AMD’s Developer Central has been updated with a pair of new demos showcasing some of what’s possible in DirectX11 with the new Radeon HD5800 cards. First is the “Mecha Demo”:
The Mecha demo shows the results of a new approach to rendering semi-transparent objects without pre-sorting, known as order-independent transparency (OIT). It is made possible by the ATI Radeon™ HD 5800 Series of graphics processors and the new features of Microsoft® DirectX® 11 technology. Blending is an order-dependent operation that requires sorting objects before rendering them. Atomic operations and append buffers make it possible to construct per-pixel fragment lists and sort them on the GPU. The results are a significant increase in speed and accuracy over those possible with traditional techniques.
Second is the “Ladybug Demo”:
The Ladybug demo shows the results of a new approach to simulating lens-accurate depth-of-field effects based on real-world parameters of focal length and focus distance. This technique is made possible by the ATI Radeon™ HD 5800 Series of graphics processors and the Microsoft® DirectX® 11 and Direct Compute 11 technologies. Depth-of-field is used in feature films by cinematographers to subtly guide a viewer’s attention through a shot or to heighten the emotion of a scene. This technique finally provides developers with a way to achieve the same effects and bring new levels of cinematic realism to their games. This approach is enabled by features such as atomic operations and shared memory.
If you’ve got the necessary hardware & software, hit their website for the EXE’s to see for yourself. Otherwise, hit their website to download the H264 HD movies showing what you’re missing.
