Any word on when Mantle + TrueAudio will launch for Thief?

[OCGuy]

Motsm - Recently there has been a trend where information regarding upcoming product releases is completely fabricated, then repeated and spread as fact. Mantle was supposed to be the next Iphone. "Free sync" was supposed to be real.

The image being non-AMD isnt the problem, that is easy to see. The problem is someone stole an image, and passed it off as a diagram of what TrueAudio will do.

When these things arent caught, they inevitably are cross-posted to another forum, and then the bad blogs pick it up. There is no room for it.

 

[Erenhardt]

You're attributing something to AMD true audio that AMD has never, NOT ONCE, stated in their briefings or press materials. I just gave them a once over via google. The quote you made is from an AT article stating what a DSP can potentially do. It was never stated by AMD that trueaudio will do this. It is interesting that you left the context out of the quote you took from that AT article.

But, instead, you take an internet image, modify it, and take credit for it to suggest otherwise. Then you take an AT article quote out of context to suggest that true audio does these things. When AMD has never made such a specification. And the article at AT which you quoted was merely specifying what a DSP can potentially do. When AMD describes true audio, they focus on the programmable aspect and they have never, to my knowledge, mentioned sound reflections or ray tracing. Yet here you are trying to make it sound like AMD has in fact done these things. I've looked over AMD's material for true audio and cannot find a source for this. Since you clearly manipulated internet images, i'm guessing that you can't find an AMD related source either.

Let the games continue, though.

Wait what? You say Ryan's Smith articles on Anandtech are speculations.. whoow, hold on a minute.
Are all the things in all his articles baseless claims, or is it only when it suits your taste?

And when I find a source straight from AMD, you will come back and say "those are all lies, lies from AMD as usual - track record of lies!"? Give me a break!

 

[blackened23]

In fact I didn't say that. Maybe you can read what I posted. I said that Ryan Smith described what a DSP can do. Then he went on to say that AMD is tight lipped on what true audio actually does. Never, not once, did Ryan Smith attribute Ray tracing or reflections to true audio. He was discussing DSPs on a general basis in terms of potential.

You know what. Your games. I'm tired of playing them. Tiring. Not worth the energy. You go on and have your fun. Not worth it.

 

[monstercameron]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-the-making-of-killzone-shadow-fall

MADDER - Material Dependent Early Reflections

Unless we are assuming that the DSP in the ps4 is different from what we get in hawaii gpus or they are doing the sound processing on the "weak" jaguar cpu cores. If it is true audio silicon then it matches with Erenhardt's claims...

 

[motsm]

I guess that means the possibilities are endless, "the sky is the limit" (this quote is not mine either, credit to: unknown)
I agree that amd is not giving much details yet. There is barely anything on their web about TrueAudio. But from anadtech artciles, its clear they are aiming for some kind of soundwave physx.

I said it is possible as well, just as it is possible on a CPU or CUDA. If it's a feature that AMD will push for, or TrueAudio will entice someone to make, we don't know yet.

So all I'm saying, is it should not yet be attributed to TrueAudio directly, as we don't know if something like this will exist or not in the near future. If someone announces such a thing tomorrow however, then I'd be glad to see it, and the conversation could continue.

Motsm - Recently there has been a trend where information regarding upcoming product releases is completely fabricated, then repeated and spread as fact. Mantle was supposed to be the next Iphone. "Free sync" was supposed to be real.

Yes, I agree that editing the images was too far, as it implied it was official. I just wasn't against using the images to explain what early reflections were in a broad sense. So perhaps I didn't make that clear.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-the-making-of-killzone-shadow-fall

MADDER - Material Dependent Early Reflections

Unless we are assuming that the DSP in the ps4 is different from what we get in hawaii gpus or they are doing the sound processing on the "weak" jaguar cpu cores. If it is true audio silicon then it matches with Erenhardt's claims...

As has been said many times, it's possible, but has yet to be done or announced in relation to TrueAudio. This is what I said in the other TrueAudio thread about that feature though.

From what I am getting from the article, it only processes the players gunfire with early reflections, may only use 1 ray per surface, and it seems the ray disappears when it hits it's first material (It's not real clear on that though). So it sounds like it's a very limited implementation, but it's still an improvement over having none at all, so I can't knock em I suppose. Ideally, you'd want each sound source casting ray spheres that would bounce around the environment while being filtered by each surface's material properties they encountered, and they wouldn't disappear until the surfaces absorptive properties along with it's natural decay silenced the sounds rays. I guess a single calculation per material is an alright workaround at this stage, but having it limited to only the players gun fire is an unfortunate compromise.

