Just thought about something with the update

[heedicalking]

BS. They said they'll be off by default at first, then on by default as they get better. They never said they won't be toogleable.

so shadows are for looking cool and nothing more :( darn i hoped we could use them for hide and seek

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[Altiris]

Wow...no one has even talked about the main topic...

[zmaster]

If you really want performance gain.. go multi threading

[Sevara]

Geometry shaders?  Yeah, you'd need a recent (and high-end) video card for those.  Pixel shaders (more likely)?  They've been a part of OpenGL for almost ten years, since they were one of the core new features of OpenGL 2.0.

Honestly, the only people who are going to have problems are the ones who have barebones systems from the beginning of the Windows XP era.  Even a DX9 video card like a Radeon 9X00 is likely to have some pixel shader support.

[M]

You could probably get a new GPU that will run these fine from newegg's $50-75 bracket. You've all been running on this decade-old stuff for so long you're literally scared of the loving dark.

The GPU I have now runs Skyrim on the default Ultra setting plus shadow tweaks (4096 shadow map resolution and farther shadow distance) plus the official HDTP with literally no stuttering whatsoever, and the stuff in newegg's $100-200 range is ALL better than it. (Still costs $240-260 here though but forget this country)

[Bisjac]

many games with advanced shaders were also 32bit.
i dont see a problem

[Bisjac]

I think Komp and BS expect gamers or just people in general to higher end computers by the time they do that. That would imply that it'd be very far in the future.
At least, that's a theory

an average spec, best buy desktop for $500 can play the hell out of blockland.
this game dosnt really require much. you cant expect the gimping of development for games just because you are below the consumer average.
you arent supposed to use the same comp for 8 years.

[zmaster]

My old 3 year old $250 laptop supported geometry shaders (I assue you mean vertex shaders) and could run most games using them (spore for example) at a decent average framerate(30 -15 fps). 

[Sevara]

My old 3 year old $250 laptop supported geometry shaders (I assue you mean vertex shaders) and could run most games using them (spore for example) at a decent average framerate(30 -15 fps). 

Vertex shaders and geometry shaders are NOT the same thing.  Geometry shaders were just introduced and only show up in high-mid to top-end cards.  But pixel and vertex shaders should be fine on virtually anything off the shelf at this point.