Introduction
Two days ago, Thursday 6th April 2006, ATI released a new driver for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, one which enabled HDR rendering on ATI Radeon X1K-series hardware to be performed with multisample antialiasing turned on.We let you know about the patch, passed on by ATI's Terry Makedon as poorly disguised sexual spam, and we pondered how it worked, yours truly offering up a hypothesis on what 'Chuck' - the undercover black ops programmer, locked in a ninja-proof dungeon deep in the bowels of ATI, hacking on space-age alloy keyboards his digits cannot smash - did to allow the two rendering features to work together on their hardware.
Previously a combo found only on the Xbox 360, high dynamic range rendering plus AA lets you get the dual visual advantages of a better lighting model and reduction of geometry aliasing. Sacrificing one feature for the other isn't really what a modern gamer is looking for, but sacrifice is what developers sometimes have to do, depending on rendering engine and time and skill available to make the features work together on able hardware.
New found fame assured, 'Chuck' agreed to an exclusive interview with HEXUS to explain how the patch works (and totally debunk my initial analysis!) in a technical sense. But not before answering a few other questions first. Want to hear what 'Chuck' has to say about getting a new Ferrari, making the Oblivion gates pink and his invention of time travel? Of course you do. Clickety click.
ATI's 'Chuck', yesterday
