Hardware brushes

[Dahut]

Is there somebody knowing exactly what is the new "hardware brush" concept, included in Warfare UT and U2?
Does it means something that the graphic card can cache in local memory for faster transformation?
If yes, does it means that it exist "software brush", uncachable in the graphic card?

[Fuzzpilz]

As far as I have understood, hardware brushes are brushes that are T&Led by the graphics card, which of course must support T&L.

[Snowshovelboy]

So will level designers be able to choose how they tesselate for cards without hardware T&L or will it be smart enough to do it itself or will it just not work on old cards?

[ChrisToth.hu]

I think it can be used with older cards but they cannot benefit from the new tech...

[tarquin]

I'm probably totally wrong, but I thought that a GeForce card handled all T&L itself anyway.
Unreal 2 sounds great anyway!

[Snowshovelboy]

Yea, it does, but if the video card doesn't support hardware t&l, the t&l is done before it gets to the video card, so by the time the stuff gets to the video card if you just keep rendering things the way you have always been it will be too late and there will be no t&l for the hardware to do because its been done already

if that made sense

[tarquin]

So when UT runs on a system with a GeForce, does the GeForce handle T&L, or doesn't UT support this (in which case the CPU handles it) ?

[Dahut]

The T&L handling is hardware coded in the GeForce, as well as in the Radeon. The software has to be written knowing that it can use such function. Upcoming Unreal Engine will be modified to look, when starting, if the card supports T&L, and spawn corresponding triangles fans and strips to the graphic card memory if it supports T&L, or keep the triangles in main memory if it does not. In that case, the number of supported triangles will be a lot lower, meaning that Unreal 2 maps will only be playable on T&Lable configurations. Maybe will the CD come with two map series, as now with two textures series, low res and high res.