Batman AA fiasco: Who's telling the truth?

[Wreckage]

Interesting, why did they decide to only allow Joker to be played in the PS3 and not PC version?

PS3 exclusive from the start. I'm sure Sony payed for it.

 

[WaitingForNehalem]

Now that was a damn good post.

I'm not going to further comment on the issue anymore because it's been beaten to death. In fact the more I think of it, I will probably just pick up the game for the PS3 because you can play as the Joker. Which interests me far more than which kind of AA it uses.

Won't you miss PhysX?

 

[SSChevy2001]

SSChevy2001, what's it look like if you don't do the hack but you do enable that "AA for everything" switch? And correspondingly what kind of fps difference do you see between running the hack versus the "AA for everything" option?

And maybe its just me, but does anyone else think both shots look like crap? With and without hack AA the game's jaggies are pretty glaring in your screenshots...do you notice it when playing?

Looks the same for the most part, of course I gain some FPS with the hack.

Honestly I had a lot of fun with this game, and the jaggies aren't that bad when playing without AA. The AA does make a difference though.

These screenshots are cropped/zoomed 300% from 1920x1080 image.

http://img695.imageshack.us/img695/9233/batman8xaahack.png

 

[Idontcare]

Looks the same for the most part, of course I gain some FPS with the hack.

Honestly I had a lot of fun with this game, and the jaggies aren't that bad when playing without AA. The AA does make a difference though.

These screenshots are cropped/zoomed 300% from 1920x1080 image.

Cool, thanks for indulging me with my request, I have to admit with the less zoomed-in images you provided there it does look much better than before.

I'm sure its a matter of taste, but to my eye the screenshot with the vendor hack you show in your post looks better (and has higher fps) than the ATi CCC screenshot. Is that your feeling on it as well, having actually played the game with both in effect?

 

[lopri]

@IDC: I think you're seeing things. ^_^ The AA look the same to me and the only difference I notice is the details of wall-ladder (?) on the bottom-left, and I think that's due to slight variance in lighting.

 

[SSChevy2001]

@Idontcare
No problem.

After looking over the screenshots again I got to admit not really seeing a difference, but the FPS difference does help.

 

[evolucion8]

How can I hack the vendor ID so I can use the more efficient FSAA in Batman AA? Playing the game with 8xFSAA using the CCC at 1280x1024 was very smooth, never dropped below 75FPS with V-Sync On no matter what was on screen, but since I enabled Hardware PhysX with the GenL patch to run it on my AGEIA PPU, now FSAA won work no matter what, thatś odd. If someone can explain me how to change the vendor ID to enable BAA FSAA I will be grateful.

 

[Tempered81]

you can change it will Ati tray tools

 

[SSChevy2001]

How can I hack the vendor ID so I can use the more efficient FSAA in Batman AA? Playing the game with 8xFSAA using the CCC at 1280x1024 was very smooth, never dropped below 75FPS with V-Sync On no matter what was on screen, but since I enabled Hardware PhysX with the GenL patch to run it on my AGEIA PPU, now FSAA won work no matter what, thatś odd. If someone can explain me how to change the vendor ID to enable BAA FSAA I will be grateful.

You need ATi Tray Tools. Then you need to make 2 manage profiles, one for BmLauncher.exe and the other for ShippingPC-BmGame.exe.

Then in the Direct3D Tweaks tab of both profiles you need to input the following.

Enable
VendorID = 10DE
DeviceID = 5E2
Device Name = NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260

Save and your done.

When you launch the bmlauncher you'll get this message, but after you press ok you can set whatever AA you want.
Your NVIDIA(TM) Graphics Driver is not up to date - for the best in-game experience, we recommend that you update your driver

 

[evolucion8]

It worked fine first allowing me to select the Anti Aliasing level, I chose 8x and then when the game started, it crashed and now it won allow me to choose it again stating that my card doesn support anti aliasing loll, thanks a lot anyways,

PS: Edi: Uninstalling and reinstalling ATi Tray Tool fixed the issue, odd, now I can run the game with the In game anti aliasing and looks great, woooo

 

[SSChevy2001]

@evolucion8

Sounds like you only have a profile for the BmLauncher.exe, and not one for the ShippingPC-BmGame.exe. Or you do have one for ShippingPC-BmGame.exe, but it's missing the direct3d tweak settings.

