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Adding "update" template because (despite recent changes) the article still seems to describe a historical state of graphics technology (e.g. "start to show some resemblance with", no mention of compute shaders or hardware ray tracing), which may mislead readers. |
→Real-time software rendering: Fix date of cited interview, which was off by 4 years |
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But even for high-end graphics, the 'art' of software rendering hasn't completely died out. While early graphics cards were much faster than software renderers and originally had better quality and more features, it restricted the developer to 'fixed-function' pixel processing. Quickly there came a need for diversification of the looks of games. Software rendering has no restrictions because an arbitrary program is executed. So graphics cards reintroduced this programmability, by executing small programs per [[vertex (geometry)|vertex]] and per [[pixel]]/[[fragment (computer graphics)|fragment]], also known as [[shaders]]. Shader languages, such as [[High Level Shader Language]] (HLSL) for DirectX or the [[OpenGL Shading Language]] (GLSL), are [[C (programming language)|C]]-like programming languages for shaders and start to show some resemblance with (arbitrary function) software rendering.
Since the adoption of graphics hardware as the primary means for real-time rendering, CPU performance has grown steadily as ever. This allowed for new software rendering technologies to emerge. Although largely overshadowed by the performance of hardware rendering, some modern real-time software renderers manage to combine a broad feature set and reasonable performance (for a software renderer), by making use of specialized [[dynamic compilation]] and advanced instruction set extensions like [[Streaming SIMD Extensions|SSE]]. Although nowadays the dominance of hardware rendering over software rendering is undisputed because of unparalleled performance, features, and continuing innovation, some believe that CPUs and [[GPU]]s will converge one way or another and the line between software and hardware rendering will fade.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Valich|first=Theo|date=
===Software fallback===
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