Quote:
Originally posted by Humus:
SlartyB is partly correct and partly incorrect. Some features are handled in software if there's no hardware to back it up, but that's just features that are somewhat "realistic" to implement in software. If features for example is missing in the rasterisation process (say that it misses DOT3 bumpmapping for example) it would mean that the rasterisation pipeline in the hardware cannot do anything, the software rasteriser takes over completely. So, in such cases there is instead a way in DirectX to ask whether the hardware supports a specific feature or not. If it doesn't, well, then it's up to the application to either find another way to do it, disable the function completely or just tell the user that it cannot run since the hardware doesn't support the needed function.
Doom3 is most likely going to be an OpenGL game as all other id games. That means that Doom3 will look for OpenGL extensions for the shaders (GL_NV_texture_shader and GL_NV_vertex_program). I highly doubt that they will completely drop support for legacy hardware, so if those extensions isn't present, it'll need to look at other extensions and do the effects as good as it can. It'll simply mean that other cards will be missing some effects. I think it's a safe bet to say that Doom3 will at least run on GF1 and higher, the performance is though another question.
Thanks Humus. Hey! I was almost right