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technomage
05-02-2006, 12:52 AM
Anyone used fxPascal (http://sourceforge.net/projects/fxpascal) for building vertex and fragment shaders for opengl :?: If so any idea where I can find some documentation in english :wink:

Clootie
05-02-2006, 12:13 PM
IIRC fxpascal compiles down to vertex/fragment assembler code, but now you want your shaders to be passed to driver as GLSL source.

technomage
05-02-2006, 12:19 PM
Thanks for the tip :D I'm just startng to look into shader technology (my current system barely supports it in emulated mode) and I have to admit it can get a bit confusing, but if GLSL is the one to use then I'll use it :D

JSoftware
06-02-2006, 08:00 PM
i've tried both. i used to write shader programs in assembler instructions but i tried fxPascal and implemented it in my last engine. It generally worked pretty neatly but it had a few shortcommings when working with multiple rendertargets and arrays and such. but generally i like it.

Glsl.. well i've used it a bit and frankly i don't see why i should use it. I havent' been able to find any reasons.

if it doesn't come with a pdf with all commands and syntax included then it is in Seth, an IDE for fxPascal

Clootie
06-02-2006, 08:11 PM
GLSL compiler is build in driver, while fxPascal translates to ARB vertex and pixel shader assmbler. And this really makes a reason!

For example:
* GLSL is more feature rich.
* Vendor driver can better optimize your code at higher level (and I bet vendor drivers doen't know anything about "style" & shortcuts of assembler code produced by fxPascal).

Sure, if anyone aims at GeForce3 level hardware - when it's better to code directly in assembler.

Andreaz
16-03-2006, 06:49 AM
And for a GLSL Ide, i can recomend shaderdesigner, it's quite smooth:

http://www.typhoonlabs.com/index.php?action=shaderdesigner.htm