 

[Red Irish]

nitromullet I fully agree with your statement. I was serious when I said vendor lockout sucks for the consumer. (I have gathered from the posts that my original post on the analogy was viewed as an attempt at sarcasm on my behalf...which it was not)

Its great for the businesses involved but it has absolutely nothing to do with the best interests of the consumer. DVD regions? Fast food and beverage supplier? PC gaming?

To me these are all shades of the same business practices and are taken out of the same business management handbook.

NV and Eidos did not invent anything new in the world of business and marketing here, we have all come to accept the realities of very similar analogs in other areas of our consumer-sided lives, but the passion that comes into play on these forums is somewhat unique in my perspective.

I don't say that to undermine it or to discount it, quite the opposite. I am loathe to the fact we are so desensitized to care about how the same playbook is used against us consumers in so many other markets.

At the same time though what are we consumerists to do? Vote with our wallets. But who do we vote against? Eidos? Nvidia? AMD?

I am more inclined to say the guilty party here to be voted against (if we had to be selective about it and make a prioritized list) would be Eidos...they are the ones who whored themselves out to begin with and put themselves up for the highest bidder.

That we found out in hindsight that NV is a John in this case doesn't exonerate them at all, it takes two to f*** the consumer, but the consumer also has to be a willing third party member in that dance before they too get screwed...did you buy the game? I did not, and I won't.

Excellent post.

 

[Painman]

I wonder if nV's actions could be construed as negligent or deliberate hampering of an ATi card owner's experience. Not re: the denial of ingame AA. I think we all understand now that it's an nV value-add as far as Batman: AA is concerned. But the fact that a portion of nV's AA code gets run on ATi hardware regardless, resulting in a performance loss for the ATi card owner, is is incredibly uncool.

Still, I give the benefit of the doubt that it's not a deliverate Dick Move against ATi owners. More of a step-on-your-own-dick-while-frantically-swinging-it sort of move.

I'm troubled, though, over where this may go, particularly re: Eidos. They're just the publisher in this case, not the developer, but there are a pair of eggs being hatched over at Eidos Montreal that worry me: Deus Ex 3 and Thi4f. It would be incredibly sad if these sorts of shenannigans continue to go on, and drag the players of these titles (like me) into the green vs. red war like players of Batman: AA.

I will not be pissed upon for buying one company's card over the other. nV has this attitude, lately, that they can piss on me if I buy Red. I'm not saying that the Batman: AA issue is necessarily an example, but there is another. Locking me out of use of an nV card as a PhysX PPU while I have a Red card as primary renderer is a deliberate pissing into my face. I have a functional G80 card (and a dysfunctional G200 card) sitting here, I paid plenty for both... you have my money already... if you decide to degrade/obsolete my hardware on purely political grounds, then you can rest assured, Jen-Hsun, that the next face-pissing will be from me, to you, when I swear your company off forever.

You catch for flies with honey than with vinegar. Didn't your momma teach you that?

 

[BenSkywalker]

The way this most likely went down, as it has always seemed to me.

nv- "Would you guys be interested in us coding AA support for your game?"
Eidos- "Sure"
Eidos- "Hey ATi, you want to write your own code path for AA in our game"
ATi- "Why would we pay someone to write code for you?"
Eidos- "Hmm, nV's code path works for ATi anyway"
Eidos Legal- "Make sure you don't let that code run on any other hardware, nV owns that code"

Fanboyrage hits the net-

AMD- "It's nV's fault"
Eidos- "It's AMD's fault"
nVidia- "It's Eidos"

Likely reality- nVidia never took legal ownership of the code, they just got it working on the game and never mentioned one way or the other if it was free for them to use on anything(perhaps assumed that it didn't need to be said, or maybe they could have assumed that is what they would do).

