*smacks gfxtsyler for not doing his shader homework*
ehhhmm...
Ok far cry does not use Fragment and verex shaders because it use directx where they are called vertex and pixel shaders...
it does use shaders since it contains many prpixel operations which im sure are not done on the cpu
ARB is an organisation that aims at improving the opengl made way back in (1992?) their new extensions are marked with arb name
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenGL_Arc ... view_Board
in opengl its vertex and fragment shaders
lastly
i mean that is low level shader programming...
is incorrect since better results are achieved with high level shaders as:
-you can only go so far with asm
-high level shaders are compiled diffrently on diffrent gpus thus optimum performance is achieved for cet gpu card
(thats why some games need time to precompile shaders everytime u change graphics options eg battlefield2 rather than having them precompiled for you)
decent high level shader compilers can precalculate some operations or even remove redundant code
asm shaders however are only as good as the programmer
asm shader on te other hand are not compiled in the same sense but have the "keywords" converted to predetermined binary combinations"
shader models allow various degrees of complexity in many sections such as
-math operations available sin, tan etc... even lograithm on SM 3
-complexity loops and structures num of variables
- maximum number of ALU operations required
