Geometry Instancing?

[lunitari]

What the hell does Geometry Instancing do in the new 4.10 catalyst drivers? It is under the Direct 3D settings, but I could not find anything in the release notes about it.

 

[BFG10K]

Geometry instancing can speed up certain games that support it, games such as Far Cry. Basically it speeds up the rendering of multiple similar objects such as trees.

 

[lunitari]

Huh. Well, if I enable this, will it mess up other games that don't support the feature?

 

[BFG10K]

Nope.

 

[Sylvanas]

geometry instancing is a wonderful feature ive only ever had positive results with it. (in farcry that is)

 

[otispunkmeyer]

is it enabled on the 6800's? geometry instancing is part of the whole dx9.0c sm3.0 thing, do u need the sm3 path on farcry to use it? or do us 6800users already have it enabled?

 

[Marsumane]

Its already enabled for 6800 users. The reason why ati couldnt enable it by default had to do with their way of doing it failing the whql certification. It had something to do with it not being fully sm3.0 compliant and instead using a workaround to get some of the sm3.0 functionality out of their archetecture. So basically they defaulted it to "disabled" and gave it to users as an option so that they could be whql certified.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Rome:Total War is a good example of it 🙂

 

[jasonja]

Originally posted by: Marsumane
Its already enabled for 6800 users. The reason why ati couldnt enable it by default had to do with their way of doing it failing the whql certification. It had something to do with it not being fully sm3.0 compliant and instead using a workaround to get some of the sm3.0 functionality out of their archetecture. So basically they defaulted it to "disabled" and gave it to users as an option so that they could be whql certified.

Wrong... the user doesn't enable it. The game developer enables it thru some backdoor DirectX API calls. The feature is enabled and supported by the driver, but it's up to the game to enable it thru ATI's custom method. You can see examples of Instancing on the ATI card by using Novodex Rocket (download here) and Humus has a Instancing sample that works on ATI cards too (download from here)

 

[LocutusX]

slightly off-topic, but... anyone know what the hell is up with Far Cry's developer (UBISoft?) and the supposed 1.2 patch which never quite materialized? Did they fire their support team or something?

 

[sleepeeg3]

Technically 1.2 materialized, but ya, when is 1.3 due out? It has been months to fix some math. Even toying with the idea of switching to a GT...

How bad is the 1.2 patch on ATI cards?