The astonishing graphics performance claimed for the new Sony Corp Playstation seems to have shaken up the PC graphics chip card industry. Nvidia Corp has unveiled details of transformation and lighting (T&L) capabilities that will be in included in forthcoming chips being developed by the company. In a rapid riposte to this, ATI Technologies Inc has given performance details of its forthcoming Rage Pro 128 graphics chip at WinHEC 99.
Nvidia claims that the T&L functionality in new chips will allow for significant change in physics, character behavior and image fidelity enabling PC graphics to advance to levels approaching the graphics quality of films like ‘Toy Story’ and ‘Bugs Life’. The claims are strikingly similar to those made for the graphics quality of the new Playstation. Nobody at Nvidia was available to comment on the technical details of how the T&L breakthrough was achieved. The system appears to work by modeling the behavior of natural elements and materials, which are then converted to a screen coordinate map. However, Nvidia are unable to say when chips or chipsets which incorporate T&L functionality will be available or how much they will cost.
Meanwhile, Maximum PC magazine reports that the ATI Rage chip will run at 125MHz and use new graphics filtering and texturing techniques. The first chips are expected in July.
