Inventing on Principle

[WILL]

Well you could write a middle-layer for graphics that kept you from messing with breakable API code. Then just stick to that layer and you won't crash during development. You'd lose some low level control, but you do gain that added feel towards the creative hands in your code real-time effect that is what you are going for. I personally think that that's the only way. Until the hardware starts putting in safeties that will prevent hurting the drivers.

[Eric]

Well you could write a middle-layer for graphics that kept you from messing with breakable API code.

Well, that's what ANGLE is trying to achieve (http://code.google.com/p/angleproject/ and http://blog.chromium.org/2010/03/int...e-project.html), but they're not quite there just yet, and they still have to exclude a variety of graphics cards and hardware drivers for stability reasons.

I don't remember if FireFox also uses ANGLE, but I've read that both Chrome & FireFox perform extra checks on the shaders to try and detect errors the HLSL compiler and drivers don't handle very well (like http://www.gamedev.net/topic/579554-...-crash-in-dx9/).

But anyway, I'm hoping the push for stable 3D graphics in web apps will ensure that stability will happen, from the hardware vendors down, ANGLE & other middle-layers will (and already) have trouble keeping up with all the new hardware and driver revisions.

Would you please share the shader code that managed to crash your PC? What operating system and API did you use?

It was definitely nVidia, and crashing with either Cg & HLSL, I don't have the code available anymore, but it might have been a similar issue to the DX9 one I linked above, ie. an error in the shader code that wasn't reported correctly.

[LP]

It was definitely nVidia, and crashing with either Cg & HLSL, I don't have the code available anymore, but it might have been a similar issue to the DX9 one I linked above, ie. an error in the shader code that wasn't reported correctly.

It is weird since in 6 years working with shaders (both in FX Composer and directly) I've never had a video driver crash, let alone BSOD (I don't even know how it looks like now). Maybe I've been using a wrong operating system?

Seriously though, Cg, HLSL and GLSL are restrictive enough, there is little you can do to force the crash. Sure, there are ways to mess up with the API, but I don't think using badly written shaders is one of them.

[Eric]

but I don't think using badly written shaders is one of them.

Think again, just check the ANGLE issues tracker (f.i. http://code.google.com/p/angleprojec.../detail?id=198). You can also have a look at the detailed driver release notes from nVidia, AMD & Intel. And if Google takes the trouble of maintaining hardware and driver compatibility lists for Chrome, believe me, that's not for the fun of it either ;-)

[LP]

Think again, just check the ANGLE issues tracker (f.i. http://code.google.com/p/angleprojec.../detail?id=198). You can also have a look at the detailed driver release notes from nVidia, AMD & Intel. And if Google takes the trouble of maintaining hardware and driver compatibility lists for Chrome, believe me, that's not for the fun of it either ;-)

Then you should have stated that buggy software that tries to use shaders among other things, can crash PC, not shaders themselves. The link you have provided redirects to ANGLE issue tracking support. The only thing you prove by this is that ANGLE has issues but you did not address any of my shader questions.

In any case, ANGLE is just an application of Adapter (or "wrapper" in some literature) software pattern. In no way it will help to resolve API issues as you are just redirecting OpenGL ES API, on top of which WebGL is based on, into Direct3D API. I think this will create more issues than it will solve.