"our target hardware is running literally none of those things". What is needed is to somehow translate DirectX to Vulkan, Windows to Linux, x86 to Arm64, and 4KB pages to 16KB pages.
oh my.
An Update on Apple M1/M2 GPU Drivers
121–130 of 291 posts
Re: An Update on Apple M1/M2 GPU Drivers
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
3D TVs failed before they existed as a product category. You cannot encode enough information through stereoscopy to create a convincing or "realistic" 3D effect. The conditions for making it work have always been fickle and as 6DOF VR/AR is proving, it was never enough to be convincing anyways. Encoding two slightly different versions of a video and layering them on top of each other is a dirty hack. It is not a hol…
Thank you. This guy gets it. Path tracing is the gold standard for computer graphics. It is a physically based rendering model that is based on how lighting actually works. There are degrees of path tracing of varying quality, but there is nothing else that is better from a visual quality and accuracy standpoint. Your modern AAA title does a massive amount of impressive hacks to get rasterization into the uncanny val…
This is all built on the, frankly, nonsensical assumption that photorealism is the, let alone a, primary goal.
Re: An Update on Apple M1/M2 GPU Drivers
#123> tessellator.cl is the most unhinged file of my career ...so far. The presenter is only 23 apparently. Maybe I'm speaking only for myself here, but I think career unhingedness does not go down over time as much as one might hope. In all seriousness, she does really impressive work, so when she says this 2,000 lines of C++ is inscrutable, that gives one pause. Glad it's working nonetheless.
I guess it's these two files? The original 2600+ lines of C++: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/asahi/mesa/-/blob/main/src/ga... The translated code: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/asahi/mesa/-/blob/main/src/as...
Honestly it doesn't look too bad
A lot of the size is just because the code deals with a lot of 3/4 dim stuff and also some things are a bit more verbose in code but translate to something short in assembly
Re: An Update on Apple M1/M2 GPU Drivers
#124Alyssa is amazing, I remember the first article about the GPU work, and then learning she was only 17 and poof mind blown. It's truly stunning that anyone could do what she did, let alone a teenager (yes I know, she's not a teenager anymore, passage of time, etc :D)
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Re: An Update on Apple M1/M2 GPU Drivers
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know, Hardware Unboxed recently did a review of 30-some games comparing the visuals with and without ray tracing, and the conclusion for the majority of them was that it wasn't worth it. There were only maybe half a dozen games where the ray tracing was an unambiguous improvement. So I think calling it "a bit of a gimmick" is accurate for many of the games that shipped in, even if not all of them.
Hmm I watched the video [1] and in the games where it had an unambiguous improvement, the improvement in reflection quality is extremely stark and noticeable. Anecdotally, when I was playing Black Myth Wukong recently, there were some shiny environments where full path tracing really made a huge difference. So I guess it's just a "gimmick" in that relatively few games properly take advantage of this currently, rather…
Using raytracing on a very recent, high end game that has been designed for raytracing has an extremely noticeable positive improvement on visual quality. Wukong is a perfect example.
Unfortunately most people’s experience with raytracing is turning it on for a game that was not designed for it, but it was added through a patch, which results in worse lighting. Why? Because the rasterized image includes baked-in global illumination using more light sources than whatever was hastily put together for the raytracing patch.
Re: An Update on Apple M1/M2 GPU Drivers
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you. This guy gets it. Path tracing is the gold standard for computer graphics. It is a physically based rendering model that is based on how lighting actually works. There are degrees of path tracing of varying quality, but there is nothing else that is better from a visual quality and accuracy standpoint. Your modern AAA title does a massive amount of impressive hacks to get rasterization into the uncanny val…
This is all built on the, frankly, nonsensical assumption that photorealism is the , let alone a , primary goal.
In most cases of high end / AAA game titles, it is. Not all, but certainly most.
Re: An Update on Apple M1/M2 GPU Drivers
#127I was going going to say she should work for Valve to help get Steam working on Linux on Macs, but it seems she already does? [1]
Re: An Update on Apple M1/M2 GPU Drivers
#128What I really respect is the dedication to completing support for the M1/M2. Too many projects get dropped the moment the next shiny ray-traced toy comes along.
I know this type of work can be challenging to say the least. My own dabble with Zig and Pinephone hardware drivers reminded me of some of the pain of poorly documented hardware, but what a reward when it works.
My own M1 was only purchased because of this project and Alyssa's efforts with OpenGL+ES. It only ever boots Asahi Linux. Thank-you very much for your efforts.
Re: An Update on Apple M1/M2 GPU Drivers
#129> tessellator.cl is the most unhinged file of my career ...so far. The presenter is only 23 apparently. Maybe I'm speaking only for myself here, but I think career unhingedness does not go down over time as much as one might hope. In all seriousness, she does really impressive work, so when she says this 2,000 lines of C++ is inscrutable, that gives one pause. Glad it's working nonetheless.
I didn't even know this until now. I looked at her resume and I can't grasp how she's been doing an undergraduate degree from 2019-2023, meaning that writing an entire GPU driver is the side project she made during her degree.
There’s a lot of free time when you’re in college.
Re: An Update on Apple M1/M2 GPU Drivers
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're looking at years of careful artist and engineer work to get something that looks almost as good as pathtraced visuals. The fact that it's so good without any raytracing is a credit to the developers. Replacing all that effort with raytracing and having one unified lighting system would be a _major_ time saver, and allows much more dynamic lighting than was previously possible. So yeah some current games don't…
> Sure fully pathtraced graphics might not be 100% usable currently, but the fact that they're even 70% usable is amazing! Aside from Cyberpunk 2077 and a handful of ancient games with NVIDIA-sponsored remakes, what even offers fully path traced lighting as an option? The way it went for CP2077 makes your "70% usable" claim seem like quite an exaggeration: performance is only good if you have a current-generation GPU…
Alan Wake 2 has had path tracing from day 1, and it looks excellent with (and without) it.