3dfx T-Buffer Technology Overview

Developer Quotes

3dfx actually debuted the T-Buffer technology to a variety of software designers back at The Game Developer's Conference (GDC) a few months ago. Apparently, many of them were impressed as the following quotes show.

"3dfx has always taken the lead in delivering compelling features to the gaming community without compromising performance. The T-Buffer technology will allow us to deliver yet another major leap in visual quality at the usual raging-on frame rates from 3dfx."

-Scott Cronce, vice president of technology, Electronic Arts

"Today"s games heavily rely on the ability to differentiate themselves through their intelligent use of 3D graphics and graphics effects. This will become more apparent in the future. While frame rate and resolution are important to running smoothly and delivering crisp images, the digital effects that 3dfx enables will greatly improve our ability to create immersive gameplay. We intend to use this new technology from 3dfx to its fullest."

-Malcolm Johnson, director of technology, Lucas Arts

"Epic Games is known for it's innovative games and special effects. Motion blur and depth of field are cinematic effects employed by the film industry for years. The ability to achieve real-time effects such as these on a consumer graphics product is exciting indeed. Unreal Tournament will look amazing with full-scene anti-aliasing."

-Tim Sweeney, director of technology, Epic Games

Conclusion

The T-Buffer is a solution that 3dfx has come up with for the general problem of aliasing. All of the effects are generated by the use of multiple frame buffers that that are the heart of the T-Buffer. Spatial anti-aliasing, the ability to remove jaggies and pixel popping, is probably of the largest benefit to gamers, and will provide the most impact when products are released since it can be enabled for all games from the driver.

Expect the T-Buffer in 3dfx's next generation product "this Fall at consumer friendly prices." 3dfx wasn't willing to disclose many other details about such a product.  When questioned about the status of the product, they did mention that for a fall release to be possible, the silicon must "either almost be done or already exist."  Extrapolating a bit more, we should be able to expect a press release on such a product within the next month or so.  Further, 32-bit external rendering will definitely be supported at long last.  Finally, T-Buffer is supposedly only "one of the big things" for this next generation product.  The possible inclusion of Transform & Lighting would neither by confirmed, nor denied, but our impression was that it would not be included - only time will tell.  The key here is that 3dfx is promising 60fps at 1024x768 for any game - they view anything less as unacceptable for real gamers.

Regardless, with NVIDIA's next generation product, code named  NV10, just over the horizon, this fall should be extremely interesting, with the consumer as the real winner.