| Viper1 said: It seems that some of that is programmable just not in the same sense as Direct3D shaders are. I called them programmable shaders earlier as they were called that by a developer though I now believe he meant it in the context of the Pica 200's API allowing some programmability in there. This means they can be both quickly implemented and flexible for those that want to push them further. |
Direct3D is an API that has a set of libaries and instructions that you can use with or without programmable pipelines, think of it as kind of a popular middleware like UE3 in a sense(more direct would be OpenGL.) The difference is the flexibility really, on a fixed pipeline, it's an entirely different math game you are playing and is more restrictive in the long run, which is really not something I'd worry about on a handheld since the viewing area is so limited anyways. You can do custom shaders on even the TEV as well, they just often come out not as efficient since you are making it do a lot of extra work that it wouldn't have otherwise have to do vs a matured programmable pipeline code or a set of instructions that does a similar task in much shorter paths already embedded in the hardware itself.
