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Last Updated:
10
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12
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2007
Developer Newsletter: Issue #28
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GeForce 7800 GTX Launched
 With 8 vertex pipelines and 24 pixel pipelines, the GeForce 7800 GTX features a superscalar architecture and the NVIDIA CineFX 4.0 engine. The CineFX 4.0 engine includes a redesigned vertex shader unit that shortens the time required to set up complex geometry processing. In addition, a new pixel shader unit delivers up to 2x the floating point shading power of previous generation products, while an improved texture unit incorporates new hardware to speed up anisotropic and floating-point filtering operations. Also included are new features such as transparency antialiasing, improved multisampling, advanced video processing, and more.
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NVPerfHUD 3 Released to the Public
 There are so many new features in NVPerfHUD 3 that we introduced three separate modes to hold them all! Use the new Frame Analysis mode to freeze your application and single-step though a frame, drilling down into each draw primitive call to get advanced details about what is going on at each stage in your graphics pipeline. The new Debug Console mode shows you the DirectX Debug Runtime messages, warnings from NVPerfHUD, and custom messages from your application. And, of course, the powerful pipeline analysis experiments are still available in Performance Analysis mode.
We have also produced an NVPerfHUD 3 Overview video that describes all of NVPerfHUD's key features in detail. In addition, the NVPerfHUD User Guide and Quick Reference card are now available in English, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean.
GameDev.net published a review describing all the new features we've added to NVPerfHUD 3. They report that "[Frame Analysis Mode] is by far the most impressive mode of NVPerfHUD. ... A few moments in this mode does more to show how advanced graphic pipelines work than anything else I have seen. ... NVPerfHUD should be of interest to anybody who develops software that employs DirectX graphics."
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 Melody 1.2 Now Available
Melody now supports generating normal maps from much larger models than ever before. Check out the latest release and updated User Guide for tips and tricks that will help you get the most from automatically generated normal maps.
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NVIDIA Plug-ins for Adobe(R) Photoshop(R) and More
 Our plug-ins have been updated to take advantage of Adobe Photoshop CS2 features, particularly the extended support for 32-bit per component floating-point import and export. Existing .dds files can also be directly loaded in floating-point for HDR processing without loss of data. Developers building HDR content for tomorrow's games should absolutely upgrade to Adobe Photoshop CS2 and install our latest texture tools.
In addition, the installer now includes two new scripts for Adobe Photoshop. Mipster is a mip-map generation tool that leverages the power of the Photoshop CS2 internal image filtering engine along with the NVIDIA DDS Plug-in and Normal Map Filter. The Cube Map Shuffler script rearranges cube-map-face elements for use with different export and editing tools. It can quickly convert and copy between different cube map layout formats, a task that has previously been annoyingly slow and error-prone. Updated versions of both the Normal Map Filter and DDS Plug-in are also in this release.
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New Whitepapers and Presentations
 Let's Get Small talks about mipmapping, explaining how the process works and how to make full use of it. It also includes discussions on how mipmapping affects different kinds of textures, such as bump maps, normal maps, and color maps, advice on how to use mipmapping effectively in your authoring pipeline, and much more.
Image Processing on the GPU whitepaper describes the basic methods of GPU usage for image processing and provides useful pointers to documentation, demo programs, and other developer tools.
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 GPU Gems 2 Reviewed on Slashdot
An independent review of our latest book, GPU Gems 2: Programming Techniques for High-Performance Graphics and General-Purpose Computation, is now available on Slashdot.
You can also find Slashdot reviews of our previous books, GPU Gems: Programming Techniques, Tips, and Tricks for Real-Time Graphics and The Cg Tutorial: The Definitive Guide to Real-Time Programmable Graphics.
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ForceWare Release 75 Graphics Driver
In conjunction with the announcement of GeForce 7800 GTX, we have announced immediate availability of our new Windows Hardware Qualification Labs (WHQL)-certified NVIDIA ForceWare Release 75 graphics driver. The new driver supports more than seven different operating systems and more than 250 NVIDIA products. This new driver features:
- Support for OpenGL 2.0. The latest API and new extensions enable rich shader effects on NVIDIA GPUs.
