NVIDIA DirectX 11 Questionnaire – A Response to AMD’s Views

[unknownsock]

Interesting article, shame there were so few questions.



Hang on, why are nvidia scum? they bought out aegia why should they allow it to be used on ati hardware (what would be the incentive for buying out aegias at all?). At the end of the day we all make purchasing decisions with our eyes open, ati offer among other things strong performance at affordable price, but there cards do not grant access to physx effects. Regardless of whether those effects are any good, that is your choice

Because it should be illegal what they are doing.
Can't wait till they get a hefty fine.

 

[Rroff]

When I was reading that article, I thought it was an interview with the Iraqi Information Minister

LOL! it did rather.

There is a lot of mis-information in this thread regarding batman AA tho...

While drunkenmaster has a good point about the debris and other physics effects... half the time they ignore the player is even there - which is one reason FOR using a physics engine... and aren't used on objects where it would make sense to use them like dripping water...

He also has a good point about AMD/ATI not getting into the game and supporting developers better - then whining when things don't work so well on their cards... AA in batman being a case in point I will come to later.

The effects in Batman AA bare little resemblance to normal scripted effects...

The chucks of wall that fall down, aren't any chunks, again they are basic chucks that fall off walls, something we've seen, again, for years upon years. Its nothing remotely fancy or unseen before. Fog, since we hit DX10 fog, and its poor clipping effects, have been irradicated more or less, Bioshock shows the difference in dx9 and dx10 mode. Fog/smoke looks great in dx10, it "blends" in with floors perfectly, while in dx9, it clips, you see distinct lines where the smoke/fog ends as it interacts with the floor. Please tell me what physx brings to Batman thats brand new and never seen before?

The chunks aren't anything like the noclip, no tumble, no interaction chunks used in older games - they tumble, bounce off the environment and each other, etc.

Again the smoke is nothing like the old style smoke effects and a lot more advanced than the z-feather smoke seen in the likes of bioshock... its not just about blending the edges when they intersect the scenery - the smoke in Batman flows with air currents and the entire smoke volume, wraps around objects instead of ghosting straight through and generally looks much more interesting.

The branch of the engine Batman uses has NO native support for anti-aliasing whatsoever... normally it would rely on the user forcing it globally or using a profile for that game... the only ingame AA path is an nVidia opptomised custom multisampling algorithm - which may or may not work too well on other vendors so is disabled... why they didn't atleast include a stock DX AA path I dunno kinda lazy... and whether ATI could have really got their own path included if they had been movtivated to do it is another matter which I can't answer.

 

[MoodyB]

Hang on, why are nvidia scum? they bought out aegia why should they allow it to be used on ati hardware

That's not the problem. You used to be able to have an ATi card installed along with a Nvidia card, with the latter doing the physx work & the ATi card pushing the pixels about on the screen. They stopped this from working, along with the ATi gfx card + Aegia physx card combo as well.

So, due to NVidia throwing their toys out the pram, lots of people have wasted money on NVidia products bought solely for making physx effects work in games.

Scum seems like a very appropriate description for them to me.

 

[Rroff]

When they deliberately cripple another cards performance when its obvious that card in question can run them crappy effects with ease, then yes they are scum, and to take AA out for ATI cards makes them even bigger scum.

They didn't take out AA for ATI cards... it was never there in teh first place... they implemented a method specifically for nVidia cards which is enabled when you have one present... why they didn't atleast include a stock AA implementation as well is another matter... it could have been malicious, simply lazy or an oversight, or they were really waiting for ATI to get back to them and they never did before the game shipped... who knows.

 

[D13]

When they deliberately cripple another cards performance when its obvious that card in question can run them crappy effects with ease, then yes they are scum, and to take AA out for ATI cards makes them even bigger scum.

Cripple performance? you mean fail to implmeent physx on ati cards? just why on earth would they do that?
Remove aa on ati cards, surely that is more of a question for eidos rather than nvidia

Because it should be illegal what they are doing.
Can't wait till they get a hefty fine.

If nvidia are doing anything illegal than what are amd/ati waiting for? they took on intel so they clearly arent scared by huge ass companies? if nvidia are so blatantly braking competition laws then why hasnt this gone to court?

 

[unknownsock]

Cripple performance? you mean fail to implmeent physx on ati cards? just why on earth would they do that?
Remove aa on ati cards, surely that is more of a question for eidos rather than nvidia

Fail to implement PhysX? ATI have stated many times, they want to go the universal route, rather than force companies into a tunnel.

 

[Rroff]

End of the day out of the matured physics libraries available... roughly 60% of games run best on physx and 40% on havok due to the gameplay nature and the nature of these physics implementations... in some cases you can get away with bullet, tokamak, ODE, etc. but in most cases they are only really suited to a narrow range of games... so at the end of the day it doesn't make sense to not support both physx and havok on both vendors in hardware... and nVidia should be leading the way with a port to open CL - we all know havok is already capable of doing that... just being held back for some arbitary reason.

 

[Greebo]

Cripple performance? you mean fail to implmeent physx on ati cards? just why on earth would they do that?
?

