THG: How long did Futuremark work on the 3DMark06 project, from start to finish? What were the greatest hurdles to overcome?

Nick: It took us roughly 12 months to get 3DMark06 done. In a project as big as 3DMark, it is impossible to pinpoint the hurdles. Coming up with new and innovative effects and techniques is always challenging, since we don't have any real-time reference material on how it should be done. Most of the techniques we use in 3DMark06 are made in-house without any real-time demonstrations.

Let's take the subsurface scattering effect as an example. We had read about it and how to do it, but had never seen it running in real time. It took us some time to get it right and to work as we wanted it. Now, looking at the effect, I think the guys did a great job, and it is an effect I think we will see used in future games. It doesn't cost that much in terms of performance, and if used with the correct settings, it can really up the visual fidelity. For example, in "Deep Freeze", we use it as a part of the snow shader, and without the subsurface scattering effect, the snow simply looks wrong.