alt Hacker News> If you mean that this style can be achieved with graphics hardware
I really ought to have been more specific with my first sentence to ward off any hair-splitting.
The author claimed to love software rendering, but the examples given to highlight the supposed positives of software rendering can all be achieved on GPUs. If the author had instead highlighted the ability to easily debug and inspect the inner workings of the rasterisation pipeline with a software renderer, that might have been a much more relevant argument.
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> the examples given to highlight the supposed positives of software rendering can all be achieved on GPUs.
Any look in older games, 2d or 3d, can be achieved on modern GPUs, so that seems like a vacuous thing to state.
He says he likes the look, that's subjective and doesn't need arguments. You wanted to read another, technical article.
I agree with you and I think others aren't understanding your point. "Hardware rendering" can also be achieved by the CPU in "software". It will just not be realtime. Just fire up Blender and render scenes using the CPU, which is a standard option. You will see how amazing "software" rendering can be.
There's nothing special about the GPU besides doing certain kind of operations that are very useful for graphics (and AI, among other things) really efficiently. The distinction should never have been "software rendering" vs "hardware rendering", but "what CPU rendering could achieve when GPUs weren't widespread" versus "what GPU rendering has been able to achieve since they became available".