Batman AA fiasco: Who's telling the truth?

[zagood]

In a few years we won't even have to use these arguments. nVidia will stop making add-in cards and instead will develop an all-in-one GPGPU architecture from the ground up to wage war against x86. They will call it the Soljačić. It will render games and process distributed computing faster than anyone could possibly imagine.

However, it will take 5 minutes to load Outlook 2013, since AMD created proprietary code that allows DX12 to accelerate loading of the three-dimensional Aero interface.

Game developers will treat the Soljačić (commonly referred to as the Soulja) as another console, so in effect games will have to be optimized for ATi and nV hardware seperately. With nV's acquisition of Crytek, their toolset will make the switch much easier than anyone thought, and will push Sony's Playstation 4 to the fringes where only people addicted to Eight Days will still be playing it.

A full 75% of American males between ages 15-27 will get 3dVision implants, subsidized by a rider on the Universal Health Care Bill (passed in November 2012). 99% of all Koreans will get one just because it's so darn cool.

And PhysX will make cloth look really neat.

 

[jsadie]

I'd prefer it if TWIMTPB stuck to things that nV is exclusively capable of, because when it starts bleeding into hardware independent things like this AA codepath, it really starts to become cheeseball and stinks of business deals and Quid Pro Quo like the iPhone/AT&T situation.

But hey. TWIMTBP is a PR campaign. It's about market share, not the hardware.

1 full Cheese Wheel to Rocksteady for their central role in this fiasco. They allowed their product to be swept up into this maelstrom of 3rd party marketing drivel and become a conduit for it.

1/2 of a wheel to nVidia. You're so frantically swinging your big green dick, Jen-Hsun, whacking anyone and everyone including your own customers, that you swung it underneath your own foot. Again.

1/2 of a wheel to ATi. Quit being a bunch of whiny ass tittie babies and compete. Your PR campaign sucks. your AIB partners suck. "Get in The Game!"? Take your own frackin' advice.

I sure as heck would hope that ATI also consider doing this with Dirt2 and DX 11 features - since they seem to have to leg up on NVIDIA in that respect.

But - they can only do this if there are DX features that the Dirt2 Engine does not include natively and requires custom coding but ATI engineers - try and beat NVIDIA at their own game instead of crying about being caught with your pants down on the AA issue

 

[palladium]

Some reverse engineering may help here. If the AA is implemented using common industry standards then it would be reasonable to guess that nV paid Eidos for exclusive in-game AA for their hardware. If not ( i.e. there is a custom AA implementation written by nV), then one could argue that nV is protecting their investment by locking out competitor's hardware. Given that UE3 engine does not natively support AA under DX9 (only DX10), I can see why a custom AA implementation is needed, given that a good proportion of gamers still use XP.

 

[Lonyo]

People saying AMD should write its own code:
That's a bad bad bad idea.
If you start making it so GPU companies have to write code for (arguably) basic features in games, developers are going to either stop caring, or segment the market so some games support features for ATI while some games support NV features (more than we are already getting with things like PhysX).

I'd rather that developers wrote code that ran on both company's cards and conformed to a standard (be it OGL or DX), and any card that supported those standards would be able to run with any/all features enabled.

People who WANT ATI to write their own AA code are crazy, because it only encourages this sort of behaviour that can only harm the consumer.

 

[dflynchimp]

okay people there's something wrong with the AT forum servers at the moment. If you click "post" and the screen doesn't reload, DO NOT CLICK POST MULTIPLE TIMES. Trust me, your post has been logged, the screen just won't refresh. This thread is now in dire need of clean-up due to the multi-clone posts of people who got too hasty. I know it's not your faults but if you just quit the page then reload the forum you'll see that one click was more than enough to get your word in.

 

[BFG10K]

Duplicate posts have been removed.

Video Mod BFG10K.

 

[jvroig]

okay people there's something wrong with the AT forum servers at the moment. If you click "post" and the screen doesn't reload, DO NOT CLICK POST MULTIPLE TIMES. Trust me, your post has been logged, the screen just won't refresh. This thread is now in dire need of clean-up due to the multi-clone posts of people who got too hasty. I know it's not your faults but if you just quit the page then reload the forum you'll see that one click was more than enough to get your word in.

Well that explains it, I thought Lonyo was just plain hopping mad at the people who want AMD to write their own code

Personally, I hate what NVIDIA did here. That doesn't stop me from being excited about Fermi's launch (which certainly won't stop me from getting a 5850 - as soon as I can find one!), but I just wish they hadn't done that.

 

[Martimus]

Batman AA is not our property.

So you do indeed work for nVidia.

I had always thought that you worked for AMD since you seem to push more people away from nVidia with your abrasive style of overstating everything than you convince people to use their products. I know that due to your posts (and a few others here), I have a predisposition to avoid nVidia cards in the future. You have pushed me away from their products at least, but it is just a predisposition to use another product and not so much a hatred of them. So I may still buy one, but it will have to be much better in my mind, and not on nearly equal footing.

 

[BFG10K]

So you do indeed work for nVidia.

