More clarification from Timothy Wilson about some of the technical aspects of graphics rendering:

Pixel Shaders are a little bit of code that runs per-pixel. They combine textures and may compute lighting. Vertex Shaders are a larger bit of code that runs per-vertex. A vertex shader can move vertices, in addition it may ‘shade’ them. This is not a requirement, as I have written vertex shaders that do no shading at all, but instead let the pixel shaders do the lighting calculation.

Vertex shading is primarily what we have now in current hardware, each vertex is “shaded”, and the values are interpolated across the polygon. Also known as Gouraud shading.

Per-Pixel shading just means each pixel is ‘shaded’ separately, ie the light calculation is computed in one-way-or-another for every pixel.

Just a lot of confusion as to whats-what. Many of the names are similar, and somewhat misnamed even.

In addition, he sent along an example of per-pixel shading, so you can see what he’s talking about. Hope you all read this carefully… there’ll be a test on Wednesday.

Matt Soell popped into our forum yesterday to clear up questions like “who is behind cortana.org?” and “when will www.bungie.com be updated?” (Read the whole thread for more nuggets – it starts here.) Where’s my Big Mac?

Okay, we’re seriously confused. We misinterpreted John Carswell’s comments a little bit, it seems… he wrote to point out the nVidia PR Director interview that MSXbox held this week. There were two quotes that stood out for me:

MSXbox: What is the difference between these 2; Per-Pixel Shading and Bump-mapping?

Derek: Bump-mapping is kind of a hack, for lack of a better term. Per-pixel shading and Vertex shading are more accurate ways of doing texture and coloring. No more helmet head, like in sports games, you always look in the back of the head and [the hair] stands still, but in real life hair bounces. It’ll give images personality, and it’ll give scenes more personality. It’ll make scenes more organic and give it more ambiance.

And then later on:

MSXbox: When are the developers going to get final Xbox development kits- we’ve heard around March?

Derek: That sounds about right.

(That second one was exciting because it means that the final card will probably be in the playable Xbox folks will get their hands on at E3.) Okay, I thought I had a handle on this per-pixel shading/bump-mapping thing, until we got a note from Timothy Wilson (warning – heavy on the geek-speak), which suggested that John was wrong when he said there was no bump-mapping in the Malice shots. NOW who do we believe?

John Carswell, from MSXbox.com, sends in an intriguing observation:

If you have taken a look at the Malice screen shots you might be interested in knowing there was no bump mapping used. What appears to be high quality bump mapping is in reality per-pixel lighting. Thought you might be interested because of Matts “per-pixel everything” comment.

Those Malice shots look fantastic. So we wanna know… what happens when you have per-pixel lighting AND bump mapping? Oops, we’re drooling again…

fAt1, from MPZ Halo, writes to point out that Upwire.com has a story about a playable Xbox at E3:

David Hufford, PR manager for the Xbox revealed that “E3 in May will be the real coming out party for Xbox,the machine will certainly be playable and you’ll be able to get your hands on lots of the games.”

fAt1 wants to know if we’re gonna see Halo running on that Xbox…

Thanks to Ph.D. who pointed out (on our forum) an editorial at Gamespy.com discussing the possible death of PC gaming at the hands of the Xbox, and consoles like it. Now, it has a few problems (as one of the arguments for the Xbox, it discusses the mod community, and how easy it will be to download new mods, created on a PC, for your Xbox game – if the thesis is correct, and PC gaming dies, who’s going to be making those mods?), but in general, it’s a decent read. And it has a gratuitous Halo screenshot, to boot. (An old one… but it’s one of three games mentioned by name.)

Apparently, in a thread over at Battleground: Halo, there was some speculation that a commercial involving Halo characters has been showing on TV. Yesterday, Matt Soell stepped in and squashed it:

No, there is no ad for Halo running on TV. Not even Californian TV. 😉

You can read the entire thread here. (Note: This doesn’t address the ‘Halo to be mentioned in an Xbox Superbowl commercial’ rumor floating around…)

Thanks to Chris Newhall, who sent in another Halo desktop pic for our Wallpapers page. Brings back the old days… Pax.

