3DMark 06’s SM 3.0/HDR Test

Shader Model 3.0/High Dynamic Range Lighting Test: Game Test 3 Canyon Flight

Although the Canyon Flight test was seen in 3DMark 2005, the Canyon Flight test in 3DMark 06 is substantially different. Most obvious is the introduction of SM 3.0 technology. This test now incorporates high dynamic range rendering, and exceptionally smooth shadows. These new shadows are created using a 16 sample randomly rotated grid. This isn’t a technique currently used by developers due to the computational intensity, but it certainly produces a very nice looking set of shadows.

HDR rendering

Higher-quality textures

More HDR rendering

Look at those shadows!

Uh oh...

Run!

Why can't real games look like this?

3DMark 05 (left) vs 3DMark 06 (right)

3DMark 05 (left) vs 3DMark 06 (right)

3DMark 05 (left) vs 3DMark 06 (right)

The two HDR/SM3.0 graphics tests in 3DMark06 use a 16 sample kernel that is randomly rotated for each pixel. By using the 16 sample rotated kernel, we are able to produce very high quality smooth edges for the shadows. Point sampling is currently used both for hardware shadow mapping and R32F depth maps. One could argue that 16 samples is a bit on the high side, but then again, 3DMark06 is an ahead–looking benchmark and we strongly believe that in a year we will see games using up to 16 samples to get smooth shadow edges. To get super-smooth shadows we would need to up the sample count to 128 or possibly even higher, but no current hardware would get realistic performance numbers with such high sample counts and no game developer would do it, at least yet.