- Improved SLI Performance and Features. Allows end users to achieve incredible performance for games and applications and enable SLI in any game for maximum flexibility; includes broader SLI validation and optimizations for the latest games.
- Improved Video Functionality. Includes support for inverse 2:2 pull-down detection and correction, high definition 1080i deinterlacing, HDCP support, and more.
- Support for Windows XP, Windows XP Profession x64, Windows NT4, Windows 9x/ME, Linux 32-bit, Linux 64-bit, FreeBSD, and Solaris.
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 Upgrade Your PC Today!
Now more than ever, being an NVIDIA developer has its privileges. The Developer Relations team recently worked with Dell to get an amazing deal on a number of Dell Dimension XPS Gen4 Gaming PCs for use at E3 2005. Now that the show is over we're offering up this E3 System Special to our entire developer community for an amazing price. Interested? Click here for full details.
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Become a Registered Developer Today
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:
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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Meltdown 2005
Join NVIDIA and the Microsoft Windows Gaming & Graphics team at Meltdown 2005 (July 26-27) which will feature tracks covering: Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005, Windows codename: "Longhorn", Graphics, General Windows platform best practices, and Publishing and Business Development. NVIDIA will be hosting a suite at the event so please plan on stopping by. You can learn more about Meltdown and register by visiting http://www.microsoftmeltdown.com.
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SIGGRAPH 2005
NVIDIA will be participating in and sponsoring a number of different sessions and other events at SIGGRAPH 2005. These sessions and events include two sponsored talks, three sketches, and several courses. A complete list is available on our "NVIDIA at SIGGRAPH 2005" page.
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Iron Developer at CEDEC 2005
If you're a Japanese developer, don't miss our Iron Developer event at CEDEC 2005. We'll be giving four talks there, covering a range of topics:
- Mike & Luna: Even More Secrets from the NVIDIA Demo Team & Next-Generation Special Effects
- Shader Integration
- Shaders in Your Toolchain: COLLADA & FX Composer 2.0
- Performance Tools and SLI Programming
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Tip of the Month: Enabling Transparency Multisampling and Supersampling on GeForce 7 Series GPUs
To enable Transparency Multisampling in D3D first check if it is supported:
(pd3d->
CheckDeviceFormat(D3DADAPTER_DEFAULT, D3DDEVTYPE_HAL,
D3DFMT_X8R8G8B8, 0,D3DRTYPE_SURFACE,
(D3DFORMAT)MAKEFOURCC('A', 'T', 'O', 'C'))) == S_OK);
When rendering alpha tested fragments Multisampling can be turned on by setting:
pd3dDevice->
SetRenderState(D3DRS_ADAPTIVETESS_Y,
(D3DFORMAT)MAKEFOURCC('A', 'T', 'O', 'C'));
To enable Transparency supersampling first check if it is supported:
(pd3d->
CheckDeviceFormat(D3DADAPTER_DEFAULT, D3DDEVTYPE_HAL,
D3DFMT_X8R8G8B8, 0, D3DRTYPE_SURFACE,
(D3DFORMAT)MAKEFOURCC('S', 'S', 'A', 'A'))) == S_OK);
When rendering alpha tested fragments supersampling can be turned on by setting:
pd3dDevice->
SetRenderState(D3DRS_ADAPTIVETESS_Y,
(D3DFORMAT)MAKEFOURCC('S', 'S', 'A', 'A'));
Both modes can be turned off by setting:
pd3dDevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_ADAPTIVETESS_Y,
D3DFMT_UNKNOWN);
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Featured Pages and Downloads
Some of the most popular pages and downloads over the past few weeks have been:
- NVIDIA GPU Programming Guide. Useful advice on how to identify bottlenecks and eliminate them by taking advantage of the latest GPU features.
- NVPerfHUD 3. NVPerfHUD is a performance analysis tool that overlays a graph of useful information on top of DirectX 9.0 applications.
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Job Openings
NVIDIA's Developer Technology group is always looking for talented engineers and artists in the US, Japan, and Europe. See http://talent.nvidia.com for more general information, or our specific openings for: Mobile Device Developer Technology Engineer (USA, Europe, and Korea), and 3D Professional Applications Developer Technology Engineer.
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