Geometry Shaders

OpenGL OpenGL: Advanced Coding
1

Hi !

How close do you guys think this is to geometry shaders ?

http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?wo=2005122095

Don’t know if this has any kind of implications on geometry shader stuff in applications …

2

from what i can tell, if they manage to perfect the method it may end up with an almost infinite degree of quality, way better than anything you can do with the geometry shaders and whatnot, however there are a few items i like to address.

  1. actual hardware is ways off, so far in fact that raytracing hardware will come way before it.

  2. more primitive variants has been used for the last 20 years and this is just an advanced variant of it with morphing, depth buffers and stuff.

  3. the technique has problems with partially transparent geometry and things like that.

  4. The premise in the beginning of the description of that patent application is wrong, there will always be enough polygon processing power compared to the rest of the GPU, especially with the geo shaders, besides they talk a lot of the CPU in it but lately pretty much everything is done on the GPU

So no i don’t think this will ever have a direct affect on anything related to the current gen hardware.

3

This has little to do with GS. The headline is “IMAGE BASED RENDERING”, which is hardly a new concept and from brief reading of the patent I don’t see anything here that diverts significantly from existing techniques, so it would surprise me if this patent would be legitimate in any shape or form.