Hello, I have been doing a pretty long reseaech about pixel shader-compatible games and the earliest examples I know of are Ballistics and AquaNox, both released in November 2001.
Are there any other games as well that take advantage of Geforce 3 shader features? Thank you in advance!
The Elder Scrolls III ?
there was dronez, might be a record for the most extensive and technical settings menu in a game: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce3 … nce,311-12.html
early on there was also a geforce 3 version of giants citizen kabuto that came bundled with some cards, apparently a fanmade patch exists based on that. there are two benchmarks mentioned in the toms article, 3dmark2001 and vulpine glmark.
other than that, you can look through DX8 game lists, though of course most of the earlier games there won't look any different on geforce 3. i suspect you really have to go into 2003 to widely see a difference in terms of effects, things like NFSU come to mind.
November 2001 had Comanche 4. It used it for water reflections. Comanche's had a long legacy on water reflections since 93, so it'd better use it for that.
Aquanox feels more like a fillrate overdraw choke game than a pixelshader game, not changed much since its earlier 2001 appearance. It's had a lot of graphics hype behind it since (despite technically being behind the curve with the olden justkeepblending techniques).
douglar wrote on 2024-07-14, 17:22:The Elder Scrolls III ?
I read that it uses shaders for its rendered water, and in that regard it aged decently enough.
leileilol wrote on 2024-07-14, 17:43:November 2001 had Comanche 4. It used it for water reflections. Comanche's had a long legacy on water reflections since 93, so it'd better use it for that.
Aquanox feels more like a fillrate overdraw choke game than a pixelshader game, not changed much since its earlier 2001 appearance. It's had a lot of graphics hype behind it since (despite technically being behind the curve with the olden justkeepblending techniques).
I tested Comanche 4 recently, I'm impressed the CD version ran flawlessly in Windows 11. What do you think of Ballistics shaders? I could only watch a gameplay of it and it is even more simplistic than AquaNox, visually and gameplay-wise.
Yeah, Morrowind was the showcase for pixel shader water back in 2002. Many gaming magazines of that time posted comparison screenshots similar to this:
It was their way of saying "you need to upgrade" as programmable shaders would soon become the norm.
Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-07-14, 18:00:Yeah, Morrowind was the showcase for pixel shader water back in 2002. Many gaming magazines of that time posted comparison scree […]
Yeah, Morrowind was the showcase for pixel shader water back in 2002. Many gaming magazines of that time posted comparison screenshots similar to this:
It was their way of saying "you need to upgrade" as programmable shaders would soon become the norm.
Those shaders look fantastic, had you cropped the image to only show the water I would have believed the screenshot is from Half-Life 2.
For reference, I deliberately took that screenshot using the retail CD version of Morrowind, without any patches applied. Just to showcase that these visuals were available when the game initially launched, which was in May of 2002.
Seeing comparison pics like that made many gamers upgrade back in the day, myself included.
the best early use of the technology in terms of offering a complete package was arguably not even a PC game, but halo on the original xbox. i think morrowind can't compare and to me personally always had a depressing look to it.
otherwise, the thread just shows how thin pixel shader support was at first on the PC, with a lot of it feeling a bit tacked on, no doubt owing to the fact that the cards launched at a higher price than what an entire xbox would cost at launch. i think in hindsight you could easily sit out 2002 on a dx7-class card, particularily one with 64 megabytes, and really not miss out on much.
auron wrote on 2024-07-14, 19:20:the best early use of the technology in terms of offering a complete package was arguably not even a PC game, but halo on the original xbox. i think morrowind can't compare and to me personally always had a depressing look to it.
otherwise, the thread just shows how thin pixel shader support was at first on the PC, with a lot of it feeling a bit tacked on, no doubt owing to the fact that the cards launched at a higher price than what an entire xbox would cost at launch. i think in hindsight you could easily sit out 2002 on a dx7-class card, particularily one with 64 megabytes, and really not miss out on much.
It was thin indeed, although it surprises how in only two years since the release of the Geforce 3 it began to become a requirement for some games to support pixel shading-capable GPUs.
In late 2003 we already had Silent Hill 3, DX Invisible War and Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, all of these could not work properly with PCs sporting a Geforce 2 or similar GPUs, and in 2005 many, if not most of the big releases required a Geforce 3 / Geforce 4+ card or equivalent ATI card (I can count at least a dozen of titles).
auron wrote on 2024-07-14, 19:20:the best early use of the technology in terms of offering a complete package was arguably not even a PC game, but halo on the original xbox.
Halo was definitively ahead of its time. That kind of shader effect and bump mapping use was never before seen on PC or console. The end result was extremely impressive for a late 2001 release.
For anyone who hasn't experienced the OG Xbox version of Halo (not the later remasters) I highly recommend watching this video by Digital Foundry where they discuss the tech in-depth.
AquaNox wrote on 2024-07-14, 19:39:It was thin indeed, although it surprises how in only two years since the release of the Geforce 3 it began to become a requirement for some games to support pixel shading-capable GPUs.
In late 2003 we already had Silent Hill 3, DX Invisible War and Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, all of these could not work properly with PCs sporting a Geforce 2 or similar GPUs, and in 2005 many, if not most of the big releases required a Geforce 3 / Geforce 4+ card or equivalent ATI card (I can count at least a dozen of titles).
yeah, in 2003 you definitely needed a DX8-class GPU to play everything. but i'd say that CPU requirements were rising much steeper than GPU requirements in 2001-2002, and developers seemed to focus on other things than using pixel shaders. ut2003 was a good example, being a late 2002 game with DX7-class visuals, but a very harsh CPU requirement for the time.
one question that never seems to be asked is, how much did the geforce 4 ti's directx 8.0a support matter in practice? i know there is a big title where the radeon 8500's 8.1 support mattered - battlefield 2, which won't run on geforce 4 ti. never really understood that, because the game is not that much of a graphical leap over its predecessors.
