vorpX 19.3.0 Sneak Peek: A Feast for Shader Hackers

[Ralf]

It’s about three months since vorpX 19.2.0, so some may start to wonder when vorpX 19.3.0 will be out. TBH I’m not quite sure yet, might be pretty soon or maybe take a little longer than usual. We will see.

The reason why I can’t tell yet is that vorpX will get an absolutely huge new feature with the next update that brings an entirely new playground for profile authors: you will finally be able to modify individual game shaders, which is immensly useful for fixing effects that may not work perfectly in 3D with vorpX’s traditional authoring toolset.

Of course official profiles will also be updated with optimized shaders where it makes sense. So everyone will benefit from this.

Since working with assembler code isn’t exactly for everyone, it had to be made at least as simple as possible. To achieve that vorpX got its own little shader programming language, basically extending the shader assembler language with better comprehensible macros.

If for example you would want to fix a misaligned shadow that doesn’t get stereofied properly, in the best case all you would have to do is something like this in the related pixel shader:

some shader assembler code
...
// get an un-projection matrix that isn't available in this
// shader from some other shader
vpxGetMatrixInverseFromConstant(r20, c4, 8739258)
// Unproject the shadow position (r6 in this example)
vpxMatrixMultiply(r24, r20, r6)
// Apply stereo to the unprojected position and write it
// back into the original position register (variable)
vpxStereo(r6, r24)
...
more shader assembler code

It won’t always be that simple, you will need to learn something about shader programming, but those who like to tinker to get everything perfect when doing profiles will get an entire new world to discover.

There will be some working examples and enough documentation to get you started.

[steph12]

hello Ralf,

while i appreciate & salute the huge work you are doing to make VorpX more powerful for experimented users allowing them to create flawless games profiles, i’d like to ask, will there be new official games profiles with this update ?

[Ralf]

Just to clarify: You will benefit from this IMMENSELY even if you don’t do profiles yourself. Not immediately, but in the months after the feature is fully fleshed out. This is truly huge.

And yes, as always there will also be some new profiles. Not much going on in terms of good candidates recently though, so hopefully the almost 300 officially supported games plus more than 500 available user profiles will keep you entertained :).

[RJK_]

WOW !!!

[grumdark]

This is fantastic news for the creation and improvement of profiles.

By the way Ralf,
Have you considered the additional possibility in this new update to release, the function to deactivate the black layer for lens distortion around the Vorpx symbol?
(“logo or watermark” is already possible, only the black part remains)

For users who are also interested in playing alternating from time to time on TV screens and VR headset, along with the new profile improvement info, I think this would already be the icing on the cake.
regards

[jjensson]

Fantastic! I hope there are enough people out there that have the knowledge to dive into this.

[dellrifter22]

Sounds awesome!! Excited to learn how to use this.

[dborosev]

You just made RJK_’s day. That guy is a beast with profiles.
Maybe eventually some of those non 3D shadows can be weeded out.

[RJK_]

@ dborosev

wonder if anyone has realized that i recently put a bunch of DX6 and even Glide games into 3D (Z3D) eg. Dungeon Keeper 2, Shadowman, Summoner ect. – which werent expected to work at all. (just a little sidenote).

[rustysalter]

Thanks for the update and continued support Ralf, any chance we can expect a Vorpx 20.0 in the future with official support for popular peripheral locomotion accessories like Kat Loco, 3dRudder, or Cybershoes, support for Index controllers and support for Leap Motion hand tracking or eye tracking modules if they become included in popular future VR 2.0 bundles?

I could see Vorpx becoming very big and way more popular in the future as vr matures with these additions!

[Softman17]

finally !! you found a way for experienced users to help you … it’s huge :)
i’m not one of them but i understand what this mean, and it’s a great idea.

Thanks from France

[d0kt0r]

Hi Ralf,

Very interesting feature.

Will be any tool to “hunt” the problematic shadder?

Awesome news!!!

[Jarilo]

Ralf, your are amazing. I’d get you a good bottle of Scotch my friend.

Sounds great, as long as everything else continues to work as it is.

[Ralf]

@ d0kt0r : You can already do that in the current shader authoring menu. vorpX already has various options to treat problematic shaders. The new feature will work on top of that and allow things currently not possible.

@ Jarilo : Everything else will stay the same. All current special shader options will still be available and only get overridden when a replacement shader is found. So the whole thing works transparently on top of the current shader tools.

[hugelarry]

Hello.

I’m currently running VorpX 19.2.4, and I found that I can already dump the shader disassembly, then modify individual shader code and move it into a special folder to make it active.

I also found the following documentation as part of my installation:

/Animation Labs/vorpX/docs/shaderswapper/asm_macros.html

Is the above functionality already live in 19.2.4?

It sounds like 19.3 will expand on this capability in some way.

Thanks for making a cool product.

[Author]

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