Don't think nV would ever do anything for gamers without getting direct kickbacks, it is certainly what the heavy red tint may give you the impression of, but-

Why does PC gaming rock? Because you get your downloadable content for free. According to Infinity Ward community manager Robert Bowling at IAMfourzerotwo, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare’s Variety map pack is being sponsored by graphics card maker Nvidia. The free DLC will be available for keyboard/mouse jockeys on June 5th.

http://www.everyjoe.com/articles/call-of-duty-4-dlc-to-hit-pcs-for-free-81/

This was freely available to ATi owners, paid for by nVidia. To give you an idea, this content generated ~$1Million for Activision on the console side. I'm sure nV paid less then that, but the fact remains they did not do this just for team green, team red got it for free too. I'm willing to wager rather heavily that the amount they spent to add AA support to Batman was considerably less then the free CoD content for all PC users.

I'm troubled, though, over where this may go, particularly re: Eidos. They're just the publisher in this case

Eidos is now a label fully owned by Square Enix. Square Enix plays in the broader gaming market, taking kickbacks for exclusives is extremely common outside of PC gaming.

It would be incredibly sad if these sorts of shenannigans continue to go on, and drag the players of these titles (like me) into the green vs. red war like players of Batman: AA.

Almost all of the PC based publishers have been overtaken or bought out entirely by publishers with consoles being their main focus. This type of business is very much accepted, the only difference which seems a bit odd is that people get upset at the company that 'wins' the bidding war- it is very much the polar opposite on the console side. Read some PS3 forums and they are absolutely pissed that the 360 was going to get a port of FFXIII- didn't effect their ability to play the game(which is like Batman), only that others would be able to do it in a slightly different way(which is like Batman)- the big difference is that they tend to be pissed at Sony for dropping the ball and not paying Square to keep it entirely exclusive.

 

[Idontcare]

@IDC: I think you're seeing things. ^_^ The AA look the same to me and the only difference I notice is the details of wall-ladder (?) on the bottom-left, and I think that's due to slight variance in lighting.

Probably, I'm looking at the vertically stacked images in SSChevy2001's post on a DELL 2407 in which my horizontal eye level is actually about an inch above the top of the monitor's bezel (I got kids, and they require near constant supervision, so I have to be able to "peak" above my monitors frequently)...so the ATI CCC image in SSChevy2001's post being at the bottom of screen makes it all the more "off-axis" viewing from my perspective.

If you are looking at them and are telling me they look the same then I have no issue taking your statement as fact and discarding my previously stated impressions of the differences between the screenshots. I have no problem with that outcome.

 

[Creig]

The way this most likely went down, as it has always seemed to me.

nv- "Would you guys be interested in us coding AA support for your game?"
Eidos- "Sure"
Eidos- "Hey ATi, you want to write your own code path for AA in our game"
ATi- "Why would we pay someone to write code for you?"
Eidos- "Hmm, nV's code path works for ATi anyway"
Eidos Legal- "Make sure you don't let that code run on any other hardware, nV owns that code"

Why would Eidos Legal assume that just because the NvAA worked on ATi cards that it would need to be disabled? Surely Eidos has published other titles where ATi provided code that worked just fine on Nvidia cards.

 

[SSChevy2001]

The way this most likely went down, as it has always seemed to me.

nv- "Would you guys be interested in us coding AA support for your game?"
Eidos- "Sure"
Eidos- "Hey ATi, you want to write your own code path for AA in our game"
ATi- "Why would we pay someone to write code for you?"
Eidos- "Hmm, nV's code path works for ATi anyway"
Eidos Legal- "Make sure you don't let that code run on any other hardware, nV owns that code"

Likely reality- nVidia never took legal ownership of the code, they just got it working on the game and never mentioned one way or the other if it was free for them to use on anything(perhaps assumed that it didn't need to be said, or maybe they could have assumed that is what they would do).

Did you even read the link?

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.

This though is the really kick in the ass, as part of the code is running on ATi hardware enabled or not.

