The Tree, The Boat, and Wanda

No rehashing

By now you've already been flooded with pictures of the Porsche, the true reflections in the lug nuts, the two firetrucks, and the sphere in the courtyard. You've even learned about cube environment mapping. We saw that too at the conference, but there were a couple of things about the other demonstrations that are important to point out.

The tree

You have probably seen pictures of the tree before, and said "gee whiz," but the tree is something that struck me as truly revolutionary. You may have noticed by now that the current crop of 3D games tend to take place in barren landscapes, whether it's plains (Tribes, Mechwarrior 3), deserts (Motocross Madness), or icy tundra (Starsiege, Heavy Gear, etc). Notice how those types of settings are always bereft of thick foliage? You've never had the opportunity before to walk through a lush tropical rain forest or even a mountainous pine forest that looked true to life. With the GeForce 256, developers now have a polygon engine strong enough to render trees with tons of leaves, and more than just a few branches. This opens the door to military simulation games that take place in thick forests that actually look real, and adventure games which are more immersive and can take advantage of vast outdoor scenes.

Now that's a tree

8 fireflies buzz around the tree

The Boat

When people talk about the slick cube environment mapping feature in GeForce 256, many point to the sphere demonstration, and indeed it is impressive. Obviously it's going to enhance reflection features of cars in games like Need For Speed. That's all fine and dandy but personally I was more impressed with the boat demonstration. Yes, the surface of the water reflects the clouds in the sky; that's nothing new. However, NVIDIA went one up on that and actually had the bottom of the lake refract up through the surface of the water at the same time! Remember how excited everyone was with transparent water in first person shooters? Well now action gamers may have to take Snell's law into account and aim lower in the water to actually shoot and hit a submerged opponent. Again, this type of functionality more closely simulates reality and will hopefully open up imaginative game developers to yet another unconquered environment - shallow water. How about some special forces simulations where you're doing assault missions around a river?

The boat on the water

Wanda

Not the most attractive CG female we've ever seen but if nothing else, Wanda is curvy and ultra detailed. Everything about her right down to her eyelashes, is represented by tons of polygons! Even zooming in up close to the face didn't show any signs of jaggy edges. They briefly switched to wire frame to show that even the smallest facial features on Wanda were represented by hundreds of polygons. Again, this opens up developers to create more unique looking faces, and allow them to more accurately create subtle emotions in their characters. The still shots showed you Wanda's curviness (I can see the Tomb Raider fans drooling already), but didn't show you the subtle expression changes that Wanda can make with her face. This requires a lot of polygons, something that the GeForce 256 can give to developers. Game developers already hire real world architects to make levels - will doctors and anatomy majors (and their intricate knowledge of muscle structure) be next? Imagine playing Leisure Suit Larry 9 (is that what would be next) and having to use body language and facial expression to gauge your next pick up line.

Wanda