Sorry if I helped derail the thread a little, celticlonewolf.

The 360, from my perspective, has a few more hurdles (fairly big ones) to overcome before 3D gaming can become reality on it, though.  I would love for both HD consoles to leap forward, but I had to mention that the truth is that the PS3 is a lot better suited for this type of tech.  Its cool to see that MS is doing what they can, though.

@Groucho I agree, I'm glad that both the HD consoles are making this push. I just got defensive because a topic came up that had nothing to do with the PS3, and people are already slandering Sony >_> The company that had 3D games up and running already e_E

Can we get a link to the article about the 360 having a hard time rendering to multiple targets? Any post processing using pixel shaders is rendering to different targets.

Ok Jagged, this has absolutely nothing to do with the OP, but your avatar friggin rocks >_>

awesome news, cant wait too see this is action.

http://blogs.msdn.com/shawnhar/archive/2007/11/21/rendertarget-changes-in-xna-game-studio-2-0.aspx

It's actually the eDRAM of the GPU that's the issue.  It gets clobbered every time the rendertarget is switched.  Multiple targets is possible on the X360, but it doesn't look like its decently fast, due to this issue.  Lots of memory copying to support the feature, it seems.

Shawn Hargreaves, the MS engineer whose MSDN blog this is says it clearly enough: "Deferred rendering is actually quite an awkward fit for the 360, because of the limited size but very fast EDRAM hardware design. The technique as a whole may work ok, but I think that light volumes idea is probably more work than it is worth."

Deferred Rendering is great for fancy lighting, and some fancy lighting/shading techniques, when it comes to speed.  The X360's flexible GPU allows it to largely get around this issue, if the game is engineered well, I imagine, but it may not look quite as good as an engine using deferred rendering -- depends on how much of a graphics fanatic you are, I suppose.  Game reviewers go crazy for it, but the general public may only be able to tell the difference in a subtle "I dunno, it just looks better" kinda way.

And some people say Blu-Ray is irrelevant to PS3.

3D is irrelevant.

Have fun paying more for the add-on.

Hmm...interesting.  That is only in regards to one method(deffered rendering) of calculating lots and lots of light sources more simply than other methods.  It looks like the depth information needed for the process takes up a good bit more than the 10mb of EDRAM which in turn causes predicate tiling(but the 360 was built to handle tiling very very efficiently).  It doesn't look like rendering to two different targets is a problem though, just when used in conjunction with this method.

It certainly seems as though the X360 should be able to handle rendering scenes from different viewpoints, and then alternating the output in a 120 Hz signal, if that's how the 3D stuff works. MS probably just didn't have the TV hardware, or a high end > 60 FPS, 1080p game to show off at CES.

I'm sure Sony knew in advance, and had the TV know-how to either make it work with existing 120 Hz TVs, or had some special TV prototypes, perhaps only with different firmware, at the show. The fact that MS didn't have 3D apps showing at the show may not have anything to do with the 360's capabilities, given certain assumptions on how the tech works.

LOUD_HOT_WHITE_BOX,be silent and disappear as u have nothing of worth to add here,and while u are leaving take ur ignorance with you please,as we all know alot of things were said not capable on the 360 but microsoft has proven it to be untrue time and time again.hmmmmm are some people scared that microsoft will once again allow certain tech to be produce on their machine before the ones who always promises it???what add on r u talking about again??