War is Over

[caffeinade]

VGPolyglot said:

caffeinade said:

The patent pretty much prevents Linux from shipping with support for a method of storing texture data in a GPU's RAM.
There are better methods that are soon to be adopted (and currently are being used) but this one that was patented 20 years ago was and still is very popular.
Along with MP3 (which recently had its patent expire, so it is free to use and stuff) this bring Linux much closer to breaking into the mainstream.

These two patents expiring are a big deal to people who care, but un-important to those who do not.

The stuff about ASTC is one of the newer methods of texture compression, and is quite similar to virtual texturing, or video compression techniques.
It represents a way for the Switch to help bridge the gap between it and the devices with more VRAM (PS4, XOne as they cannot support the standard due to using older hardware).

The fact that we now have a popular console that supports Vulkan, half floats and ASTC at a base unit level is both a big deal for Linux, and should give a bit of a kickstart to the next generation of console / PC titles.
The Switch is too weak to brute force problems, but it has a nice feature set that, when taken advantage of will help PC gamers , without harming the current console games.
Developers will need to make use of the features, and that does not harm current games because the Switch should be too weak to harm game design.

TL;DR
Patents expiring is a good thing.
Linux continues to get better day by day, but has a long way to go.
ASTC should help the Switch keep up (within reason) with the PS4 and XOne and improve PC ports.

Hope this helps.

Thanks. So, Microsoft has other patents that has forced other operating softwares to find different means of using anti-aliasing? I don't know if Linux will ever be widely adopted, considering the brand recognition of Windows and iOS. I've never even seen Linux myself.

We are talking about texture compression here, I am sure Microsoft has patents on AA that cause people headaches, but to my knowledge AA is not really an issue.
Personally I don't really care for AA anyway, and it is not really mission critical.
Especially when we are talking about text, for reasons I am sure I will eventually turn into its own thread.

Texture compression compatibility causes major issues when trying to, for say run Windows apps on a Linux machine.
S3TC is not a Microsoft patent, but the nature of the licensing restricts its use on Linux all the same.
Microsoft has been a big part of its success though, with the support found in / with DirectX.


Using ASTC Texture Compression for Game Assets

Data size will be referring to VRAM usage from here on out.
bpp = bits per pixel.
There are 8 bits per byte.
I will make the assumption that a gigapixel is one billion pixels from here on out.
And from here on out I will assume (for the sake of simplicity) that one billion pixels is equal to 1GB,
eight bytes per pixel as a baseline.

The left is uncompressed data at 2 to 3 GB per gigapixel.
The middle is S3TC (Microsoft's name for it anyway) using 1 GB per gigapixel.
The right is ATSC using 0.64 GB per gigapixel.

So in short ASTC uses less data than S3TC and looks better (less artifacting when comparing the given example).
It will not always be this biased towards ASTC, and there are different quality settings that could be used.

Apologies for anything I have gotten incorrect, and / or oversimplified.