Quote Originally Posted by trinibwoy View Post
Nope, bump mapping is just a pixel shader trick that changes the color of a pixel to simulate detail. Tessellation happens much earlier in the pipeline and affects the underlying geometry of the scene.
Well actually I know that, but don't bump maps contain the depth information (that will be "fakely" applied to the object), and using the already developed bump maps can't this information be somehow converted to actual polygon info?

I'm not talking about doing this real-time, either. The bump maps could be taken and pre-converted into whatever, and then be used in game. Obviously I don't know how to actually do this or anything, but this line of thinking leads me to believe that this should be able to be done.

With parallax maps it could be done even better, if it's really a possibility