Many games, even on current "next-gen" hardware, render particles using camera facing quads - veteran coder Krazanowski (Tomb Raider: Anniversary) suggests a neat alternative solution using pixel shaders and a little bit of math.
Though a bit on the technical side, I hope we can see some of these sorts of effects creep into more games soon. So long as they don't slow them down too much anyway, since laying on the pixel shaders can weigh on the GPU pretty quickly.
the volumetric particles (in simple terms) is a "cloud" of small pointers, polygons or dots (whatever you want to call it guys) but this time the use of shaders (the calculated reflected light on texture) will be used as calculated dots with light volume (color) effect, something that consumes a lot of cycles but with the new GPUs it will be possible to optimize a new kind of shader.
for graphics to be used in all full aspecs and not just for hi-rez photo-realistic textures. As particles effects my big is on LostPlanet, the explosions in that game looks awesomely smoked, and the next one will be KillZone2 hopefuly.
looking at the stuff from stalker clear sky the smoke doesn't look near as impressive. The smoke actually reacts to movement making proper trails and vacuums in clear sky, it's just amazing.
Though a bit on the technical side, I hope we can see some of these sorts of effects creep into more games soon. So long as they don't slow them down too much anyway, since laying on the pixel shaders can weigh on the GPU pretty quickly.
The RSX is very strong at pixel shading, so shouldn't be a problem.
for graphics to be used in all full aspecs and not just for hi-rez photo-realistic textures. As particles effects my big is on LostPlanet, the explosions in that game looks awesomely smoked, and the next one will be KillZone2 hopefuly.
The smoke monster is eating the 8 ball :S
looking at the stuff from stalker clear sky the smoke doesn't look near as impressive. The smoke actually reacts to movement making proper trails and vacuums in clear sky, it's just amazing.