http://developer.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=IO_CgFXViewer
Any thoughts?
I’ve downloaded it - all 33mb of it, played with it, and found dozens of bugs in it.
None of the paths for shaders and such like seem to be valid - try browsing to change a shader for a mesh…invalid path errors.
Also, why on gods clean earth is the OpenGL renderer sooo much slower than the D3d one? No sense to it.
At no point is the CgFX viewer descibed as a beta, so what’s the excuse?
Well I don’t have it d/l’ed completely yet but to me it looks like nvidia’s answer to ATI’s RenderMonkey. Well I guess so, from the tiny screens on the site that’s the conclusion I have. 
Doesn’t suprise me it’s buggy as hell, the other effect viewers are quite buggy themselfs. Once I get CgFX viewer I can make a better judgement but so far I’m still more toward RenderMonkey.
-SirKnight
Don’t get me wrong, if it weren’t so buggy, and the opengl renderer were faster, than I’d be very happy with it. It’s far and away better than rendermonkey. It’s interface is maybe not as elegant as rendermonkeys, but its flexibility (runtime opengl support for microsoft fx files) is bloody welcome as far as I’m concerned - one script for both API’s - unlike ATI who seem to think XML is the way to go, which I think is just adding another unwelcome layer of complexity to the whole shader authoring business.
Just sort the bloody bugs out! I’ve waited a long time for something like this…my own fx file parser is crap, I want one written by people who’ve done it full time, not my hurried half arse attempt in between other more pressing programming tasks… 
Well, it doesn’t say the viewer is beta, but the CgFX runtime required to use it (that also loads the fx files) is said to be beta.
I’ve played with the viewer a bit. But it’s just that: a viewer, with a couple of parameters that you can tweak.
Concept-wise it’s not comparable with RenderMonkey IMO.
EDIT: On second thought, the underlying fx file format is concept-wise similar to RenderMonkey. But the CgFX viewer application is not. It lacks a lot of the nifty editing capabilities RenderMonkey offers. And as knackered pointed out, it’s buggy as hell. Up until now I have never managed to quit the app gracefully as it always terminates with an exception 
[This message has been edited by Asgard (edited 11-15-2002).]
any documantaion about using the runtime cgfx? i couldnt found any, and with that, i find no use to it.
>>>ust sort the bloody bugs out! I’ve waited a long time for something like this…my own fx file parser is crap, I want one written by people who’ve done it full time, not my hurried half arse attempt in between other more pressing programming tasks… <<<
Sounds like they did a rush job themselves. I have only found a couple of minor bugs in rendermonkey and it sometimes crashes.
I’ll download it soon and let u know
V-man
Hmm so, the solution
Ati: Move some of the rendermonkey guys to the driver dev team.
Nvidia: Move some driver devs to the CgFX viewer.
Charles
Runs fine for me. No crashes or anything… haven’t done much with it like… except fiddle with some of the examples.
Annoying that the d3d renderer is alot faster than the gl one tho.
I downloaded the CgFX viewer, and it says right on the link that the viewer is Beta.
That’s because they’ve just changed it.
Good to know they’re listening…
Right, I’ve played around with the max5 plugin, and I must say that this is very smart. Very, very smart.
One question to nvidia - are you going to make the CgFX runtime source code available? Or at least give us a template of the dll, so we can make our own. Where the hell is the runtime installed to by the way? What’s it called?