Dany Lepage on Shader 3.0 and PCI-Express

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Just got word from Dave Baumann over at Beyond3D that their chat with Dany Lepage of Ubisoft is out!

Ubisoft developer, Dany Lepage (Splinter Cell, Splinter Cell X) has dropped in some thoughts on Shader Model 3.0 and how he feel PCI-Express will alter life for games developers.

Recently we mused whether Shader 3.0 would represent a major inflection point in terms of adoption or whether it wouldn't gain widespread support in light of the quantity of Shader 2.0 hardware now available and the next XBox being a few years off. In Dany's opinion Shader 3.0 offers useful functionality that will benefit programmers:

"In my opinion, Shader Model 3.0 is a huge step forward compared with Shader Model 2.0. Shader Model 3.0 adds dynamic branching in the pixel shader and while it's not required, I'm expecting the major IHVs to provide a complete orthogonal solution (FP16 texture filtering/blending) in their next HW iteration.

Dany Lepage on Shader 3.0 and PCI-Express