Comment by eska
3 days ago
His definition of software rendering is
In a software-rendered game, the CPU draws every pixel. There’s no 3D card involved: the game works out each frame in its own code and writes it straight to video memory
I think that’s the standard definition. If you mean that this style can be achieved with graphics hardware then that’s a different argument and why your first sentence is deemed contentious
> If you mean that this style can be achieved with graphics hardware
I really ought to have been more specific with my first sentence to ward off any hair-splitting.
The author claimed to love software rendering, but the examples given to highlight the supposed positives of software rendering can all be achieved on GPUs. If the author had instead highlighted the ability to easily debug and inspect the inner workings of the rasterisation pipeline with a software renderer, that might have been a much more relevant argument.
He says he likes the look, that's subjective and doesn't need arguments. You wanted to read another, technical article.
He likes the look of nearest neighbor texture sampling, not software rendering.
You can do nearest neighbor in hardware rendering and you can do bilinear in software rendering. Rendering mode and texture sampling are two totally different things.
6 replies →
But if you want to experience GLQuake that looks like software-rendered Quake, that's a simple settings change in your GPU driver, overriding the texture sampling mode. That's literally the only difference. I'm not sure the author is aware that it is a viable option to tweak the hardware rendering this way.
7 replies →
> the examples given to highlight the supposed positives of software rendering can all be achieved on GPUs.
Any look in older games, 2d or 3d, can be achieved on modern GPUs, so that seems like a vacuous thing to state.
Not necessarily. Someone unfamiliar with graphics might believe that there’s something about a CPU that a graphics card doesn’t have such that the look can’t be achieved. Certainly the author of this piece seems to believe that.
2 replies →
I agree with you and I think others aren't understanding your point. "Hardware rendering" can also be achieved by the CPU in "software". It will just not be realtime. Just fire up Blender and render scenes using the CPU, which is a standard option. You will see how amazing "software" rendering can be.
There's nothing special about the GPU besides doing certain kind of operations that are very useful for graphics (and AI, among other things) really efficiently. The distinction should never have been "software rendering" vs "hardware rendering", but "what CPU rendering could achieve when GPUs weren't widespread" versus "what GPU rendering has been able to achieve since they became available".
I like CPU rendering for the mere fact that it doesn't involve special GPU hardware. More of a challenge, more of a throwback to 80s/early 90s gaming.
1 reply →
What they meant was: "This aesthetic isn't exclusive to software rendering". I thought the rest of their comment made that pretty clear once you got past the first sentence.
I think the issue is that modern aliasing can be done without a GPU, so it's not that he loves software rendering, it's that he loves the style the constraints of the time imposed, and that style is not married to CPU-exclusive rendering.
Yes - but most of the rest of the article describes something different! (Which is what the post you're replying to explains)