We promised to share with you some first-hand information on our Next 3DMark, and here it is.
I don't think this first bit of info will come as a big surprise to most of you, but the Next 3DMark will require a fully DirectX 9 compliant graphics card capable of at least PixelShader 2.0. Though 3DMark03 already introduced DX9 shaders, and used them to a certain extent, the Next 3DMark will ake the use of shaders to a totally new level.
The second bit of info is that the Next 3DMark will use a new 3D-engine which dynamically builds HLSL shaders. The HLSL shaders are dynamically built and runtime compiled using the most optimal compilation target for the installed hardware. Of course, all compilations produce the same rendering. This is an engine structure that future games will be using. Dynamic shader generation is an efficient way to build large 3D worlds with a wide variety of different materials. Runtime compilation, to a target selected for the installed hardware, is a generic technique to produce the most optimal shaders for all hardware.
