Geforce Experience and Gaming Evolved is a chilling reminder of where gaming is going

[SirPauly]

I guess I misrepresented my concern. I don't have a problem with GFE as it stands this moment. My concern is, moving forward, do developers start to require things like GFE and Gaming Evolved (Think it's actually called Raptr- can't remember) and completely remove our ability to change settings in the options. I mean, so few of us optimize the games ourselves. We can just do it via the .ini, right? We don't need options settings. Hopefully I'm just being dramatic, but it's the direction we're heading. Newer games have far less graphical sliders to mess with things. At least the newer games that I've played.

That's a valid concern if developers removed the ability to change settings but don't see that happening based on the wide range of PC systems -- from ultra to very low budget systems.

I enjoy tweaking to find the right balance of image quality and immersion for my subjective tastes, thresholds and tolerances. But, gamers are not made from the same mold -- some are sensitive to frame-rate, while others may be sensitive to aliasing -- to name two quick examples.

But tweaking may be a daunting task and many gamers may desire an easier solution choice to simply play the game with more immersion instead of using default settings, and this is where GE experience makes a lot of sense. At first, didn't provide any value for me but with the additions of ShadowPlay, installing drivers, information, Streaming, it is becoming an essential tool for features and abilities and like it.

 

[2is]

I think the concern is warranted games to me look to be moving away from options/choices. Maybe you'll always be able to hack the config files and the like but most people don't do this.

How is that? All the options are still there gfe just sets them for you if you allow it to. It's literally an ADDED option on PC, not a removal of one.

 

[xthetenth]

It doesn't change anything for the people who don't want it, and it adds a great deal for the people who want it.

Isn't the entire point of PC gaming that people can get what they want from it?

Excluding new people just because they aren't up to speed on things or don't want to obsess about the things they use to do what they want is how you get a sick ecosystem that doesn't replace members and slowly dies off.

 

[MrK6]

Just don't install GFE, it's bloatware. Unless you need to record yourself gaming, otherwise it's useless.

Exactly this.^^

So that's the lazy option. However, look at the amount of testing they do at:

http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/gu...-hunt-graphics-performance-and-tweaking-guide

reading that and choosing your settings is the non-lazy option. We didn't have that kind of testing and analysis years ago. You can find the right setting for your setup with about an hour of tweaking. Before you might spend your first week tweaking it with hearsay from internet forums on which settings to use.

Eh, tweakguides.com was always there for close to a decade, but I agree that there's plenty of options for people who want to do a proper job.

However, this is the way the PC market has been going for years, in many respects. A decade+ ago I was browsing a few niche forums, soldering my Ti4200, and using an aquarium pump to water cool. Now forums are infested with marketing, overclocking is as easy as the click of a "turbo" button (or if you're really adventurous, moving the slider yourself), and "DIY" kits come with everything pre-selected and instructions. Would I go back to the way things were? Nah, but making things more mainstream comes with its own set of drawbacks - the dedicated and knowledgeable become relatively fewer as the population accustoms to a normal curve.

All in all, PC gaming is becoming more popular; hell, we have our own unofficial marketing slogans (PC MASTER RACE). This is going to draw in everyone, even those who just want to be "part of the crowd" without doing the work, hence the lazy options. It's the same as the guy who buys a stock 350Z and starts bragging at a cruise night (or whatever analogy you prefer). As long as the community maintains its core values and appropriate backlash against nonsense like artificial crippling for marketing purposes (Witcher 3 gameworks fiasco being the latest), we'll be OK.

 

[boozzer]

if pc gaming splits into 2 groups, I am 100% going console and never look back.

 

[Dribble]

Geforce Exp is for the console generation who are used to plugging in a game and playing - they never fiddle with the settings. I'm pretty sure it came about when nvidia realised a large % of their users wheren't using even vaguely sensible settings for a number of games. All it does is auto set the in game settings the user could have fiddled with anyway.

Anyway if you know how to tweak then tweak - nothing to stop you. For those that don't they get a more playable experience and are more likely to keep gaming on a pc and not switch to a console.

Really some people like to complain about everything.

