Eidos to Remove Vendor ID Check from Batman to Allow ATI Cards and Anti-Aliasing?

[caveman-jim]

Richard Huddy, Sr., Manager Developer Relations at AMD, has been having an interesting conversation with Lars Weinand, Senior Technical Marketing Manager at NVIDIA, on the HEXUS forums regarding intellectual property (IP) and Batman: Arkham Asylum.

Lars,

Many of the points you've come back with have been well dealt with by other people here, but there is one snippet that deserves a swift response from me.

Originally Posted by Lars Weinand

Batman AA is not our property. It is owned by Eidos. It is up to Eidos to decide the fate of a feature that AMD refused to contribute too and QA for their customers, not NVIDIA.

If it is relatively trivial, Mr. Huddy should have done it himself. The Unreal engine does not support in game AA, so we added it and QAed it for our customers. As Eidos confirmed (Not allowed to post links here, but check PCper for Eidos' statement) AMD refused the same opportunity to support gamers with AA on AMD GPUs. I'm sure Mr. Huddy knows how important QA is for game developers. I recommend AMD starts working with developers to make their HW work in a proper way. That's not our job. We added functionality for NVIDIA GPUs into the game. We did not lock anything out. AMD just did not do their work. This happened with previous UE3 engine titles before, where ATI owners had to rename the executable to make AA work on that title (Bioshock in example). It’s not NVIDIA to blame here.

...

Lars Weinand, NVIDIA

I’m surprised and pleased by authorised NVIDIA spokesperson Lars Weinand’s clarification that “Batman AA is not our property. It is owned by Eidos. It is up to Eidos to decide the fate of a feature that AMD refused to contribute too and QA for their customers, not NVIDIA.”

AMD received an email dated Sept 29th at 5:22pm from Mr. Lee Singleton General Manager at Eidos Game Studios who stated that Eidos’ legal department is preventing Eidos from allowing ATI cards to run in-game antialiasing in Batman Arkham Asylum due to NVIDIA IP ownership issues over the antialiasing code, and that they are not permitted to remove the vendor ID filter.

NVIDIA has done the right thing in bowing to public pressure to renounce anti-competitive sponsorship practices and given Eidos a clear mandate to remove the vendor ID detect code that is unfairly preventing many of Eidos’ customers from using in-game AA, as per Mr. Weinand’s comments. I would encourage Mr. Singleton at Eidos to move quickly and decisively to remove NVIDIA’s vendor ID detection.

It’s also worth noting here that AMD have made efforts both pre-release and post-release to allow Eidos to enable the in-game antialiasing code - there was no refusal on AMD’s part to enable in game AA IP in a timely manner.

I trust that you will also confirm that no similar activity will take place on any other games?


Richard Huddy, Worldwide Developer Relations Manager, AMD's GPU Division

Grab yer popcorn and let's see how this plays out @ Hexus.com

Will nVidia confirm no more shenanigans? Will Eidos save AMD Gamers from jaggie eye-death? Tune in for this and more, same bat time, same bat channel!

[FiggyG]

Well, this got a lot more interesting. I'm being an optimist and saying that it's going to be fixed because I want it to be. It's sad that NVIDIA is pointing their finger at AMD when it is their own legal department keeping the vendor id check in the game. Either communications is broken in the company, or they are lying to make the competition and their partner look bad.

[gamekill]

I am neither nVidia nor ATi fanboy. But I believe nVidia is the right one in this case. If their programmers and engineers worked out an FSAA code and handed it over to Eidos, they have the right to lock it to their cards. Eidos (or whoever coded the game itself) is the one being an ******* here. THEY should have coded the FSAA themselves, for their game.

[Sound_Card]

We need more data!

Huge contradiction pointed out there by Huddy. I don't think the NV guy expected him to spill under the table emails. Pretty much makes him look foolish.

[FiggyG]

Originally Posted by gamekill

I am neither nVidia nor ATi fanboy. But I believe nVidia is the right one in this case. If their programmers and engineers worked out an FSAA code and handed it over to Eidos, they have the right to lock it to their cards. Eidos (or whoever coded the game itself) is the one being an ******* here. THEY should have coded the FSAA themselves, for their game.

I think that you are missing the point.

NVIDIA wrote the code and licensed it to Eidos

Eidos couldn't implement the code with other manufacturers hardware due to license with NVIDIA

AMD exposed that there was a VENDOR ID check preventing it from working properly with their hardware.

