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I am a veteran of Dark Basic, and will be getting DB Pro soon... I am curious; is there a formatted function or DLL that can be used to expand DB Pro to support the per-pictel or even per-pixel shading found in the next line of graphics cards to be released? I believe that this type of shading will soon be the standard for 3d rendering of scenes and even individual 3d objects.

Also, what sort of formatting is needed? Is this explained in the handbook that (hopefully) comes with DB Pro?

Any help or feedback with this would be appreciated.

Pixel Shading is currently a part of the GeForce Only (3/4/FX/XGL) enhancements that DBpro has.
Currently the support is limited and setup is also quite limited due to thier intergration, however as 1.05 is to have the rewritten Engine - I would guess that at that point you will be given better and deeper access to the shaders.

Until we have the Third Party Function SDK there is little anyone can do to actually improve upon what the DBS staff have already provided as Shaders using a back buffer access within a DLL would require a second render resolution running DirectX parrellel to DarkBasic Pro which could cause instabilities and at the very least will half the performance of the program.

It is getting worrying how many people are asking for these advanced graphics techniques...
Please try to note now many actual game companies addin these effects as standard - how many make them as the REQUIREMENT ... there are very few because the market is so small as only a small fraction of gamers are actually capable of using Shaders I would seriously doubt there is any TRUE merit for atleast a year.

There will be advanced graphics techniques comming and there are many tutorials across the net that show you howto use them - however I'd recommend getting a game WORKING before attempting to add anything fancy.

I agree that currently, there is only a limited application for these advanced tecniques. Currently, only very big names are using per pixel and even fewer per pictel shading. However, in times to come, it will become the standard in all rendering. The difference between those left begind and those still in the game will be whether they know how to use these features ahead of time (as with any major technological advancement).

For those who don't know, a pictel is 1/4 of a pixel.. Basically, each pixel is made of of 4 pictels, which are used in different sequences along with the pictels of nearby pixels to create a color. The advantage to using per pictel shading is that a single object can have multiple textures. This allows for things such as a 4 layer texturing system which would have, say, 1 layer for color, one for transition, one for actual texture, and one for bump mapping. The result is spectacular!

The GeForce line supports per pixel shading, and the GeForce MX will offer support for per pictel shading. To see several examples of what is possible from an excelent high end company, look at http://everquest2.station.sony.com/media.jsp

The skeleton is particularly impressive.

I appreciate the advice on where to start with this. Strike that... I *greatly* appreciate the advice 8)