on most systems, even with dedicated PhysX hardware). Fermi should perform much better, so I'm really looking forward to these benchmarks.

[K007]

Unless nvidia pushes this stuff onto developers...none of this will be seen until the console can do this...

If only both ATi and Nvidia had a unified emblem/group or something that could push/pay for there features to be both in the game....