I think Wreckage was quoting the article.

 

[yh125d]

Vendor locking (and I have no doubts that nvidia did just that) is very shitty, but I am very disappointed with ATI's dev relations. I knew it wasn't near as good as nvidias, but I didn't know it was that bad :|


Step up your game ATI!

 

[jvroig]

Vendor locking (and I have no doubts that nvidia did just that) is very shitty, but I am very disappointed with ATI's dev relations. I knew it wasn't near as good as nvidias, but I didn't know it was that bad :|


Step up your game ATI!

Agreed. Building better relationships with the community around you can only be good for your business.

Although, maybe this isn't representative of ATI/AMD's general relationship with devs? Or maybe cut them a little slack since they are in the red and perhaps need to focus what manpower they have to issues or concerns that they rate to be a little more pressing? You know, like a triage.

Don't really know anything concrete, just throwing around my 0.02. For all I know, ATI really could be treating devs like dirt.

 

[dflynchimp]

Duplicate posts have been removed.

Video Mod BFG10K.

BFG saves the day, hooray!

and jbroig it's not that ATI's relation is necessarily "bad". It's just that Nvidia happened to have struck a deal with B:AA developers that resulted in their being allowed to insert the vendor locking code. This is solely a business deal between Nvidia and friends. ATI meanwhile is being more than friendly to DX11 developers with their hardware and driver dev.

 

[Forumpanda]

I think Wreckage was quoting the article.

The way to tell is this: When what he is writing makes sense, then he is quoting someone else.

 

[jvroig]

@dflynchimp: Agreed. I was by no means trying to say ATI has lousy relations with devs. I was merely agreeing with the concept that building good relationships with the community around you is bound to be good for business. It was yh125d who seemed to say that ATI's dev relations are bad.

 

[jvroig]

The way to tell is this: When what he is writing makes sense, then he is quoting someone else.

I'm not sure if this was present in the old forum, but now that we've switched to vB, there should be an "ignore user" option if you really can't stand what he's saying... but with the amount of chatter from him and replies around his posts, the thread might start to not make sense if all you see are blanks instead of his posts.

 

[Elganja]

People saying AMD should write its own code:
That's a bad bad bad idea.
If you start making it so GPU companies have to write code for (arguably) basic features in games, developers are going to either stop caring, or segment the market so some games support features for ATI while some games support NV features (more than we are already getting with things like PhysX).

I'd rather that developers wrote code that ran on both company's cards and conformed to a standard (be it OGL or DX), and any card that supported those standards would be able to run with any/all features enabled.

People who WANT ATI to write their own AA code are crazy, because it only encourages this sort of behaviour that can only harm the consumer.

Agreed with what is bolded... BUT at the sametime people who expect NVIDA to just give away their code are also crazy.

 

[Idontcare]

Vendor locking (and I have no doubts that nvidia did just that) is very shitty, but I am very disappointed with ATI's dev relations. I knew it wasn't near as good as nvidias, but I didn't know it was that bad :|


Step up your game ATI!

Vendor locking indeed sucks for the consumer, I can't tell you the number of time I have gone to McDonalds wanting to order a Pepsi but all they serve is Coca-Cola.

 

[dflynchimp]

Vendor locking indeed sucks for the consumer, I can't tell you the number of time I have gone to McDonalds wanting to order a Pepsi but all they serve is Coca-Cola.

but I like Coca Cola!

In any case that analogy is a little forced. I think a better one is if Porsche were to secure a patent or contract of sorts to black leather seats, therein you can't buy any car other than a Porsche if you wanted black leather seats.

At least if you brought your own can of pepsi into McDonalds they'll probably let you drink it in their store provided you also ordered some food from them.

 

[Idontcare]

but I like Coca Cola!

In any case that analogy is a little forced. I think a better one is if Porsche were to secure a patent or contract of sorts to black leather seats, therein you can't buy any car other than a Porsche if you wanted black leather seats.

At least if you brought your own can of pepsi into McDonalds they'll probably let you drink it in their store provided you also ordered some food from them.

If I am a customer of McDonalds and I want a soft-drink I have little choice but to buy a Coca-Cola product.

If I am a customer of Eidos/Batman AA and I want anti-aliasing I have little choice but to buy an Nvidia product.

If I am a customer of McDonald's and I want to go to the trouble of bringing my own beverage, dealing with the associated hassles of remembering to bring it with me and the fact it won't likely be cold when I get there, etc, then sure I can bring a can of pepsi with me.

If I am a customer of Eidos/Batman AA and I want to go to the trouble of enabling anti-aliasing of every scene and object, dealing with the associated performance hit because smart-AA is not available, then sure I can use an AMD product.

From my perspective the analogies are pretty apropos. The difference is that in the case of McDonalds and Coca-Cola we have all grown accustomed to accepting this restriction in our consumer choices, and there is little fanboy flameage over the matter. Not so much with enthusiast graphic cards and PC games.

 

[dflynchimp]

If I am a customer of McDonalds and I want a soft-drink I have little choice but to buy a Coca-Cola product.

