Meltdown 2001 - ATI's R200 Countdown Begins

The Demos

Like I said, I think this was as close as we can get for now to a public showing of R200, and therefore, the demos of the SMARTSHADER technology were significant as a result.

Unfortunatley time and conditions didn't allow me to get good pictures but I'll try and capture the spirit in the descriptions.

Final Fantasy inspired graphics - this is the ATI demo application running SMARTSHADER on the R200. You can just make out in the top left hand corner of the screen the words PS 1.4 Ghost Shader. The demo used a transparent rotating skull bone set against a bump mapped, specular lit, image using a single light source rotating around the room. Unfortunately, this picture does no justice to the actual quality of the display. The red buttons at the bottom left of the screen are used to turn on and off the various features of the board.

ATI acknowledges that it has to develop more realistic demos, reflective of real gaming situations, but what they showed was impressive enough.

In this image all of the features of the graphics subsystem are at full steam. The text in the top left hand corner of the screen says: PS 1.4 Cubic Environment Diffuse Light and Tinted Refraction

In case you were wondering what the image above was - it's a stained glass window. The background image comes through the stained glass; there are four light source, one white, three colored, rotating around the object and room simultaneously; the glass panels and leading is bump mapped for extra effect.