Thanks to David Bricker, who posted a snippet from the Bangkok (Thailand) Post over at the R.net forum. It does a decent job of summarizing the amazement with Halo, fear that Microsoft would crush Halo, and interest in the 3rd/1st person debate thathas manifested in the past year or so, all in one paragraph. While there’s really nothing new here, the source is interesting enough to warrant a mention. The next question is… where in heaven’s name did David get his hands on a copy of the Bangkok Post?

The Halo SETI Marines received a challenge last evening from the Overclockers UK team… and it looks like we’re not up to it. They’re crunching at a rate of almost 900 units/day, compared to the Marines’ 250 units/day. We’ll be dropping another slot, it seems, by week’s end. Got a few machines you can spare for the war effort?

Thanks to Dispatcher, who sent in a rather… odd piece of artwork for our Miscellaneous Art page. Check it out!

The Halo SETI Marines have a new top cruncher! For the first time in 17 weeks, DarthFlounder has been displaced at the peak spot… congratulations, Lacrymosa! Details can be found on the 14 day stats page.

“We actually modeled the black off of a Glock 9mm.” In anIGN Xbox interview J. Allard, Xbox General Manager, describes how the Xbox casing is made from left over German munitions. No wait I think I read that wrong. 😉

Bob which button did you press? MSXbox has put together a Xbox controller design spec image to help clarify what button does what. It’s the red one…no blue… wait it’s…

Thanks to gen for the heads-up on the R.net forum… Gamecenter interviewed Ed Fries, Vice President of Games Publishing, on Saturday at CES. The quote of interest:

Jason Ocampo: So what are the upcoming plans here? We’ve got Gamestock coming up, E3, GDCÂ…
Ed Fries: Yeah, for me at Gamestock I’ll be unveiling our first-party portfolio, which I’m really excited about.

First-party portfolio… that should include Halo, no? Gamestock comes up this March, and is press-only… but we’re betting there’ll be new Halo material to see before April rolls around.

Shadow writes to say that the new NAVCON design is complete. Stop by and take a look! Pax.

Okay, we’re not an Xbox site (thought we DO put the ‘X’ in ‘BO’…). This will be the last Xbox-related item today, we promise. However, some of you might be interested in the IRC chat that MSXBox hosted today concurrently with the CES keynote speech. There were at least 4 major players from Microsoft taking part in the chat… and while much of what was said was simple verbal back-slapping, there were a few nuggets. Warning – the log is 72K.

For those who want a good look at the Xbox, the official site now has a Flash Tour of the console. Check it out!

Dontcha just love it when the PR folks get a little ahead of the demonstrators? As I write this, I’m watching a live webcast from the Computer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas – the Xbox will be unveiled here this morning. However, on Microsoft’s web site, you can find this press release about the show… describing in detail what’s going to happen, even in parts of the keynote that haven’t been shown yet.

A highlight of Gates’ keynote address came when he revealed what Xbox will look like when it hits stores in fall 2001. Gates unveiled the Xbox console and controller and showed demos of two games being developed exclusively for Xbox: “Malice” by United Kingdom-based Argonaut Games PLC and “Munch’s Oddysee” by Oddworld Inhabitants Inc. and published by Microsoft. Gates later was joined on stage by professional wrestler The Rock to promote an Xbox wrestling game.

Well, at least this saves us the trouble of waiting to see if Halo will be demoed today… (Thanks to Christoph Schmidt for the press release heads-up.)

Not really Halo news… but Nathan Bitner has appeared in the news here quite a bit, so we figured it was worth a mention. As noted on the Marathon’s Story page, Gamesmania has an interview with Nathan up at their site, in which he discusses Island Four Software, his new company, and his philosophy of game development. Except for Gamesmania twice referring to the Marathon’s Story page as ‘the Marathon.org message board’ (with no correction from Nathan), it’s a fun read. What does Nathan want?

Oh, yeah, and most importantly, I want a cult following.

Are we helping here?