I’ve just found in the super paper of ATI, called “ATI OpenGL Programming and Optimization Guide” that all ATI GPUs from the R300 (Radeon 9700) to the latest R580 (Radeon X1900) only support NEAREST (and the mipmap version) filtering for depth map. That explains the previous results. So if you want a nVidia-like depth map filtering, you have to code the filtering yourself in the pixel shader. Okay, this answer suits me!
Tag Archives: filtering
Depth Map Filtering – ATI vs NVIDIA
Really ATI has some problems with OpenGL. Now I’m working on soft shadows and my tmp devstation has a Radeon X700 (not the top-notch I know but an enough powerful CG). With my X700 (Catalyst 6.6) the soft shadow edges are rendered as follows:
And on my second CG, a nVidia 6600gt (forceware 91.31), the soft shadows are as follows:
The GLSL shaders are the same, a 5×5 bluring kernel, with a shadow map (or depth map as you want) of 1024×1024 (via a FBO) with a linear filtering. Now if I set the nearest filtering mode, I get the following results for the X700:
and for the 6600gt:
It seems as if the Radeon GPU has a bug in the filtering module when the gpu has to apply a linear filter on a depth map. Very strange.
I’m not satisfied by this explanation but it’s the only I see for the moment.
This kind of problem shows how it’s important for a graphics developer to have at least 2 workstations, one with a nVidia board and the other with an ATI CG. I tell you, realtime 3D is made of blood, sweat and screams! :winkhappy: