Will Eidos patch Batman:AA to remove the Vendor ID check?

[caveman-jim]

Right.


So, how about that AA in Batman?

[acroig]

Originally Posted by caveman-jim

Right. So, how about that AA in Batman?

I told you, won't happen. Close the thread already.

[SIrPauly]

Originally Posted by Skynet

That's one possible path for tech to proliferate. But it's not the only way, and it's very often not the ideal way. There are many examples where proprietary tech whithered and died because the overall market refused to cater to one vendor.

So are you saying that something like PhysX will sooner or later become an open standard? And if it does, when? What is Nvidia waiting for?

In that Hexus thread, an interesting comparison was made. Nvidia is Internet Explorer, ATI is Opera. Actually a better comparison would be, Nvidia is Internet Explorer, ATI is Firefox, and Matrox is Opera. Internet Explorer tried very very hard to push IE only standards. It failed. Slowly but surely, open standards pushed Microsoft into a corner, and they had no choice but to embrace them, albeit slowly. IE is slowly but surely losing market share, Firefox is gaining. Even Adobe Flash is going to be pushed out when HTML 5 becomes widely supported.

The lesson? Closed standards most often do not survive in the long term. Nvidia is hell bent on become the Apple of the GPU world. But that strategy will fail, unless Nvidia will be satisfied to become a company that controls everything, but is confined to less than 10% of the market.

No, what I am saying it through the chaos so-to-speak open standards are formed through past players help that pushed it forward. PhysX to me was about getting GPU Physics started -- not the end-all-be-all Physics for every one. It has to start man -- someone has to have the courage to risk, innovate and try. That's the beauty of technology -- because sometimes something is invented that changes and redefines the entire industry.

[caveman-jim]

Originally Posted by SIrPauly

No, what I am saying it through the chaos so-to-speak open standards are formed through past players help that pushed it forward. PhysX to me was about getting GPU Physics started -- not the end-all-be-all Physics for every one. It has to start man -- someone has to have the courage to risk, innovate and try. That's the beauty of technology -- because sometimes something is invented that changes and redefines the entire industry.

Indeed and we should celebrate Pong for leading the way.

[SIrPauly]

Pong was cool -- wish it had in-game AA though!

[caveman-jim]

It was originally design to, but the switched rendering path late in development and couldn't add it back in befor launch.

[Skynet]

It doesn't matter who started it, who innovated first, who pushed the boundaries first. We can argue all day long that someone has to push the envelope, get the ball rolling, pick whatever analogy works for you. What matters is when you have the technology, you need to be very careful in your choices on how you use it, how you chose to have it compete and proliferate in the marketplace.

If you don't and decide that you can dictate the market direction and bet wrong, you will end up dead. 3dfx is a prime example of this.

[caveman-jim]

Very true.








But Pong was first.

[acroig]

Originally Posted by Skynet

What matters is when you have the technology, you need to be very careful in your choices on how you use it, how you chose to have it compete and proliferate in the marketplace.

If you don't and decide that you can dictate the market direction and bet wrong, you will end up dead. 3dfx is a prime example of this.

3dfx died due to lack of execution, did they not? Yes, I get your Glide example but I don't think it applies here. Physx means $ for nV who owns the tech. I see little incentive for them to give it away.

I do think that, someday, nV will open source the SDK.

[ChrisRay]

3dfX actually death actually had little to do with glide. More to do with their massive debt they created aftering switching to STB. Which pissed their partners off. And their inability to get features supported in a timely fashion.

[acroig]

Originally Posted by caveman-jim

Very true. But Pong was first.

You deserve an infraction for that!

Oh, wait.......

[Skynet]

Nolan Bushnell FTW.

3dfx's death can't be attributed to one decision, or one failed aspect of their tech. They failed because they tried to control every aspect of their business, and the market moved faster than they could keep up. Which is incredibly ironic, because a little company called Nvidia was a significant force that helped see the demise of 3dfx.

[SIrPauly]

Originally Posted by caveman-jim

It was originally design to, but the switched rendering path late in development and couldn't add it back in befor launch.

I read that somehow nVidia was to blame for this as well. Strange -- because nVidia didn't even exist yet, hehe!

[ChrisRay]

Originally Posted by Skynet

Nolan Bushnell FTW.

3dfx's death can't be attributed to one decision, or one failed aspect of their tech. They failed because they tried to control every aspect of their business, and the market moved faster than they could keep up. Which is incredibly ironic, because a little company called Nvidia was a significant force that helped see the demise of 3dfx.

STB is still what killed their business in the OEM space, And most of their profitability which led to debt. 3dFX made alot of mistakes. But having Glide wasn't really one of them which ended up causing them to go out of business.

