It's just that from a consumer standpoint it sucks to heck and I can see that if this were allowed to continue it is the consumers who stand to lose out. That's why I'm opposed to it. Not out of some misguided support for a faceless corporation but because I'm looking out for my own interest.
I haven't felt left out on any of it for a long time now, around the time I ditched my 1800xt. This is one area everyone in this forum knows is a factor before they buy their parts. It is one of the reasons, one of the main reasons, people are willing to pay a bit more for nVidia. This is what nV is going for, and if you check out the gaming forums, people are not upset with nV or Eidos over this situation overwhelmingly. This is just part of the gaming market now.
And taken another way, can we assume that you think it's ok for ATI to ask developers to lock out nVidia games from being able to run DX11? After all, ATI is helping developers implement DX11 in about 20 games with the list likely growing. Why should ATI spend resources to benefit nVidia?
Any code written by ATi absolutely they have the right to lock it. That said, I haven't heard of them authoring any code for any of the upcoming DX11 titles at all, just offering support and guidance. Either way though, any code ATi writes themselves should absolutely fall under their guidelines for usage. In a real world sense, that is locking out about 70% of PC gamers at the moment though, so it will likely take a much larger incentive for them to get it done then just donating the code at this point.
I don't think there'd be as much screaming if Eidos required ONLY nvidia hardware on the box. Unfortunately, ATI hardware is there not only as minimum but also recommended.
Not only does ATi run the game extremely well, it runs AA in Batman too, use the CCC. The real issue is the level of performance it offers. nV's workaround is far more sophisticated- and if people would drop the ranting loyalist bit they may happen to notice that ATi's AA in Batman looks
better then nV's.
That's the real problem. Unless you're fortunate enough to own hardware from the company insisting on the vendor locks you'll have to have both an ATI and NVidia computer to properly experience new games. And the customer has to research who bought off the dev and publisher before buying any title to avoid getting something rendered partly functional by the other team. Nobody with a clue wants that, not even the vendors.
How's Bioshock's in game AA using DX9? Doesn't work. Are people going to now start blaming ATi because nV didn't pay to do that for them too? It would be one thing if we were talking about a feature, any feature, removed from a game. We are not talking about that, we are talking about
bonus features for owners of nV hardware. Why is that a problem? ATi is absolutely free to do the exact same thing and neither one of them are hurting
any consumer by doing it unless they are rather extreme loyalists who feel ripped off that someone got something extra for paying for something different.
I guess the best way to put this would be to have nV fans freak out if any game comes with Eyefinity support. I honestly hope that it is widely supported and I'm sure as hell not going to throw a hissy fit if it is. ATi owners bought the card knowing that was a probability and was paid for in the price of purchase. nV owners buy their cards knowing that extra attention in game is expected and paid for in the price of purchase.
Create 2 textures 1 being a MSAA render target. Render all the objects than need MSAA into this texture. (maybe all of them) Copy this texture into the other texture, then use this texture for whatever you need. The reason for the copy is 2 fold, the multi samples stored in the MSAA render target need to be resolved. (basically combine all the multi sample into a single pixel per pixel) Some may think that rather than copy the texture, just use it as a texture for future renderings. If you do this, every time you fetch a pixel from the texture it will compute the multi sample pixel each time. So you take a little hit copying some surfaces around but it's really not as much as you may think.
From all the information I have seen that is what I am fairly certain they are doing, although I have not looked at the source code.
It is bad to say this isn't done with directX calls or infer that it isn't supported and thus the reason I took this argument so far.
It isn't a supported approach to AA, it is a very creative workaround to an issue with a game engine.
but I refuse to believe it the code itself was anything special that could not have been done by a company the size of Eidos.
What you are ignoring how tiny the PC market is for them. The PC version is on pace to sell 10% of what the consoles sold(that would still make it a profitable port, but only because it is a port). It's possible the title will hit 1Million units, but if the console version stopped selling today(versus the big sales spike it will get in a couple weeks) they would hit ~20% of what the console version sold. The reality of the market right now is that PC gaming is not going to see any perks unless nV/ATi push it. That is the way things are and it isn't because Eidos or anyone else can't afford it, it is because it is stupid business to spend more resources on something that is going to generate significantly less revenue. Oh, and another thing- if you think Eidos couldn't come up with it, why the hell didn't Sweeney do it in the fitst place?
I guess the whole issue doesn't really matter now since nVidia tried this and lost. They likely won't be trying something similar in the future since there's a ton of bad PR over this issue.
Overall they got way more positive rep then you seem to realize. Step away from the tech forums and into the general gamer forums. If you do, you'll get a glimpse as to why nVidia held such a dominant market position over the 4xxx series despite what the overwhelming majority of tech enthusiasts thought.
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