Software rasterizer project on PlayStation 3

As you may know, it is possible to run user programs on the Sony Playstation 3 console, provided you install a Linux-based system. However, it is not possible to directly access the GPU of the console, meaning hardware 3D rendering is currently impossible for -most- PS3 users.

I wrote most because ps3's with pre-2.01 firmware could benefit from an exploit in the hypervisor in order to get access to the GPU.

Different people on the Playstation 3 homebrew scene started different projects for designing a 3D software rasterizer, which is the technical term for a library which draws basic graphic primitives (such as triangles) on a screen made of pixels.

I am also having my project. This is a great challenge to first master the specificities of programming the Cell processor, and could lead to releasing cute graphical animations and/or games.

My rasterizer is quite simple, but performs quite well. It only handles flat or smooth shaded triangles, without any possibility (for now) to handle textures. However, some testings shown it was able to display objects consisting in more than 200,000 triangles in less than 1/60s, meaning perfectly smooth animation is possible.

This project is demoscene-intended, and it's likely I'll try and release some tech demo in a not so far future. I hope it won't be available when nobody has the possibility to run otheros stuff on ps3's.

Comments

1. On 29/01/2010, 00:59 by Miles Prower

Hi Ouasse,

You used to have a webpage showing pictures of your rasterizer running on the PS3. Where did it go?

Thanks

2. On 27/04/2010, 13:16 by ouasse

here :)