Developer Newsletter: Issue #25

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Several pieces of sample material from the upcoming GPU Gems 2 book have been released. These include:

• Visual Table of Contents
• Foreword by Tim Sweeney, Epic Games
• Preface
• Contributor biographies
• From the Back Cover
• Table of Contents
• Chapter 8: Per-Pixel Displacement with Distance Functions
• Chapter 14: Dynamic Ambient Occlusion and Indirect Lighting
• Chapter 29: Streaming Architectures and Technology Trends

Don't miss our sponsored sessions at GDC, including the GPU Gems 2 Showcase.

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NVIDIA's Game Testing Lab is open and ready to test your games! Testing stability, image quality and performance across the full spectrum of NVIDIA's product line and on the latest drivers in development, this lab offers many benefits to our software partners, while ensuring that their precious assets remain perfectly safe. Within a couple weeks of receiving your build, NVIDIA will provide you with a comprehensive report on how your game performs on various GPUs, a list of bugs found, as well as recommended settings for common configurations above minimum spec so that you can be assured your game will run well "right out of the box" on your customers' premier choice of gaming hardware. For more information, email the lab director, John Spitzer, at jspitzer@nvidia.com.

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Floating-point math sometimes results in the generation of floating-point specials (such as NaNs and Infs) on CPUs as well as on GPUs. These special numbers often result in unintuitive rendering results that are hard to debug.

Floating-Point Specials describes when floating-point specials are generated in various stages of a modern GPU pipeline, and discusses methods for handling and protecting against these situations.

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The Microsoft DirectX9 SDK has been updated again for February 2005 including changes to D3DX library, graphics samples, tools, and documentation updates.

There is a new "Top Issues for Windows Titles" article discussing best practices when developing games for Windows.

PIX for Windows can now efficiently capture information about an application’s calls to Microsoft Direct3D APIs allowing users to single-step through scene rendering from within the tool.

The precomputed radiance transfer (PRT) system has been enhanced with fast ray tracing methods have been added for direct computation of ray/mesh intersections against a simulation scene. Additionally, GPU-accelerated direct-lighting computation now supports normal maps.

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Joining our Registered Developer program is free and gives you access to a number of benefits:

• Developer Forums
• Prerelease Tools
• Prerelease Drivers
• Bug Reporting

Joining is easy!  Simply fill out one of applications below:

• Game Developer Application
• Workstation Developer Application
• Handheld Developer Application

Please note that it may take a few weeks to receive a decision on your application, due to the large number of applicants.

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Chapter 29 of the upcoming book GPU Gems 2 describes the trends in semiconductor design and manufacturing that are driving the evolution of both the CPU and the GPU. One of the important factors driving these changes is the memory “gap”—the fact that computation speeds are increasing at a much faster rate than memory access speeds. This chapter also introduces the “streaming” computational model, which is a reasonably close match to the characteristics of modern GPU hardware. By using this style of programming, application programmers can take advantage of the GPU’s massive computation and memory bandwidth resources, and the resulting programs can achieve large performance gains over equivalent CPU implementations.

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What has screaming fast 256MB GeForce Go 6800 Ultra graphics, a gorgeous 17" wide screen WUXGA screen, an interchangeable lighting system and skins while only weighing in at 8.6-lbs? The revolutionary new Dell™ Inspiron™ XPS Gen 2 notebook, of course.

Redefining the performance bar for gaming enthusiasts (scores of over 12,000 in 3DMark 2003) or anyone looking for the ultimate HD video notebook, the new Inspiron XPS features the latest GeForce Go 6800 Ultra with state-of-the-art technology including:

• Shader Model 3.0 support: enables games to show extraordinary visual effects by using Microsoft DirectX 9.0 Shader Model 3.0.
• NVIDIA PureVideo™ Technology: Experience unprecedented HD Video with stunning picture clarity, smooth video, accurate color and precise image scaling for all video content to turn your PC into a high-end home theater.
• PowerMizer™ 5.0: helps users reduce power consumption on their notebook without affecting their experience.

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The NVIDIA® GeForce™ Go 6600 graphics processing units (GPUs) deliver brilliant video and 3D graphics on the leading portable multimedia and performance notebook PCs. With the advanced video capabilities of NVIDIA's PureVideo™ technology, support for the latest 3D games and applications, and NVIDIA PowerMizer™ 5.0 technology for high performance and long battery life, the GeForce Go 6600 GPUs deliver unparalleled features for both the road warrior and the multimedia enthusiast. With a GeForce Go 6600 powering your notebook PC you can easily travel from the home theater to the boardroom with the perfect blend of performance, features, and portability.
>> Read Press Release

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Some of the most popular pages and downloads over the past few weeks have been:

• NVIDIA SDK 8.5. An updated version of our SDK with Shader Model 3.0 support.
  
• FX Composer 1.6. Includes several new features such as Shader Model 3.0 support, material panel improvements, DXSAS support, and more.

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