NVIDIA Shows Off DirectX11 Tech at PDXLAN 16.5

At this past weekend’s PDXLAN 16.5 event, Tom Petersen, NVIDIA’s Director of Technical Marketing, decided to give people in attendance a preview of what’s to come from the company. This included some slides of features that its upcoming GPU would be offering, and though he couldn’t specify which one, anyone reading this is likely well-aware that it’s the GeForce GTX 580.

To make sure those in attendance didn’t feel special for too long, NVIDIA has since posted a video of the demonstration online, and it runs at about 10 minutes. During it, Tom goes into great detail about DirectX 11’s tessellation feature, and shows off two currently unavailable tech demos to help show things off, Aliens vs. Triangles and Endless City.

In Aliens vs. Triangles, the demonstration focuses entirely on how tessellation can improve character depth without much work from the developer. Tom stressed the fact that morphing and massively changing characteristics of the alien were being done entirely with tessellation, and the help of an additional displacement map. The result is actually quite impressive, and is a good showing for the tech.

In the other demo, Endless City, NVIDIA shows off an infinitely generated floating city that utilizes tessellation techniques to a major degree. Proof of that is enabling wireframe mode, where in some scenes over two billion polygons are displayed. It can be assumed that as soon as the GTX 580 gets released, these demos will be released to the public.

The video also has some Call of Duty: Black Ops gameplay, but that will be even less interesting once the game is released tomorrow.

NVIDIA previews unreleased GPU technology powering the first live showing of Call of Duty: Black Ops PC game play at PDX LAN 16.5!