 

[sxr7171]

Well even for an auto settings program it's pretty clear it missed the mark by a mile. Putting Titan X SLI on medium/high settings is really bad. The reason people pay for this technology is for better than console visuals and for it to put $2k in hardware in medium quality territory is ridiculous. I doubt anyone who invested money and time into a gaming PC is going to find that useful.

For those who want prebuilt boxes more power to them. PC gaming is and always was about choice. The upcoming VR revolution will boost PC gaming to another level and a lot of those people will buy preconfigured bundles of PC and VR gear. They will have some form of auto settings system but I can't see why in a PC environment any developer would hide access to settings. Those who care to play with those will be allowed to. If anything PC gaming is going to get a lot more attention over the next decade.

 

[happy medium]

I think Nvidia is going to be making their own games soon. I think that's the ultimate goal.

 

[3DVagabond]

I think Nvidia is going to be making their own games soon. I think that's the ultimate goal.

What makes you think that?

 

[happy medium]

What makes you think that?

Well they make gpu's
they have a game/TV console, tablet
they have Grid, a means of delivering games
they work with game developers and make their own software in the games

I mean .....whats left? make the games too right?
Then they can just optimize their AAA games with their gpu's/hardware

Pipe dream?:whiste:

 

[3DVagabond]

Well they make gpu's
they have a game/TV console, tablet
they have Grid, a means of delivering games
they work with game developers and make their own software in the games

I mean .....whats left? make the games too right?
Then they can just optimize their AAA games with their gpu's/hardware

Pipe dream?:whiste:

Naw! Not too much of a stretch.

 

[Excessi0n]

Curious to see what settings it would pick.

Do you realize that you can go into the per-game settings and tell it what balance of image quality and performance you want? By default it errs on the side of performance, but you can make it a lot more aggressive in its choices if that's what you want. It can't read your mind...

I'm detecting a hint of irony in this thread. :awe:

 

[HellBound]

Gameworks are broken, almost all the latest releases have been a mess that use it..its sad

 

[cmdrdredd]

If I let GFE optimize anything it always goes too low. I can often run ultra at the same FPS I get when it does it's thing. I don't know how they come up with the settings, but they need to do a better job at it if they want people to use it. People are going to do themselves a disservice if they allow the software to set the game settings for them.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

If I let GFE optimize anything it always goes too low. I can often run ultra at the same FPS I get when it does it's thing. I don't know how they come up with the settings, but they need to do a better job at it if they want people to use it. People are going to do themselves a disservice if they allow the software to set the game settings for them.

This is what I've found as well. But, frankly, that doesn't bother me; I'm perfectly capable of changing settings on my own to whatever I damn well please. If the Geforce Experience can make the process easier for console converts, I'm not going to judge them. Anything that brings more people into PC gaming and makes a larger market for developers to focus on is bound to be good for the state of PC gaming. Maybe it'll cut down on the number of shoddy console ports, eh?

OK, probably not, but one can dream.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Geforce Exp is for the console generation who are used to plugging in a game and playing - they never fiddle with the settings. I'm pretty sure it came about when nvidia realised a large % of their users wheren't using even vaguely sensible settings for a number of games. All it does is auto set the in game settings the user could have fiddled with anyway.

Anyway if you know how to tweak then tweak - nothing to stop you. For those that don't they get a more playable experience and are more likely to keep gaming on a pc and not switch to a console.

Really some people like to complain about everything.

Great post.

Making PC gaming a user friendly experience with as low a learning curve as possible, is important to its continued success. Until or unless they take away the options for power users, there is no good reason to complain.

 

[futurefields]

But on a Titan X SLI setup. Let me repeat this, on a TITAN X SLI SETUP, the thing auto moved almost everything to medium/high. Not a single setting at ultra. Despite if I do the tweaking myself, I can hit 60 for basically no image quality loss even at 4K.

But dude, they need to sell more GPU's to keep the industry going...

They aren't going to let you get years and years of Ultra performance out of your $2k GPU setup ok deal with it. They will purposefuly deoptimize that stuff so you want to buy the new cards.

 

[futurefields]

It's an upper-middle class and above hobby!

