Comment by accrual a day ago
It's very impressive to see "realistic" graphics on the N64. The demo reminds me of "ICO" for the PS2.
I've always wondered if it would be possible to create an SDK to abstract the N64 graphics hardware and expose some modern primitives, lighting, shading, tools to bake lighting as this demo does, etc. The N64 has some pretty unique hardware for its generation, more details on the hardware are here on Copetti.org:
> that the n64 probably has the most standard hardware of it's generation
The Reality Coprocessor (or RCP) doesn't look like any graphics cards that previously came out of SGI. Despite the marketing, it is not a shrunk down SGI workstation.
It approaches the problem in very different ways is actually more advanced in many ways. SGI workstations had strict fixed function pixel pipelines, but RCP's pixel pipeline is semi-programmable. People often call describe it as "highly configurable" instead of programmable, but it was the start of what lead to modern Pixel Shaders. RCP could do many things in a single-pass which would require multiple passes of blending on a SGI workstation.
And later SGI graphics cards don't seem to have taken advantage of these innovations either. SGI hired a bunch of new engineers (with experience in embedded systems) to create the N64, and then once the project was finished they made them redundant. The new technology created by that team never had a chance to influence the rest of SGI. I get the impression that SGI was afraid such low-cost GPUs would cannibalise their high-end workstation market.
BTW, The console looks most like a shrunk down 90s SGI workstation is actually Sony's Playstation 2. Fixed function pixel pipeline with a huge amount of blending performance to facilitate complex multi-pass blending effects. Though, SGI wouldn't have let programmers have access to the Vector Units and DMAs like Sony did. SGI would have abstracted it all away with OpenGL
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But in a way, you are kind of right. The N64 was the most forwards looking console of that era, and the one that ended up the closest to modern GPUs. Just not for the reason you suggest.
Instead, some of the ex-SGI employees that worked on the N64 created their own company called ArtX. They were originally planning to create a PC graphics card, but ended up with the contract to first create the GameCube for Nintendo (The GameCube design shows clear signs of engineers overcompensating for flaws in the N64 design). Before they could finish, ArtX were bought by ATI becoming ATI's west-coast design division, and the plans for a PC version of that GPU were scrapped.
After finishing the GameCube, that team went on to design the R3xx series of GPUs for ATI (Radeon 9700, etc).
The R3xx is more noteworthy for having a huge influence on Microsoft's DirectX 9.0 standard, which is basically the start of modern GPUs.
So in many ways, the N64 is a direct predecessor to DirectX 9.0.
> The GameCube design shows clear signs of engineers overcompensating for flaws in the N64 design
I haven't programmed for either console. Which features show this in what sense?
The RCP was actually two hardware blocks, the RDP which as you say did the fixed function (but very flexible) pixel processing and the RSP which handled command processing and vertex transformation (and audio!).
The standard api was pretty much OpenGL, generating in-memory command lists that could be sent to the RSP.
However the RSP was a completely programmable mips processor (with simd instructions in parallel).
One of my favorite tricks in the RDP hardware was it used the parity bits in the rambus memory to store coverage bits for msss
> The standard api was pretty much OpenGL
Good point. It is the software APIs are where you do see the strong SGI influence. It's not OpenGL, but it's clearly based on their experience with OpenGL. The resulting API is quite a bit better than other 5th gen consoles.
It's only the hardware (especially RDP) that has little direct connection to other SGI hardware.
Shadow of the Colossus... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMKtYM8AzC8
Note that the N64 was designed by SGI, And seeing as how influential SGI was for 3d graphics, I sort of assume the reverse, that the n64 probably has the most standard hardware of it's generation. I would be vaguely surprised if there was not an opengl library for it.
However there is a large caveat, 1. you have to think of the system as a graphics card with a cpu bolted on. and 2. the graphics system is directly exposed.
Graphics chip architecture ends up being a ugly hateful incompatible mess, and as such the vendors of said accelerators generally tend to avoid publishing reference documents for them, preferring to publish intermediate API's instead. things like OpenGL, DirectX, CUDA, Vulcan, mainly so that under the hood they can keep them an incompatible mess(if you never publish a reference, you never have to have hardware backwards compatibility, the up side is they can create novel designs, the down side is no one can use them directly) so when you do get direct access to them, as in that generation of game console, you sort of instinctively recoil in horror.
footnote on graphics influence: OpenGL came out of SGI and nvidia was founded by ex SGI engineers.