If I am a customer of Eidos/Batman AA and I want anti-aliasing I have little choice but to buy an Nvidia product.

If I am a customer of McDonald's and I want to go to the trouble of bringing my own beverage, dealing with the associated hassles of remembering to bring it with me and the fact it won't likely be cold when I get there, etc, then sure I can bring a can of pepsi with me.

If I am a customer of Eidos/Batman AA and I want to go to the trouble of enabling anti-aliasing of every scene and object, dealing with the associated performance hit because smart-AA is not available, then sure I can use an AMD product.

From my perspective the analogies are pretty apropos. The difference is that in the case of McDonalds and Coca-Cola we have all grown accustomed to accepting this restriction in our consumer choices, and there is little fanboy flameage over the matter. Not so much with enthusiast graphic cards and PC games.

lol I can't believe we're arguing over a McDo analogy. I'm gonna cut it short and stop on my end.

personally I think this thread has been answered and accounted for. Unless our dear Wreckage would like to continue the argument I think this thread should be closed before any more bad analogy arguments like ours crop up

 

[Dribble]

Storm in a teacup.

tbh it is blown out of proportion by the fanboys - you can have AA with ati cards, its just slightly harder to do because you need to go to ati control panel, and there is a bit higher performance hit, but the ati control panel isn't exactly hard to find and batman isn't demanding so performance shouldn't be a problem. I don't really understand what the big fuss is?

I doubt nvidia would have bothered adding the feature only they added physx and 3d vision, both of which suck performance. Hence if you want AA as well as physx and 3d vision then a more efficient AA method was worthwhile.

Sure nvidia could have enabled it for ati as well but they didn't - the developer could have written it themselves but they didn't - live with it - ati users can still use AA, all you are arguing about is where the button to turn it on sits.

 

[v8envy]

The big fuss is: it's a slippery slope to video hardware locked game features and exclusives on the PC and effectively the eventual death of PC gaming.

Anyway, the McD's analogy is flawed. Here's a better one:

Leo's Bait Shop gets Ford to cut a hole in the wall to allow their restaurants to service drive-through customers. As part of the deal Ford gets to install a sensor which blocks any non-Ford owner from going through the drive through. Non-Ford customers can either park and walk in, or get drive-through service by taping a "FORD" label over their real manufacturer's badge.

Reasonable from the vehicle manufacturer or bait shop owner standpoint? Sure. Anti-consumer? You betcha. Would I give my custom to either the shop or the car maker encouraging such practice? Oh hell no, and I'd do my best to convince others not to.

 

[Red Irish]

The big fuss is: it's a slippery slope to video hardware locked game features and exclusives on the PC and effectively the eventual death of PC gaming.

Anyway, the McD's analogy is flawed. Here's a better one:

Leo's Bait Shop gets Ford to cut a hole in the wall to allow their restaurants to service drive-through customers. As part of the deal Ford gets to install a sensor which blocks any non-Ford owner from going through the drive through. Non-Ford customers can either park and walk in, or get drive-through service by taping a "FORD" label over their real manufacturer's badge.

Reasonable from the vehicle manufacturer or bait shop owner standpoint? Sure. Anti-consumer? You betcha. Would I give my custom to either the shop or the car maker encouraging such practice? Oh hell no, and I'd do my best to convince others not to.

Yes, that is indeed a better analogy.

 

[Elganja]

The big fuss is: it's a slippery slope to video hardware locked game features and exclusives on the PC and effectively the eventual death of PC gaming.

Anyway, the McD's analogy is flawed. Here's a better one:

Leo's Bait Shop gets Ford to cut a hole in the wall to allow their restaurants to service drive-through customers. As part of the deal Ford gets to install a sensor which blocks any non-Ford owner from going through the drive through. Non-Ford customers can either park and walk in, or get drive-through service by taping a "FORD" label over their real manufacturer's badge.

Reasonable from the vehicle manufacturer or bait shop owner standpoint? Sure. Anti-consumer? You betcha. Would I give my custom to either the shop or the car maker encouraging such practice? Oh hell no, and I'd do my best to convince others not to.

that analogy is just as bad if not worse...

NVIDA isn't to blame here... AMD's and most of the people in here's anger is being directed towards the wrong company. NVIDIA just took advantage of the situation and AMD seems like they are upset they didn't/couldn't beat NVIDIA to the punch.

Everyone's beef should be with the UT3 game engine designers for not haveing AA built in natively. By them not doing it, they created the "segmented market".

 

[yh125d]

I suppose I should clear up my post, I didn't mean to imply that ATI treats devs bad, or don't cooperate with them very well, I meant to say that nvidia does it a lot better (and it seems they do not just in B:AA, but overall dev/nvidia experience), what with the supplying hardware and whatnot. After reading the articla I would bet that if I were a developer, I'd prefer to get most of my support from NV rather than ATI


Although ATIs shortcomings regarding dev relations might not be some policy philosophy, but just that they're somewhat strapped for cash and had to cut funding from that portion of their business (less freebie hardware to test with/less manpower working in tandem with devs), which would be understandable