Just my 2 cents, but I think what 'TheExpert' was getting at was that shaders are not the be-all and end-all of game making, and that sometimes the fundementals such as getting the most out of as few polygons as possible are getting overlooked becuase of the attention the new shader systems are getting.

I have to agree with Red though and say this: It is clear now that shader technology is here to stay, and it really does breath life into textures and as he domonstrates so well, a simple dot3 bump map transforms the flat texture into a surface that conveys its texture and greatly enhances the 'feel' of the object.

Further more today my delivery of 3D Studio Max 7 arrived and a quick glance through the new features reveals that some major steps forward in the production of these shaders, (the new ability to create .fx files from standard textures), means that shaders are here to stay. Considering this technology is so new I am not that surprised that we are seeing a lot of attention to this area at the moment.

I am confident that over time the shaders will be defined, refined and ultimatly enthusiasm will wane and we will again see topics such as lowpoly-modeling taking a for front. In fact I know this to be true, as a few new features of max point firmly at high polygon models being used to create a shader based skin to wrap around a low polygon version of the same model, (as seen in Doom3), so a little patience may pay off...

anyway just my 2 cents...