PC Graphics Beyond XBOX - NVIDIA Introduces GeForce4

Screenshots

As usual, NVIDIA introduces its new products with impressive technology demos. The following shows some screenshots from the CODECULT 3D engine.

Codecult CODECREATURES Demo

Codecult comes from German developers, under the aegis of Phenomenia. For the launch of the GeForce4, they present a demo that takes advantage of the capabilites of modern graphics cards.

The demo runs best with 128 MB cards, since 64 MB boards have to rely on the AGP. We asked the developers for their opinion on the new GeForce4.

THG: What do you think of the Vertex Shaders in general and the double Vertex Shaders of the GeForce4?

Kurt Pelzer, Senior Programmer: In principle, anything is useful which increases performance. Programmable Vertex Shaders in particular are a must for the future, and as no modifications to the existing code are required to support the performance advantage of the second VS, it is an ideal extension of the available architecture for any user.

THG: What's your view on NVIDIA's leaving out the (ATI) Pixel Shader of version 1.4?

Stefan Herget - Managing Director of Codecult: Thanks to its extremely modular and flexible architecture, the CODECREATURES engine is arbitrarily expandable and supports PS 1.4.

The game developer can implement special PS effects, therefore it depends on his decision whether version 1.4 or only 1.1 or 1.3 is supported. The library of prefabricated Shader effects provided by us will first be optimized for the common hardware base, and will thus use version 1.1 or 1.3, although the engine already supports 1.4. We will later extend our effect library directly for version 2.0.