 

[Erenhardt]

Motsm - Recently there has been a trend where information regarding upcoming product releases is completely fabricated, then repeated and spread as fact. Mantle was supposed to be the next Iphone. "Free sync" was supposed to be real.

The image being non-AMD isnt the problem, that is easy to see. The problem is someone stole an image, and passed it off as a diagram of what TrueAudio will do.

When these things arent caught, they inevitably are cross-posted to another forum, and then the bad blogs pick it up. There is no room for it.

Yup. There are AMD watermarks all over the picture. All with all kinds of ®, TM, USPTO symbols. Seriously...

 

[OCGuy]

Monster's link specifically references CPU power.
Wow.

 

[blackened23]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-the-making-of-killzone-shadow-fall

MADDER - Material Dependent Early Reflections

Unless we are assuming that the DSP in the ps4 is different from what we get in hawaii gpus or they are doing the sound processing on the "weak" jaguar cpu cores. If it is true audio silicon then it matches with Erenhardt's claims...

http://www.maximumpc.com/everything_you_wanted_know_about_amd’s_new_trueaudio_technology_2013

Sony designed their audio hardware from what I gather, not AMD. In fact, here's an article related to just that - PS4's and XB1's audio hardware -

MPC: I'm guessing Xbox One will not have TrueAudio as Microsoft has its SHAPE audio engine but what about PS4?

AMD : Sony and Microsoft would be in a better position to comment on the functionality of their audio hardware. I wouldn’t want to answer on their behalf.

Seems it isn't true audio. I'm not 100% sure though. It could be or it may not be, but this statement from AMD marketing seems to imply that it isn't true audio. I have not seen a statement by AMD, anywhere, that true audio hardware is used in the PS4 or XB1. Now here is where the games with circumstantial evidence begins. Like I said, not really interested in participating in circumstantial evidence / modified internet image games. Have at it. Too annoying and not worth the energy expenditure. Whatever.

 

[OCGuy]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-the-making-of-killzone-shadow-fall

MADDER - Material Dependent Early Reflections

Unless we are assuming that the DSP in the ps4 is different from what we get in hawaii gpus or they are doing the sound processing on the "weak" jaguar cpu cores. If it is true audio silicon then it matches with Erenhardt's claims...

Care to quote something True audio specific?

 

[Erenhardt]

http://www.maximumpc.com/everything_you_wanted_know_about_amd’s_new_trueaudio_technology_2013

Sony designed their audio hardware from what I gather, not AMD. In fact, here's an article related to just that - PS4's and XB1's audio hardware -

There are many players involved in TrueAudio - both in hardware and software implementation:
"For their part AMD has already lined up Wwise developer Audiokinetic for TrueAudio support, and 3rd party developer GenAudio is producing plugins for Wwise, FMOD, and more."
Its not like AMD is doing all that work, opposite, its all outsourced and done with AMD's assist. I would expect full detailed feature list on TrueAudio api release.

 

[monstercameron]

Care to quote something True audio specific?

Unless we are assuming that the DSP in the ps4 is different from what we get in hawaii gpus or they are doing the sound processing on the "weak" jaguar cpu cores

and

If it is true audio silicon then it matches with Erenhardt's claims...

notice the qualifiers...

 

[motsm]

There are many players involved in TrueAudio - both in hardware and software implementation:
"For their part AMD has already lined up Wwise developer Audiokinetic for TrueAudio support, and 3rd party developer GenAudio is producing plugins for Wwise, FMOD, and more."
Its not like AMD is doing all that work, opposite, its all outsourced and done with AMD's assist. I would expect full detailed feature list on TrueAudio api release.

Wwise has a convolution reverb already, I can't say for how long exactly, but AMD has said they will run it through TrueAudio. Genaudio are the people behind TrueAudio's binaural headphone features. Fmod hasn't announced anything specific as far as I know, but they have a lot of basic filters and effects already that will now run on the GPU instead of CPU through TrueAudio.

:Edit: I'll add that Thief uses Wwise currently, and will be using that convolution reverb once TrueAudio is patched in. What I haven't been able to find out however, is whether or not the game is already using the convolution reverb, but running it on the CPU.

 

[Erenhardt]

In fact I didn't say that. Maybe you can read what I posted. I said that Ryan Smith described what a DSP can do.

from article:

The advantages of utilizing the DSP are fairly straightforward

in the article about TrueAudio, below the graph with TrueAudio DSP, the is relating to TrueAudio DPS in my book.

