{"id":197,"date":"2006-01-29T21:12:57","date_gmt":"2006-01-30T05:12:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/multimedia.cx\/eggs\/?p=197"},"modified":"2006-01-29T23:55:27","modified_gmt":"2006-01-30T07:55:27","slug":"atis-dangerous-eyeballs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/multimedia.cx\/eggs\/atis-dangerous-eyeballs\/","title":{"rendered":"ATI’s Dangerous Eyeballs"},"content":{"rendered":"

I purchased a new, fanless<\/strong> ATI All-In-Wonder (“2006 Edition”)<\/a> video card. My primary goal was to replace an old ATI Radeon 8500 video card cooled by a jet engine-powered fan which completely defeated the purpose of having a quiet<\/em>, small form factor desktop computer. <\/p>\n

I have approximately zero interest (or knowledge) in the technical underpinnings of 3D graphics programming. But since the AIW-2006 is apparently based on an ATI Radeon 9600 — which is 1100 better than my previous card — I wanted to see how much prettier the graphics could possibly be (the old card ran Doom 3<\/a><\/em> and Far Cry<\/a><\/em> demos tolerably well). A number of the included demos mention “X800” and “X850” which I believe are the latest generation ATI chipsets. Anyway, I fire up the first demo entitled, “Dangerous Curves”. It’s pretty much a run-of-the-mill gratuitous action sequence. But I thought the designers had a curious “vision” of the vignette’s protagonist:<\/p>\n


\n\"Captain
\nCaptain Eyeballs makes his(?) daring escape<\/em>
\n<\/center><\/p>\n

I was led to believe something was amiss which the graphics screen was overlaid with a series of errors messages, also dumped to a text file, along the lines of “[SSGenericAPI_D3D.cpp] (line 1256): Can’t compile HLSL pixel shader. The D3D error message is: (1706): error X5608: Compiled shader code uses too many arithmetic instruction slots (69). Max. allowed by the target (ps_2_0) is 64. [oRubyHelmetSk.ssh] (line 329): Error creating Pixel Shader”<\/p>\n

Fortunately, the bonus DVD also included the MPEG of the rendered 3D sequence (you can download either the demo or the movie here<\/a>). It turns out there is supposed to be more to detail to our hero(ine):<\/p>\n


\n\"Dangerous
\nAh, that looks a little less unsettling<\/em>
\n<\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My new video card’s value-add<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t