3DMark Next details emerge

Bit-Tech forumite dom_ informs us that the new 3DMark will be out in the next few months. He asks a number of interesting questions:

"Will it be as controversial as the last two releases? Will it bare any resemblance to real-world game performance, or will it be just another pretty looking graphics card tool?"

There's a full interview with Nicklas Renqvist of Futuremark Corporation over on Beyond3D - here's a quick snip from the article:

"We think it's time to spill the beans (or at least, show us the can label) for the next 3DMark? What snippets can you tell us - what shader model are you considering as the default option (SM2.0 again)? What kind of effects are you going to highlight this time - parallax bump mapping, tone mapping, soft shadow edges?"

Find out the answers in the full article and be sure to check out the first official screenshot on the final page.

Here's a run down of the graphical features that 3DMark Next is said to use:

• HDR rendering.
  
• Complex HDR post processing.
  
• Dynamic soft shadows for all objects.
  
• Water shader with HDR refraction, HDR reflection, depth fog and Gerstner wave functions.
  
• Heterogeneous fog.
  
• Atmospheric light scattering.
  
• Realistic sky model with cloud blending.
  
• Strauss lighting model for most materials.
  
• Subsurface scattering shader for some objects (not visible in the shot).
  
• Texture & normal map sizes: 1024 x 1024 to 2048 x 2048.
  
• Approximately 5.4 million triangles and 8.8 million vertices.

As you probably know, know we don't use 3DMark in our video card reviews because we feel that it doesn't represent anything that anyone would buy a video card for. We believe that most people buying a video card are buying it because they want to play the latest blockbuster game to hit the shelves with much better graphics than their current video card is capable of.

However, the talent that the Futuremark guys have is obvious - it's just a shame to see them use that talent to create a benchmark and not a game. After the controversies surrounding the last two releases, we believe that they're a victim of their own success. It's a great tool, but it's not much use for anything else, in our opinion.

Let us know your thoughts in the forums.