Hello mark!

05 Sep 04 13:44, mark lewis wrote to Mike Tripp:

 ml> so tell us, does the new version have the capability of running on
 ml> several computers tied together over a network acting as one?

Sounds interesting, but I've never heard of splitting it across multiple
systems.  Coulda been something that was hacked together after id released
the 1.0 source once 2.0 was commercially available.  Probably would've had
to have come from a university environment to expend the time and resources
required, though.  I know this was definitely done to POVRay and a
few of the other rendering programs and is common in the render-farms used
by Pixar, etc...but we're talking batch jobs, not real-time.

However, it wouldn't be much of a stretch to get this working on one
machine. Nvidia is applying the SLI approach absorbed from 3dfx/Voodoo days
to gang-render across multiple GPUs in the new PCIe version of their
top-dawg card (6890?).  All I've read about is distributing portions of
each frame to separate cards and that the load can be distributed
asymetrically if the cards have varying performance levels.  But since
almost all high-end ATI and Nvidia cards can manage 2 displays, it's
conceivable that 2 cards with 2 displays each could accomplish what you're
talking about...if frame rates are high enough to afford halving.

 ml> the one thing that i wish was able to be done with the above was to
 ml> toss a grenade behind you or to even just point your pistol or such to
 ml> the rear or side without having to turn your body...

That would be cool, too...and require some extra UI considerations for
"shoot-right", "shoot-back", etc.  Of course, if you're
fast enough, you can end up with grenades going off behind you
now.

.\\ike

--- GoldED 2.50+