Is he referring to AMD Mantle ? As Mantle has been said to give full control to the developers.

 

 

http://developer.x-plane.com/2014/01/a-new-particle-system-is-in-the-roadmap/

 

If he is then the GCN card holders may get full benefits.

What's a particle system?

What's a particle system?

 

 

LOL I am asking you what is a particle system ?  

Particles are behind most of the pretty effects in modern games.

 

In the context of x-plane:

 

Wing tip vortices.

Smoke - fire and sky writing effects.

Fire and fire bombing effects.

Rain.

Fire hoses on airport ground equipment.

 

 

(Has nothing to do with AMD Mantle)

 

I saw this posted last night and it seems like there are some interesting possibilities. It would definitely be cool to see rain, snow, and dust storms based on the technology.

Particles are behind most of the pretty effects in modern games.

 

In the context of x-plane:

 

Wing tip vortices.

Smoke - fire and sky writing effects.

Fire and fire bombing effects.

Rain.

Fire hoses on airport ground equipment.

 

 

(Has nothing to do with AMD Mantle)

 

 

 

 

Haha I thought that would possibly be Mantle .

I saw this posted last night and it seems like there are some interesting possibilities. It would definitely be cool to see rain, snow, and dust storms based on the technology.

 

 

you bet.

I don't think you're likely to see rain snow and dust storms.

 

Early discussions indicate that the particle generators will be attached to OBJ8 files.

 

Make the effects "global" would require some interesting OBJ8 hacks.

(A huge invisible building or aircraft attachment, for example...)

 

 

Rain on a windscreen is much more localised and easily maps to the "Attached to OBJ8" targets of early discussions.

 

Time will tell, Artists have a way of pulling off all sorts of crazy tricks, which is why you should never try and box them in.

I was wondering if these would be using internal code, or using things like the various cards Physx or Havok engines. Maybe even for things like collision detection......

 

Tesselation is almost surely a goal if they are heading this way.......

Finally, we can have furred aircrafts!

 

 

I was wondering if these would be using internal code, or using things like the various cards Physx or Havok engines. Maybe even for things like collision detection......

 

Tesselation is almost surely a goal if they are heading this way.......

 

I'm not sure about Havok but the Bullet Physics Lib has some annoying guidelines.

 

Playground should be no more than 10km^3. (Absurdly small in flight sim terms.)

 

Smallest object should be the size of a billiard ball. (Weird for a lib called "bullet physics")

 

 

I expect it to be custom internal code. ( I don't work for Laminar. )

Haha I thought that would possibly be Mantle .

Well, you can use these effects in mantle too, but this is really a standard method that is easily programmed in DirectX or OpenGL. In fact mantle doesn't really give you so many new methodsMantle is mainly usefull if you have programmed a game for the PS4 or X-Box One and want to port it to the PC. Then you might find it usefull to directly use the full capabilities on a few selected graphics cards.

 

Mantle doesn't really give you totally new capabilities, insteade you can determine how many and whcih units shall solve a certain problem.

DirectX and OpenGL have a totally opposite idea. You don't have to think about the Hardware of the user. It only offers functions and you get the results. It will either use the capabilities of the graphics card, or the CPU.

I'm pretty excited at least about the potential of this. Particles can masquerade as an awful lot of things, including smoke, fire, water, dust, fog, debris, snow, rain, explosions, contrails, Galaxy's, nebulae...... all affected by various forces like wind, gravity, object movement, collisions........ Its pretty much limited only by your imagination and the computational resources of the system.