Doom in Flash

You have no idea what WARP is for.

1) Provide a reference implementation of Direct3D. If your code looks fine in WARP but awful on a video card, it's the fault of the drivers, not your code.

2) Allow Aero to run on DX10 instead of DX9. WARP is already faster than some integrated solutions and will only continue to pull ahead as CPU speed increases. This would be very beneficial for laptops.

3) Possibly integrate with generalized graphics hardware like Larrabee. Larrabee will already have to do something similar to emulate a "normal" graphics card; this can only make things easier.

And also, a "Doom source port using WARP" doesn't make sense. Any program written to use DirectX 10 can run on WARP.

On the converse, I think I got it perfectly.

What does a modern Direct 3D game do if no "compatible hardware" is found? It refuses to run, crashes with an error, or at best, reverts to a software renderer. WARP replaces the need to write said software renderer from scratch. From the apps point of view, the fallback to the emulated "hardware renderer" should be transparent, and needless to say, it avoids a lot of coding fuss.

My point is that it probably won't be able to compete with a custom written, optimized software renderer like those found in GZDoom or older titles.

It may look pixel-perfect identical to an actual 3D card's output though without any programmer trouble, if that's the point, but it's not really a very good idea to use it as an automatic fallback option.

As you said, its use is much like a compatibility bridge, but I'll add that it has little practical value except for test purposes, or in the few occasions where a crappy's videocard "fake DirectX" drivers actually perform worse than WARP + frame buffering.

Heh, I hope we won't be seeing "software VGA accelerators" any soon built on the assumption that WARP will make it all nice and easy...

I don't know how you can compare ZDoom's renderer to a DX10 title. It would probably be playable using WARP if you dialed the graphics down to that level.

The primary focus of WARP is clearly not games anyway. There's a lot of programs where the API would be nice to use but the speed is not that important - photo apps like Picasa, visualization tools, etc. Vista, OS X, and Linux (Beryl) all use 3D APIs for things other than games.

Point taken.

My fear is that development of optimized software renderers, where their use would have made sense, will grind to a halt because of WARP. Also, I'm afraid that the market will be flooded with substandard graphic cards that will tout "full DirectX 10.x compatibility" or similar buzzwords, yet will rely partially or totally on software emulation. I hope I'm proven wrong, though.

There was Swiftshader, freely available until Transgaming assimilated them

Maes said:

My fear is that development of optimized software renderers, where their use would have made sense, will grind to a halt because of WARP. Also, I'm afraid that the market will be flooded with substandard graphic cards that will tout "full DirectX 10.x compatibility" or similar buzzwords, yet will rely partially or totally on software emulation. I hope I'm proven wrong, though.

People still right software renderers in 3D games? Seriously? Name a modern game that has one (I'm genuinely curious).

david_a said:

People still right software renderers in 3D games? Seriously? Name a modern game that has one (I'm genuinely curious).

No modern commercial game, that's for sure (think of something of the magnitude of Crysis), but budget, indie, shareware and freeware titles who want to include broader compatibility may be tempted to let it all on WARP. After all, you only have to code once....

david_a said:

Vista, OS X, and Linux (Beryl) all use 3D APIs for things other than games.

Beryl? Welcome to 2008.

does this flash port have source code?

edit: found the code, woo