The point is it has being shown all the physx effects on Batman will run fine on a multi core cpu so you don't need a physx enable card to run them. That's the bit which stinks. Not the fact that Physx doesn't work on ATI cards, but by limiting the use to one cpu core, when running the game on an ATI card with Physx enabled it runs like a dog.

I can see why they did it though. If running Batman with Physx on the cpu only was as quick as a Nvidia card, it sorta takes a one big selling point away from buying one.

 

[D13]

Fail to implement PhysX? ATI have stated many times, they want to go the universal route, rather than force companies into a tunnel.

So are nvidia 'forcing' companies into a tunnel, or giving them incentive. Sure if ati say they want to go 'universal route' thats great for them but nvidia have presumably coughed up some big bucks for aegia, they have no choice but to push it or it is just a huge waste of money

End of the day out of the matured physics libraries available... roughly 60% of games run best on physx and 40% on havok due to the gameplay nature and the nature of these physics implementations... in some cases you can get away with bullet, tokamak, ODE, etc. but in most cases they are only really suited to a narrow range of games... so at the end of the day it doesn't make sense to not support both physx and havok on both vendors in hardware... and nVidia should be leading the way with a port to open CL - we all know havok is already capable of doing that... just being held back for some arbitary reason.

tbh I dont really understand all thta but i tel you one thing, I played through red faction guerilla which i think used havok and wow that is some of the worstphysics in a game i have seen

The point is it has being shown all the physx effects on Batman will run fine on a multi core cpu so you don't need a physx enable card to run them. That's the bit which stinks. Not the fact that Physx doesn't work on ATI cards, but by limiting the use to one cpu core, when running the game on an ATI card with Physx enabled it runs like a dog.

I can see why they did it though. If running Batman with Physx on the cpu only was as quick as a Nvidia card, it sorta takes a one big selling point away from buying one.

i agree, it doesnt matter if ati cards or cpu actually have the power to run it, of course nvidia must keep physx as an exclusive reason to use their cards otherwise what is the oint in spending so much money on it in the first lace.

 

[RavenXXX2]

I can see why they did it though. If running Batman with Physx on the cpu only was as quick as a Nvidia card, it sorta takes a one big selling point away from buying one.

LOL, physx a selling point, from what I have seen its capable off and the performance hit even on NV cards, I would say it was more of a put-off than a selling point.

 

[reflux]

LOL, physx a selling point, from what I have seen its capable off and the performance hit even on NV cards, I would say it was more of a put-off than a selling point.

Certainly a put-off for me. Just makes the frame rate carpy in Batman, vaguely fancy visuals aren't worth it tbh.

 

[NickK]

So Nvidia, its possible to pay money, support companies, help them optimise without the backstabbing, sabotage and unsportsman like conduct. Intel have the money to buy Nvidia, shut them down and blow up every asset they have(which isn't much) without batting an eyelid, yet they never sabotaged AMD in terms of software and support.

I think partly the US legal system keeps close tabs on Intel's business practices.

 

[Rroff]

tbh I dont really understand all thta but i tel you one thing, I played through red faction guerilla which i think used havok and wow that is some of the worstphysics in a game i have seen

Red faction uses some neat tricks to imitate much more complex physics effects and for the most part it does fool the end user which is kinda cool... but as I said havok in games has a tendancy to be intrusive to the gameplay once you've got past the initial novelty.

 

[unknownsock]

So are nvidia 'forcing' companies into a tunnel, or giving them incentive. Sure if ati say they want to go 'universal route' thats great for them but nvidia have presumably coughed up some big bucks for aegia, they have no choice but to push it or it is just a huge waste of money



tbh I dont really understand all thta but i tel you one thing, I played through red faction guerilla which i think used havok and wow that is some of the worstphysics in a game i have seen



i agree, it doesnt matter if ati cards or cpu actually have the power to run it, of course nvidia must keep physx as an exclusive reason to use their cards otherwise what is the oint in spending so much money on it in the first lace.

The point is, developers will not allow this, innovative ideas will never happen until it all as gone universal.
Why spend so long on physics when only a certain percentage, of consumers will see it? That is a waste of money.

In regards to Batman, nvidia went out of their way to enhance this game for themselves so this is irrelivent.

 

[BoozerDawg]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQSnXhgJ4GM

 

[ejr22]

Well what you reply for?? trolling?? walk on by,

Calm down dear.

I was merely trying to give overly-excitable people like yourself some sort of sense of reason. Unfortunately it seems this is an impossible task. Enjoy your nervous breakdown when you realise there is more to life than PC gaming.

 

[Rroff]

hmm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwAz-us-uNg&fmt=22

Personally I haven't seen anything like that in any other game so far.

 

[Final8y]

hmm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwAz-us-uNg&fmt=22

Personally I haven't seen anything like that in any other game so far.

Its not very realistic in the way it drops back down & there would more dispersal.

 

[arc@css]

Perhaps we'll have games individually made one day for each gpu, ATi or nvidia? Doesn't seem so crazy when you read about all the squabbles and antics going on, mainly from nvidia's side of the court it seems.

 

[Rroff]

Depends on ambient temperature and other temps, humidity, etc.