 

[alcoholbob]

Well they make gpu's
they have a game/TV console, tablet
they have Grid, a means of delivering games
they work with game developers and make their own software in the games

I mean .....whats left? make the games too right?
Then they can just optimize their AAA games with their gpu's/hardware

Pipe dream?:whiste:

They could fund titles made in India maybe. Nvidia is all about that profit margin. Their business model doesn't have room for Intel contra revenue, or Xbox/AMD peasant margins. There's no room in that profit margin for funding a 50-100 million $ game, much less multiple titles annually. At best they give a a few hundred k for development tools for a few select games a year.

 

[Sabrewings]

I've been a PC gamer since 1998, so maybe I'm in the minority here, but I don't mind GFE. I like driver reminders since I don't always ping Nvidia's site for the latest drivers. I do let it optimize games for me (which ones it works with, which isn't a lot of mine since I like indie games), but I only use that as a starting point. I've noticed with my 980 Ti it just cranks everything all the way up anyway which is what I would've done, tried it, and worked down if it wasn't acceptable.

I still fiddle around in the driver control panel for certain games to mess with options they don't offer in game. GFE isn't a bad thing, it's just a tool. The same could be said for things like Rivatuner because you weren't hex-editting the BIOS to get extra clocks or for modern BIOS overclocking because you're not setting jumpers.

 

[kasakka]

They aren't going to let you get years and years of Ultra performance out of your k GPU setup ok deal with it. They will purposefuly deoptimize that stuff so you want to buy the new cards.

They don't deoptimize it. There's no guy going "we need to make this work shittier on older hardware". A common thing in software development is abandoning old software or hardware when you have the newfangled thing in front of you. This can lead to the older hardware performing worse eventually.

Nvidia does not write game engines or most of the middleware used in them. They don't go to Epic, Unity or Crytek and say "hey, how about making your engine run worse on old hardware so we can sell more GPUs".

There is also no correlation with Gameworks being responsible for poorly working titles. The developers of titles that happened to use it have done a botched job themselves as most of the engine fixes that followed in patches have absolutely nothing to do with GW. Overall the amount of truly great programmers is quite small. For every Carmack there are plenty of mid-level graphics programmers who just don't know or don't have time to figure out how to best make a feature work. Then shit hits the fan (right after the often rushed release) and they finally have to devote time to fixing it.

As for GeForce Experience, I'm not a fan. I find that it takes ages to open and the settings it gives are often not what I would use. I think it's much better to have developers providing sensible in-game presets that give the best IQ/performance ratio no various systems.

 

[alcoholbob]

How poorly Kepler performs in recent games should be a more chilling reminder of Nvidia customers of how long their $250+ investment lasts.

 

[cmdrdredd]

How poorly Kepler performs in recent games should be a more chilling reminder of Nvidia customers of how long their $250+ investment lasts.

That's what was said above, when there is a new thing they write software for the new thing and not so much for the old. They probably spend more time making sure maxwell works properly that there's not much left to do anything with Kepler. Especially with some of the poor game engines out there. I mean look at batman. They have an sli profile for the game in the driver but the game doesn't even work with sli.

 

[Sabrewings]

How poorly Kepler performs in recent games should be a more chilling reminder of Nvidia customers of how long their $250+ investment lasts.

*shrug*

Up until last month I was still running a GTX 275 on games at 1080p with no issues. The only one that slowed me down a smidge was Elite: D in space docks. Seems like I got my money's worth over the last five years.

 

[JimmiG]

I guess I misrepresented my concern. I don't have a problem with GFE as it stands this moment. My concern is, moving forward, do developers start to require things like GFE and Gaming Evolved (Think it's actually called Raptr- can't remember) and completely remove our ability to change settings in the options. I mean, so few of us optimize the games ourselves. We can just do it via the .ini, right? We don't need options settings. Hopefully I'm just being dramatic, but it's the direction we're heading. Newer games have far less graphical sliders to mess with things. At least the newer games that I've played.

Well TW3 isn't really representative of PC gaming in general. It's clearly a bad console port that runs poorly on most PC hardware. I mean, you can't even change the mouse sensitivity without editing the .ini, and cutscenes seem to run at <30 FPS even on Titans.