But my English is below average US elementary school level, so I may be wrong here. Feel free to clear this for me, but with something more than "I feel Ryan was speculating"

 

[Phynaz]

The level designers had the geometry data in their head before the software had it.

Your point?

I thought it was obvious. You don't need the data from the GPU for audio.

 

[Phynaz]

WOW, so much fuss over the pic I pasted?

Over-reacting much? Plagiarism? Where did I exactly claim the picture is mine? There is a source on it, so it is definitely not plagiarism. Nowhere I claimed original research (which are not related to topic) as mine. Why the hostility again?

Do you have the original creators permission to take their work, modify it, and post it, claiming they are the source?

 

[OCGuy]

Waiting for that source, which is a forum rule as well as common sense.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

I thought it was obvious. You don't need the data from the GPU for audio.

Which is why current sound solutions go through walls.

 

[Gloomy]

Patch incoming on the 18th.

 

[motsm]

Which is why current sound solutions go through walls.

GPU's have nothing to do with it.

:Edit: EAX supported occlusion in 4.0, perhaps earlier but really not sure. Not many games took advantage of it though. If I recall correctly the first Thief had basic occlusion as well, although it wasn't filtered. You could even lean against doors to press your ear to them, and hear what was on the other side better.

 

[Ryan Smith]

Oh my. Perhaps it's best I chime in, as you guys seem to be getting rather excited over what should be a straightforward concept.

The basis of the TrueAudio hardware is the array of Tensilica HiFi EP DSPs. Those are an off-the-shelf DSP solution programmable using C and ASM, and are specifically optimized for audio processing.

The important bit here is that they're a programmable solution, not fixed function. So what effects can be processed on them is generally limited only by the processing power of the hardware and the abilities of the programmer working with them.

Everything we've listed in our articles are the kinds of effects that can be done on the DSPs if the time is taken to write it into a game's audio engine. Some of those effects are more expensive than others (and more asset-intensive), so whether any given game uses those effects is going to be based on in part not only whether the engine supports it, but whether the DSPs are performant enough to handle the specific sequence of effects and the number of streams a game will require.

For the moment AMD is targeting middleware providers such as Audiokinetic and their Wwise middleware. So if you want to get an idea of what we may see being executed on TrueAudio, I'd suggest looking at the Wwise feature set. But the ultimate potential of the hardware is up to the programmers and how they choose to use it. Especially if the DSPs are Turing Complete.

]Unless we are assuming that the DSP in the ps4 is different from what we get in hawaii gpus or they are doing the sound processing on the "weak" jaguar cpu cores

The DSPs in the PS4 are the same Tensilica DSPs that are in TrueAudio equipped APUs and GPUs. Whether the APIs and plumbing are identical we do not know at this time; but it's close enough that Sony has no problem with AMD noting that the PS4's audio DSPs are based on TrueAudio. http://www.anandtech.com/show/7513/ps4-spec-update-audio-dsp-is-based-on-amds-trueaudio

 

[motsm]

Oh my. Perhaps it's best I chime in, as you guys seem to be getting rather excited over what should be a straightforward concept. *snip for space*

Yes, this is what we have been saying, but it seems the arguments are about speculated potential vs confirmed features. Hopefully with your post summarizing everything however, people will stop with the semantics.

 

[Hitman928]

Thanks, Ryan

 

[Phynaz]

Which is why current sound solutions go through walls.

It has nothing to do with having GPU geometry. Aureal had environmental occlusion 20 years ago, before there was anything called a GPU.

 

[motsm]

So it turns out that the convolution reverb that will be enabled in the TrueAudio patch will also have the option to run on the CPU. Glad to see they aren't locking the feature out, as it's a Wwise effect and should run on modern CPU's just fine. I thought they might make it exclusive simply to enforce TrueAudio's appearance.

http://www.legitreviews.com/amd-mantle-trueaudio-patch-thief-coming-march-18th_137560

With all that said, convolution reverb won't offer anything earth shattering in a game, but if you have the CPU headroom, why not.

:Edit: Not that anyone probably cares, but the impulse responses were likely recorded by AudioEase, who I'd say are one of the best in that field.

:Edit: Ok, sounds like their AudioEase license is only for the outdoor spaces library, which is a bit disappointing. The rest may be done in house, but who knows, an improperly recorded IR can be a lot worse than a standard algorithmic reverb, and they are extremely common. Hopefully they sourced their IR's properly.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

It has nothing to do with having GPU geometry. Aureal had environmental occlusion 20 years ago, before there was anything called a GPU.

Who is using that now?