NVIDIA blamed it not working on AMD hardware due to AMD not doing their developer relations with Eidos job adequately, not that fact that Eidos could not legally use it on competitor hardware.

NVIDIA says that it is up to Eidos when it is not.

NVIDIA does not know their inner workings or is outright lying with their PR.

[caveman-jim]

Originally Posted by gamekill

If their programmers and engineers worked out an FSAA code and handed it over to Eidos,

The crucial part is bolded - nVidia state that the game IP belongs to Eidos; Eidos previously said they can't remove the vendor ID check because the code belongs to nVidia.

Caught out? Or misunderstanding?

[kn00tcn]

why cant batman just be like mirrors edge... no AA locks, no cripples, just physx on cpu = slow

[spyre]

Meh you can use ingame AA with the retail game already with ATI Tray Tools and changing the card ID.

[noko]

lol, great job Huddy! I am sure Eidos will remove the feature unless they really want more folks hounding them, besides Nvidia gave them the green light and kinda put them on the spot of the whole issue.

[gamekill]

Ah ok, if nvidia completely gave the code's property away to Eidos, then I agree, Eidos should just remove the vendor id check if they wish, and nvidia shouldn't complain about it. Got it!

[VW_Factor]

Originally Posted by caveman-jim

The crucial part is bolded - nVidia state that the game IP belongs to Eidos; Eidos previously said they can't remove the vendor ID check because the code belongs to nVidia.

Caught out? Or misunderstanding?

I bet one of those cases of left hand doesnt know what the right is doing..

I'd be willing to bet, that the PR guys dont have a clue who owns what..

Eidos could have lied, not wanting to remove it, so they dont piss off nVidia who gave them AA code... nVidia could have lied to pass it off, so they wont look bad..

In the end, still doesnt negate the fact that AMD could have once again stepped up to the plate and done some work with a Dev and gotten things done. I dont care if they were discouraged from doing it and were just too lazy to push the issue (Eidos missing a large audience with great hardware), or whether they just simply refused.

How many times has this kind of thing happened? Whatever is causing it.. It needs to stop.

[Humus]

Originally Posted by VW_Factor

In the end, still doesnt negate the fact that AMD could have once again stepped up to the plate and done some work with a Dev and gotten things done.

How exactly? Break into Rocksteady offices and modify the code? IHVs can't just go around and do things on their own.

[caveman-jim]

Eidos should have refused to use the AA code with a vendor ID lock in. They didn't for whatever reason; likely for the developer assistance in physX enhancements and so forth.

This is Developer relations at its worst.

Should AMD have offered an AA solution? Yes.
Did AMD offer an AA solution? No official word yet. From the looks of, not before the game released, but two weeks after when it was time to kick up a stink. True/False? Don't know, can't get a definitive answer from anyone.

[acroig]

Originally Posted by caveman-jim

Should AMD have offered an AA solution? Yes.
Did AMD offer an AA solution? No official word yet.

I know lots of our members love conspiracy theories so let me ask this question: if ATI had offered an AA solution before the game shipped and it was refused for whatever reason don't you think AMD PR would have let the world know by now to make nV look even worse?

[caveman-jim]

Richard Huddy said they did in the Tweet-Off.

Perhaps they are sitting on their hands now that the objective has been achieved; not fixing the problem (no, that would be ) but putting the spotlight on the issues.

[acroig]

Originally Posted by caveman-jim

Richard Huddy said they did in the Tweet-Off.

Fine, Eidos denied it. If it had been true would AMD not have shown proof?

Has the objective been achieved? I don't see Eidos patching the game.

[caveman-jim]

Have a read of this, shows the pre-release Emails and conversations (link under quote):

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...)!"

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news....aspx?pageid=1

So Batman performs less than optimally on AMD cards because the 'nVidia IP' MSAA implementation (which is perfectly standard, and is how both companies recommend it be implemented) is half-performed on AMD card- they are just locked out of the render path to actually apply it.

The nVidia implementation of MSAA in Batman Arkham Asylum forces AMD cards to perform the first part of the calculations, which are never used and the result never shown (MSAA).

Wouldn't it have been better to stop the code execution before the first path? Why position the vendor lock out after beginning code execution of implementing MSAA?

I'm willing to concede there might be a valid technical reason that all cards, no matter of final render path, need to execute the nVidia MSAA alpha operations.... but that's really suspicious.