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/new...-nvidia-vs-eidos-fight-analyzed.aspx?pageid=1

This is clearly Eidos fault for not putting in AA themself if they really wanted it, or at least denying the use of the code once they found out Nvidia was going to block some of Eidos customers from it.

IMO though the code should be removed until none of it runs on ATi hardware, or the vendor filter gets removed.

Almost all of the PC based publishers have been overtaken or bought out entirely by publishers with consoles being their main focus. This type of business is very much accepted, the only difference which seems a bit odd is that people get upset at the company that 'wins' the bidding war- it is very much the polar opposite on the console side.

What your talking about is exclusive content, not exclusive features. AA is part of the DX API and shouldn't be locked to one vendor.

 

[SirPauly]

Tend to look at this as a non ideal situation and there is a blame pie with many slices from the Unreal Engine, Developer, nVidia and ATI.

 

[Creig]

Tend to look at this as a non ideal situation and there is a blame pie with many slices from the Unreal Engine, Developer, nVidia and ATI.

I fail to see how Nvidia including anti-ATi AA code in a TWIMTBP title is somehow the fault of ATi.

 

[SirPauly]

I fail to see how Nvidia including anti-ATi AA code in a TWIMTBP title is somehow the fault of ATi.

Yeah, to some, it's hard to see fault in anything ATI does and for others nVidia does no wrong either. Great discussions though! I see blame in the engine, developers, nVidia and ATI.

 

[Creig]

Yeah, to some, it's hard to see fault in anything ATI does and for others nVidia does no wrong either. Great discussions though! I see blame in the engine, developers, nVidia and ATI.

So how exactly do you see ATi to be at fault for the lockout of their own cards?

 

[Outrage]

This is eidos fault. When they allowed nvidia dev rel to mess around with the game code without checking out what they did to it.

Part of the AA code that nvidia put into the game is running all the time. When you pull the AA switch on, only nvidia cards will show the AA output. I dont know why they did this, but they probably made it this way to not show a large hit on framerates when enabling AA on nvidia cards.

I hope the game studios will be inspecting the code that gets inserted in there games better in the future.

If nvidias dev rel keeps on playing ugly, we the gamers will loose. Amd dont have much weight to put behind. But later when intel wants to get the top places in benchmarks they will have a lot of manpower to send out to game developers.

Maybe intel will go the same way as nvidia did, nvidia just got a head start... so we as gamers are just screwed anyway.

 

[dflynchimp]

This is eidos fault. When they allowed nvidia dev rel to mess around with the game code without checking out what they did to it.

Part of the AA code that nvidia put into the game is running all the time. When you pull the AA switch on, only nvidia cards will show the AA output. I dont know why they did this, but they probably made it this way to not show a large hit on framerates when enabling AA on nvidia cards.

I hope the game studios will be inspecting the code that gets inserted in there games better in the future.

If nvidias dev rel keeps on playing ugly, we the gamers will loose. Amd dont have much weight to put behind. But later when intel wants to get the top places in benchmarks they will have a lot of manpower to send out to game developers.

Maybe intel will go the same way as nvidia did, nvidia just got a head start... so we as gamers are just screwed anyway.

I highly doubt that they didn't check the game code. "Turn a blind eye" seems more like the term. After all every new code in a game usually gets tested, debugged and documented.

The obvious truth is that there was money involved. In this case Nvidia putting in its dev resources. That they inserted the vendor-lock probably was part of the closed-door business deal.

 

[SirPauly]

So how exactly do you see ATi to be at fault for the lockout of their own cards?

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1355668&postcount=544

 

[Creig]

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1355668&postcount=544

Thank you for that link, but it still doesn't answer my question. You repeatedly posted both there and here that you feel ATi is one of the parties to blame in this incident, yet all you've given as their involvement is:

if ATI complained, well, they can do the same identical work as we did if they choose -- and here we are

That hardly puts ATi at fault for the Vendor ID lockout. I'm sure there are plenty of games out there where Nvidia has (and will) benefit from ATi's work in the same manner.

Since you said "if ATI complained, well, they can do the same identical work as we did if they choose", does this mean you work for Nvidia?