transparency in viewport
 

This is my first post so forgive me if I come across totally inept. My question is this... Can I view transparency mapped to a planer projected ramp in the perspective viewport? (i.e. without doing a software render) Is there a way of showing interactive transparency in the viewport (i.e. NOT entire object transparency, but just part of it, and not from a file texture with an alpha chanel) or is this function only reserved for textures? I need the ramp node to provide interactive transparency. Please help... I am using maya 8.5 and it's a nVidia Quadro FX 4500 graphics card. Thanks.