After the PowerPoint presentation, we went over to one of the demo machines they had set up with a Voodoo5 5500 on a Pentium 733 with 128MB SDRAM. PT loaded up a "modified" version of Quake3 with Motion Blur added. The difference was apparent from the start. We could see a trail of an object behind it as it moved. Even the spinning rocket launcher had trailing. This was an impressive effect to say the least but I don't think that I'd want to play competitively in a deathmatch with 25 people who have trailing echoes. Although it is a great effect that would look cool when I demo Quake for people, the effect was too apparent because there was huge residual echoes in places that it shouldn't be that huge (such as when a rocket is spinning before it is picked up). If you still don't have any idea what I am talking about (it is hard to describe), you should go to a track meet with a camera, stand at the side of the finish line and take a picture just as a sprinter is passing you, you WILL see a motion blur.

What is depth of field you ask? It's another one of this cinema style effects integrated into the T-Buffer. The easy way to describe it is this. Hold up a paperclip 4 in. from your eyes. The paperclip will be very sharp when you're concentrating on it and everything behind it will be blurry. Now, pay attention to the back of the clip and ignore the paperclip, now the clip is blurry and the background is sharp. That is what 3dfx is trying to do so game developers can better implement focusing on their characters, drawing people deeper into the game. Some instances where this can be used is when a character is looking at a helicopter in the distance, everything in the foreground could be blurred out and the focus would be turned to the helicopter. This in turn will make people focus on the helicopter instead of everything else. For an example, we were shown a scene from "A Bug's Life" where an ant was on a leaf in the foreground and everything else in the background was blurred out.

Most of today's games use shadows. Shadows can be used to show off the lighting schemes in most games and can also be used to create depth to characters and objects. Bus sadly, most of the shadows programmed into the games are unrealistic and they plainly suck.

In most games, a shadow is created this way. 1) A copy of the figure to be shadowed is made. 2) The copy is blackened. 3) The black copy of the figure is rotated and placed in a spot where a shadow would be. The bad thing about this is the shadow is usually the same size as the figure that's projecting the shadow (never notice these things until someone points them out, do you?) and it's not really realistically blurred.

3dfx has gone out of their way to create an effect that generated realistic shadows. When shown a paperclip shadow on a red background using normal methods, we were surprised (when Brian pointed it out) when the shadow was actually a duplicate of the clip that was darkened. But when we were shown images with Soft Shadow applied, we were amazed at the realistic quality of the shadows. They were perfect, just as they would look in real life, with sizes varying and intensity of the coloration of the shadows also varying. What was really impressive was how they matched the shadows up with the source of light so evenly.