Technical Demo Overview

SmartShader™ 2.1
Is the second generation of cinematic shader technology from ATI, allowing users to experience complex, movie-quality effects in next-generation 3D games and applications. Key features include:
• Full support for programmable vertex and pixel shaders in hardware
• 2.0 Vertex Shaders support vertex programs up to 65,280 instructions with flow control (loops, branches & subroutines)
• 2.0 Pixel Shaders support up to 16 textures per rendering pass with gamma correction
• New F-buffer technology supports fragment shader programs of unlimited length
• High dimension floating point textures
• 128-bit, 64-bit & 32-bit per pixel floating point color formats
• Multiple render targets
• Shadow volume rendering acceleration
• Complete feature set also supported in OpenGL ® via extensions

The included demo applications highlight some features of ATI's SMARTSHADER technology. ATI's SMARTSHADER technology includes advanced programmable Vertex and Pixel shaders. The demo apps require the newest versions of OpenGL found in the Tiger (10.4.6+) releases of Mac OS X.

Vertex and Pixel shaders are part of a new paradigm shift in graphics technology which allow developers to have unprecedented control of how every pixel on the screen looks. Instead of being limited to the fixed functionality of the hardware, developers can now send small programs to the GPU which completely alter its behavior. With this flexibility, shader capable hardware can provide effects which were either too computationally expensive or impossible to previously perform in real time. The RADEON X800XT allows the developer to expose dramatic lighting effects, soft shadows, realistic cloth movement, reflective/refractive water with waves, and dynamic environmental effects such as waving grass or even the movement of leaves in a tree. These are just a small subset of what is now possible using the newest ATI RADEON technologies. As developers start taking advantage of shaders, you'll see computer generated imagery rise to the next level of realism.

For more information on SMARTSHADER and other ATI technologies, please see the ATI Web site and ATI Developer Relations pages.

Demo Launching Instructions

Drag the ATI Subsurface demo to your local disk from the mounted image.

Double-click the copied "ATI Subsurface Demo" file to launch.

Simple Instructions: Press ESC key to view on-screen menu. Select from the on-screen menu using the cursor keys, press RETURN to select. Command-Q to exit.