[GD-Consoles] Cg, HLSL, ?

[Brett B. \(GameBrains\) <res...@ga...>]

Since there is another thread running in the algo list on shaders, and =
most of the people here seem to be there too, I wanted to ask about how =
people are handling shaders for multi-platform console work.  We have a =
nice development environment now that builds our runtime databases, but =
implementing special effects on consoles like the PS2 is a headache.  We =
were considering writing a compiler for either HLSL or Cg that could =
then have a platform-specific backend to solve the problem.  It seems =
nVidia will be releasing a reference implementation of the Cg compiler =
that has a simple backend reporting tool and so we are leaning that =
direction at the moment.  Does this even seem viable to anyone?  It's =
not that we don't want to take advantage of each console's capabilities, =
but rather it is hard to do right now because artists don't have enough =
tools to do so, but with a more generic approach using Cg we could =
preview the stuff in Max that would roughly show the final effect.  How =
are other people getting special effects implemented on consoles?
Thanks,
Brett Bibby
GameBrains