With the recent announcements at GPU14, could AMD's new graphics API be integrated into the PA engine in the near future? As it could present a massive boost in performance especially with CPU multi threading and better GPU usage.
PA use OpenGL on all platforms and I doubt this will change anytime soon because this AMD's API are not available on Linux and Mac. This new API might be good for console games, but for PA it's useful because this game most likely will be never released on any console.
In that pax panel neutrino did say "im down" for more direct hardware access. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=VGqu4CsUX9I#t=548
@ssx: Where did you hear that mantle wouldn't be available for linux and mac? Everything I've been reading says suggests the opposite and amd has been staying fairly quiet. On topic: The Mantle API is going to have isn't going to be released till after PA. This is not to say it couldn't be included in a patch at a later date but unless they release a console version implementing this would be a lot of work for a minority of their market as most gamers have Nvidia cards.
Yeah I haven't read anything that says this API doesn't support Linux, then again there's no mention of which os's it is exactly supporting except for the fact that the Frostbite engine 3 is including it in via a patch in December. For now AMD is staying quite about most of the details until the developer conference in November, hopefully they will present a live demo.
We already know how "good" are AMD drivers on Linux and OS X, i'm doubt AMD increase it's quality dramatically. You don't add new rendering API in game with a patch. I doubt PA will ever have version for "traditional" (Microsoft and Sony) consoles, there is tons of reasons why this isn't possible. If this ever happen most likely console port won't be anything really related to PA.
Yeah you can, it would just be a major patch. All these patches do for the most part is just re download the files effected. And as long as there is a way to use GLSL shaders within Mantle it should be possible.
There are no plans for adopting Mantle, it just doesn't make sense for us to use it. PA is written exclusively for OpenGL, quite intentionally to reduce production costs while still supporting the varied platforms we've already released on. Mantle in theory is a great thing, supposedly bringing low level hardware access to the PC for console-like 3d performance. But it's at the cost of limited support to a small subset of gamers: ie those with recent high end AMD graphics cards. And this is for something that sounds like may require fairly significant rewrites of a graphics engine to properly support. We have two graphics programmers and their job is difficult enough as is. It is also important to understand that the connection between Mantle and the next gen consoles is a loose one. It's exposing functionality that console developers may have access to through the custom DirectX 11.1+ API on the Xbox One and extended OpenGL 4.2 on the PS4. It means that many of the optimization techniques developers in the past have been able to make for console games may be applicable on PC using Mantle. It does not mean that once you've made your engine use Mantle it'll magically work on console or vice versa. My personal feeling is that Mantle will be a good kick in the pants for Microsoft and the Khronos Group (the consortium that controls OpenGL) that means we'll see greater improvements in future versions of DirectX and OpenGL than we may have otherwise. I doubt we'll see widespread adoption of Mantle from any group other than those AMD works closely with. Also, I doubt Mantle will support GLSL shaders. They've mentioned it does support HLSL, which is the DirectX equivalent. They're similar, but also completely different. Kind of like Spanish and Portuguese; to an outsider they sound about the same, but they still can't necessarily talk to each other without translators.
