I learned something about GPUs today
46 points by two
46 points by two
There is also the flat keyword in GLSL and nointerpolation in HLSL.
The author does mention in a footnote that they aren't using flat for compatibility with old OpenGL.
i think for a game that looks like that, it probably makes sense to target the traditional vertex pipeline, just because every GPU since ~2004 supports it. you get a much wider possible audience by using it
but this is one of the reasons i am excited for the vertex shader pipeline to go the way of the dodo. you can get around it with hacks like nointerpolation, where the rasterizer takes the value from one vertex and doesn't interpolate
mesh shaders make way more sense. you emit per-vertex data that gets interpolated, and per-triangle data that doesn't (work graphs make even more sense, but the hardware cutoff point excludes way too many currently-popular GPUs. a high end game can probably get away with using them, but indies probably can't until steamdeck is considered retro)
Which GPUs support work graphs, and where do I go on the internet to discover this information?
support may differ on dx12, or between different drivers for the same gpu.
for work graphs, nvidia 30xx and amd rdna 3 support work graphs. not sure exactly where intel cards start, but the latest ones support them
mesh shaders start at nvidia 20xx, rdna 2, and intel arc (including iGPUs that are arc based)
I know nothing of the internals of GPUs, but that was a fascinating slice of the tech and I enjoyed reading it. Thanks.