[MUD-Dev] Cg - Lowering the cost of 3D games?

[Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com]

Nvidia have recently announced a new 3D api that they have created
in conjunction with Microsoft, that sits on top of OpenGL and
DirectX and seems to vastly simplify some of the difficulties
encumbent with 3D programming.  Whilst you will still need an
awareness of how to code 3D games, it appears you won't need to
spend weeks creating shader effects to get high quality results.

Quote from the article below :

  'The concept is an easy one and the message that the marketing
  folks at NVIDIA were trying to convey is clear.  NVIDIA "Cg" is
  very much like the "C" programming language but for 3D Graphics.
  The key advantage of the language itself, is that it is a "high
  level" programming language that allows the developer to
  synthesize large complex functions with a simple command string,
  thus eliminating thousands of line of code, as well as optimizing
  it for processing through the DirectX or OpenGL layers and finally
  to the GPU.'

So whats everyone thing? Personally I'm pretty excited as it narrows
the gap between the big studios, who can afford time to polish their
engines, and the smaller ones who without this are almost guaranteed
to fail on the eye candy front.

If I get some time over the weekend I'll have a play and see what
its like to use.

Dan

References :

- Article
  http://www.hothardware.com/hh_files/S&V/nvcg.shtml

- API
  http://developer.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=cg_toolkit
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