[SIrPauly]

I don't disagree,

What it was for me was the lack of execution coupled with the lack of flexibility, diversity and OEM vision over-all. They couldn't with-stand the brunt of the delay and couldn't sell enough product due to strong competition from nVidia's GeForce2, GeForce2MX, OEM's and ATI's Radeon 64 Vivo and Radeon 32 DDR, OEM's.

Sadly, they died and said my good byes on that Friday in December of 2000. The day the 3dfx culture was no more.

[SIrPauly]

An article about Batman gate, hehe!

http://brightsideofnews.com/news/200...-analyzed.aspx

Reading it now.

[SIrPauly]

Great data from Tim Sweeney:

# UE3 does not support MSAA on Windows DirectX 9, because UE3's use of deferred shadowing and post-processing techniques requires explicit support for frame buffer resolves, which DirectX9 lacks.
# UE3 does support MSAA on Windows DirectX 10, using its explicit support for frame buffer resolves. The support is general to all compliant DirectX 10 hardware. However, because of the way it operates on full-resolution MSAA buffers, there's room for improvement, and good chance a typical UE3 licensee shipping a major Windows game will customize it.
# UE3 does support MSAA on Xbox 360, using its explicit support for frame buffer resolves. This is very well optimized for our usage scenario (MSAA scene rendering followed by non-MSAA shadowing and post-processing).

The X-box 360 mystery is solved -- instead off offering evil nVidia -- there is logic -- go figure and how can that be?

[Skynet]

Is this true?

What got AMD seriously aggravated was the fact that the first step of this code is done on all AMD hardware: "'Amusingly', it turns out that the first step is done for all hardware (even ours) whether AA is enabled or not! So it turns out that NVidia's code for adding support for AA is running on our hardware all the time - even though we're not being allowed to run the resolve code!
So… They've not just tied a very ordinary implementation of AA to their h/w, but they've done it in a way which ends up slowing our hardware down (because we're forced to write useless depth values to alpha most of the time...)!"

[SIrPauly]

WOW! What an article!

[SIrPauly]

Nice AMD data, hehe!

They have a beef but its still good to see an in-game AA option -- it's too bad there are politics so all the PC gamers could of enjoyed it.

[SIrPauly]

That was really a good article and tried to offer many sides of a complicated issue.

[NIGELG]

Originally Posted by SIrPauly

That was really a good article and tried to offer many sides of a complicated issue.

And what is your conclusion based on all this data??....Or do you need more data??

[SIrPauly]

My view hasn't changed too much because for me personally was on ATI's side --- and don't think the AA should be used politically considering it would of been a bit of work and support to have ATI users have in-game AA. I said this in the other thread but not too many noticed. But my view means nothing -- absolutely nothing.

What some do is confuse my point-of-view with what I think nVidia's point-of-view is -- as the same. What I desire doesn't translate into anything except fruitcake speculative opinion on a forum and nothing more.

However, still try to see nVidia's point-of-view, leverage, and still a great thing to be pro-active for their customer base as a whole. Can't simply disregard some good and blanket it as bad over-all considering the title wouldn't have had in-game AA to start with. Pro-active is great over-all even though some methods may be questionable.

Also see a lot of marketing in this from AMD's side to try to place the good guy card on themselves and the bad guy card on nVidia as a whole. It's AMD that doesn't STFU about this and what is the big deal really considering their fan-base can still enjoy AA after all? The last straw or just PR speak to divide? As nVidia may of taken advantage of the in-game AA -- ATI's PR may be trying to take advantage of this, imho.

Take in the marketing about nVidia not really caring about gamers retort --WTF was that? It's almost like they're setting emotional depth chargers for the gaming community, hehe!

Blame pies -- I see slices that go around. Certainly not ideal -- not even close.

[Sasquach]

So i basically see these conclusions:

-Epic games is retarded for making a broken/half working AA system that relies on others to get working rather than having it work out of the box. So they get some of the blame for making things more complicated than it should.

-Nvidia has such awesome PR and dev relations that they are able to leverage that and kind of spin it to their advantage. They get into the good wll of others and at times seem to be able to toss in a few benefits for themselves. They get some of the blame for trying to unfairly work things to their advantage. They can be the big friendly giant that everyone loves but they seem to want to be the big controlling giant that only choose who to love.

-Eidos is dumb enough to let others do their work for them and they just kinda sit in the middle and pretend they're not at fault. They sit back and try to justify their actions while letting everyon else sling dirt at each other. They get some of the blame for not even bothering to create a standardized AA code that would avoid this whole batmangate.

-AMD/ATI doesnt sit back and watch their dev relations blow up. They do stuff, but they seem to be lazy and/or resource starved that they only do what is required. If its just sending cards out, they'll just do that. Their dev relations just do enough to get by, and its something thats starting to bite them in the ass. Then they cry foul when things dont go their way. So AMD/ATI gets some of the blame for being lazy or slow on the dev side of things and being whiny little brats. They need to step up their dev relations and STFU.

