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Go for the GT5 look using vertex and fragment shaders!

Introduction

GPU Shaders (normally called vertex and fragment shaders) are supported in Racer through Cg. Cg was created by nVidia to overcome a lot of the troubles when creating shaders for a multitude of graphics hardware. Racer has always targeted for high-end hardware, and Cg probably is one of the areas where that becomes obvious.

This document is not about teaching you Cg; there's enough of that online. I'd recommend getting the book 'The Cg Tutorial' from nVidia, which can be read online for free at http://http.developer.nvidia.com/CgTutorial/cg_tutorial_chapter01.html (see also below)

More information on generic Racer shaders (the name 'shader' here is a bit confusing) can be found here; Cg shaders are only a part of the larger concept of Racer shaders.

External books/pages to read

There's a lot of information on Cg on the internet. nVidia has made available for free the texts of their excellent GPU Gems series. Try the following (they are all for free):

• Cg Tutorial book (an excellent reference guide if you want to learn how to write Cg shaders)
• GPU Gems 1
• GPU Gems 2 (link is weird, 12-2-09)
• GPU Gems 3

Tutorials and references on GPU shading

For Racer there are a number of documents that deal with shading. Follow these links:

• GPU Shader reference - a list of all available shaders and what they do. Also lists parameters that are available in the shaders.
• Shading tracks - a tutorial on the shading that we use on tracks.
• Shading cars - a tutorial on the shading that we use on cars.
• Not using CG - designing for the non-Cg version of Racer (which will probably last a few years yet)
• Waving flags on your tracks with standard_wave_v/f.
• Glowing brake discs.
• Full-screen shaders.
• Racer shaders - the basic shaders in which GPU shaders 'live'.

(last updated November 13, 2012 )