Beyond Programmable Shading

Beyond Programmable Shading

An interesting presentation there from iD Software, discussing some of the theory behind their next generation engine (iD Tech 6, noting that iD Tech 5 is what's being used in Rage). It also agrees and expounds upon with the voxel based approach we see in Cinema 2.0 with great detail. Very interesting. Although, it does not fully resolve the issues of animating voxel structures, suggesting rendering dynamic geometry polygonally. On the other hand, the procedural generate of voxel surfaces for infinite detail is an interesting prospect I had not considered.
http://s08.idav.ucdavis.edu/olick-cu...m-in-games.pdf

It's hard to imagine that we've gone from fully fixed function GPUs architectures to fully programmable ones in less than a decade.