NV_half_float?

OpenGL OpenGL: Advanced Coding
1

Hello everybody,

I’ve just come across this extension again, and saw that they actually supply a full set of half float access points for vertex data.

These have never shown up in any nVidia presentations that I’ve seen, and I can’t remember hearing about using them. I’m thinking about adding half support to my system, and I would be interested in getting some feedback from people who’ve tried these.

Do they give you any performance benefit? The data size is halfed, but if the chip can’t handle the data natively that is probably not beneficial at all. Does anybody know whether ATI is planning to support them? Does nVidia plan to keep supporting them or are there plans to remove the vertex support for half float and stick to textures/framebuffers?

Thanks

Dirk
2

This probably makes more sense when you consider taking the output from a HALF buffer or texture and feeding it to a vertex program. Something that just became significant with the 6800 introduction.