Unigine Heaven Linux Release Pushed Back

[numasan]

This was not because Unigine Corp is liking the Linux platform any less, but because none of the Linux
graphics drivers could simply handle the complexities of this technology demo and rendering its OpenGL 3.2 implementation correctly.

None of the Linux drivers? Not even Nvidia's? Can't Unigine Corp do like iD with Rage (whenever that is..) and release for them first? (Not trying to troll, honestly!)

[Melcar]

I think the article refers to Tessellation.

[deeceefar2]

All this driver release is really holding back is tesellation support in linux. All the other work in the engine goes on without it. So while this could be a bit frustrating if someone was ready to release a game with tesellation support in linux. For the most part you are seeing a driver catching up to a cutting edge feature in a game engine where most games are still heavily in development. When someone is ready to release a game based of the engine I have no doubt the tesellation support will be there. Surely ATI will have got the driver up to par by then.

The graphics in this engine are cutting edge and beautiful just check out their developer blog if you doubt. They are implementing physics for things that most games currently just fake.

[smitty3268]

None of the Linux drivers? Not even Nvidia's? Can't Unigine Corp do like iD with Rage (whenever that is..) and release for them first? (Not trying to troll, honestly!)

AFAIK, the only issue with fglrx right now is the tesselation extension, and obviously nvidia can't do any better because they don't have hardware to even support it.

Sure, Unigine could go ahead and release what they have without tesselation enabled, but I think their view is that at that point you might as well just be running the Tropics demo, since tesselation is the key new feature that Heaven really focuses on.

[Michael]

There are a few other bugs too besides the tessellation problem, but those should be addressed with 9.12 though there still may be one or two other rendering defects I haven't checked to see if those were resolved in the 9.12 branch or not. But yes, tessellation support is the big one.

[Kano]

They could release it anyway when it works with Nvidia, maybe Fermi test cards could work with Tesselation too.

[deeceefar2]

They could release it anyway when it works with Nvidia, maybe Fermi test cards could work with Tesselation too.

Nvidia is already testing out fermi cards with Unigine Heaven in windows. I don't know about linux, but I would assume the same is true. I'm sure ATI and NVidia have the most up to date code Unigine has available to test hardware.

The tesellation is certainly the high point of the demo. The roof tiles, the stone walkway, the window frames, and the dragon look amazing. The lighting looks great on them as well. You can tell that they are actual geometry because the specular lighting and shadows that show up after they are tesellated highlight that fact.

It is interesting how tesellation bridges the gap in previous realtime rendering that occured when the camera would get real close to objects that had fake geometry. Things would perform grest and look great from far away; however, when you got close to the geometry the tricks became obvious. Rendering both far away and close geometry would be too much for the hardware. Now this provides a way to have an additional level of detail when you are close enough to see the flaws in the rendering. This just adds another level of realism to games. This is the feature that will set PC games apart from console for the next few years until a new generation of consoles emerge (if game companies target this high end feature).

[indezign]

Nvidia is already testing out fermi cards with Unigine Heaven in windows. I don't know about linux, but I would assume the same is true. I'm sure ATI and NVidia have the most up to date code Unigine has available to test hardware.

The tesellation is certainly the high point of the demo. The roof tiles, the stone walkway, the window frames, and the dragon look amazing. The lighting looks great on them as well. You can tell that they are actual geometry because the specular lighting and shadows that show up after they are tesellated highlight that fact.

Hmm, tesellation has been out for quite some time and game consoles
like the Xbox 360 are capable of this feature. A lot of technology
like tesellation has been around for quite some time, like 10-15 years, but not part of the CORE API feature set.

[monraaf]

Am I the only one who doesn't like the demo? It all looks very exaggerated to me. Almost as if they thought, now here's a cool feature lets abuse it to the max.

[BlackStar]

Am I the only one who doesn't like the demo? It all looks very exaggerated to me. Almost as if they thought, now here's a cool feature lets abuse it to the max.

Nope, you are not the only one.

The tessellation effect is indeed overwhelming (you cannot walk on a stone path with stones jutting out like this), but I guess that's necessary for the wow factor. This is similar to older effects like relief/parallax mapping, per-pixel lighting (normal/bump mapping) or even lens flares when they were first introduced. Once the novelty wears off, we'll see much more convincing implementations.