All in all, everyone is to blame for this whole mess.

IF i was to choose the order of blame (1 being who gets the most blame) it'd be:
1.) Epic games (For their UE3 which is the primary source of this whole mess)
2.) Eidos (For not making the AA code themselves)
3 and 4 i dunno...do u blame nvidia for the vendor ID check for somewhat trivial (if true) AA code that anyone could have made up for UE3? Or do you blame AMD/ATI for not doing anything prior to the game's launch? Chickenn and Egg scenario between these 2 imo.

[Sound_Card]

Originally Posted by NIGELG

And what is your conclusion based on all this data??....Or do you need more data??

Considering how he just responded to you, his conclusion is still left wide open for interpretation.
However, when NV responds, provides the "needed data" it's welcomed. When ATi speaks out, they I quote "They don't STFU".

They are just playing the good guy card. Never mind being concerned with their customer base. They are just trying to create market confusion and negative air.

[Argoon1981]

So making all this deal open and asking Eidos and the developer to support AA on ATI cards (on the menu) is not being concerned with their customer base?

They are certainly making use of this situation to try to make Nvidia look bad but Nvidia really brought it on them by making that vendor ID lock.

[Treeckcold57]

Three reasons...MONEY...MARKETING...SELFISH.

Also, Epic company didn't make it AA proper just right and there are lot of games are using Unreal Engine 3. Failed.

[SIrPauly]

Originally Posted by Argoon1981

So making all this deal open and asking Eidos and the developer to support AA on ATI cards (on the menu) is not being concerned with their customer base?

They are certainly making use of this situation to try to make Nvidia look bad but Nvidia really brought it on them by making that vendor ID lock.

Sure, as nVidia tried to take advantage of the vendor ID lock -- AMD is trying to take advantage of this opportunity to blanket nVidia's developer relations advantage or selling point, imho.

[acroig]

"A war of words recently broke out between AMD and nVidia over Eidos using nVidia's code for Anti-Aliasing implementation in Batman: Arkham Asylum. There is a large discussion going on over at various Internet forums, but we decided to take a deep breath and get to the bottom of Batmangate.

In the past 48 hours, we talked with Chris Hook [Senior Manager Public Relations, AMD], Richard Huddy [WW Developer Relations Manager, AMD], Bryan Del Rizzo [GeForce Public Relations Manager, nVidia] and Brian Burke [Public Relations Manager, nVidia]. We have also discussed the situation with Tim Sweeney, the creator of the game engine and three game developers who commented on the matter under the condition of anonymity. In order to keep the matters unbiased, one developer comes from a team which recently released a The Way It's Meant To Be Played title that scored excellent reviews and runs great on both ATI and nVidia hardware. In fact, runs on ATI's Eyefinity technology even though the developer didn't work with ATI on implementation of Eyefinity. The second developer is working on a DirectX 11 title set to be released in 2010. And finally, the third developer may even come on-the-record [in that case, we'll update the article]."

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news...-analyzed.aspx

[SIrPauly]

Originally Posted by Sound_Card

Considering how he just responded to you, his conclusion is still left wide open for interpretation.
However, when NV responds, provides the "needed data" it's welcomed. When ATi speaks out, they I quote "They don't STFU".

They are just playing the good guy card. Never mind being concerned with their customer base. They are just trying to create market confusion and negative air.

This is how I feel personally:

My view hasn't changed too much because for me personally was on ATI's side --- and don't think the AA should be used politically considering it would of been a bit of work and support to have ATI users have in-game AA. I said this in the other thread but not too many noticed. But my view means nothing -- absolutely nothing.

Do I think it was a low blow from nVidia? Yes.

Do I like it? No

Do I think nVidia gets questionable at times -- especially when they don't have the hardware advantage? Yes

Do I think it is leverage? Yes

Do I think nVidia is disingenuous at times? Yes

How much clearer can someone be? But I don't offer emotional knee-jerk views and try to be some-what constructive.

Try to think a bit:

How does airing out dirty laundry to the community help things? To offer the illusion how good ATI is morally and nvidia is a bunch of low blow scoundrels -- and why certain titles shine on nVidia's developer relations. Attack the selling point.

Why say nVidia doesn't really care about gamers?

Because take advantage of product launched that it is obvious that ATI cares because our products are geared for gamers and not scientific applications that are boring. They actually attacked double precision and ECC in their own marketing documents as a bad thing to sell product now to the gamer.

What do you think these guys do? It's about selling product right now -- for ATI and nVidia -- and you're just a number -- just like me, imho.