limitations?

is it right that the number of instructions inside a pixel shader is limitated?

yes but its pretty high i dont think u could use it up.... ;-)

i tried something like that:

ps.1.1
tex t0
mul r0,t0,v0
add r0,r0,r0
add r0,r0,r0
add r0,r0,r0
add r0,r0,r0
add r0,r0,r0

but then if i place more instructions i get the message effect unsupported by hardware

what kinda grafx card do you have?

im not sure about 3dgs with shaders but that looks like good old direct x to me and u would need a prettty good grafxs card to run that lol. ive got a geforce 4 ti 4800 and i doubt it would work. if i know anything about shaders in 3dgs i would test it for ya. but sorry i dont..

Since version 1.4 the pixel shader is fully programmable. The older versions are not, so they are limited to a certain number of instructions per pass (about 8).

yes, you are allowed a total of 4 texture instructions and 8 arithmetic instructions (in ps1.1-ps1.3).

all right. thats what i thought. can i use ps.1.4 with 3dgs? im not at home to test it but i'd like to know now.

Sure you can... if you have a GeForce FX by chance.

so if my hardware supports it i can go even to ps.2.0 ?

no you cant use anything past 1.3

thanks!

all ati cards from radeon 8500 up support ps.1.4 and directx8.1 does support it too! so you should be able to use ps.1.4! (unfortunately i have a gf4 ) but as far as i know ps.2.0 does only work with directx9...

hmm apparently you can use 1.4 as well..

You mean my Radeon8500 supports ps1.4?

~Phantom88~

yes!

How come then for example Shaderworks says when i select PS 1.4, that my hardware doesn't support it? Could it be, that's because it's using DX9?
BTW: sorry for going a little off-topic

~Phantom88~

i don't know. but at the ati website you can download some ps.1.4 example effects with sourcecode and they all run on a radeon 8500.

i get a message: syntax error when i type ps.1.4 . ps.1.3 runs well
and i have a radeon9600pro

1.4 has different syntax than 1.1-1.3

in which way is it defferent. can you tell me that, as i used only standard instructions i think

for instance you cant do "tex t0".. you have to do "texld r0,t0"

do you have a useful link to a pdf or something where those differencies are listed?

go here