How to enable Nvidia Phsyx on Ati cards in Batman:AA

[v8envy]

UE 3 definitely supports MSAA under DirectX 10. Google for Sweeney's quotes on the subject and discussion if you disbelieve.

Many UE3 titles on the PC did not support turning that on in-game for reasons of DX9hood. However, if enabled at all the developer would absolutely have to put in an explicit if( using_ati() ) { no_fsaa_for_you(); } if they went through the trouble of turning the support on in the first place.

 

[imported_Shaq]

Originally posted by: MarcVenice

Originally posted by: Shaq
I got the same framerate forcing AA or using it in-game. AA takes a huge performance hit either way. We need to SLI/XFire the new 40nm cards to use much AA in this game.

You kidding me, at 1920*1200, the highest resolution most gamers run (few ppl have 30"-screens):

HD 5870 8xAA 56,3min / 86,7avg
HD 4890 8xAA 37,0min / 56,0avg
GTX285 8xAA 38,7min / 64,0avg

At 2560 we've still got the horsepower, but we're lacking vram.

Btw, ATI cards still kick ass... The GTX 295 scores 53,7min / 92,3avg at 1920*1200 with 8xAA. Thats fewer min fps and a few more avg. A tie with the HD 5870 if you ask me.

My framerate goes into the 30's if I turn on SLI AA or 8XQ AA. 4XAA drops into the 30's-40's when looking through fog. I like to keep the FPS at 60 or above. Using AA in Unreal Engine 3 games is really inefficient. In Resident Evil 5 and Shift I can have 8XAA and stay at 60 fps the whole time. Even at 2XAA the framerate was dropping when fighting a bunch of enemies late in the game.

 

[akugami]

Originally posted by: vss1980

Originally posted by: Wreckage

Originally posted by: vss1980

Actually what annoys me is that this is just over 'physx'..... I can count all of the good games that use Physx properly and are worth having on one hand (ok, maybe 2 now)...... there are still better games using havok....

Seriously out of this huge list you can only count a few games?
http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_physxgames_all.html

I see a lot of great games.

Meh, depends what games you like....

Gears of War (will not count 1 or 2 as seperate entities otherwise all of the Valve Source games will count for havok as seperate ones), Bionic commando (iffy), Brothers in Arms, Mirrors Edge (iffy gameplay), Nurien (not at all my kind of thing but could be huge if done well), Roboblitz (ok, could be better), UT3, some of the Tom Clancy stuff isn't too bad, and Batman of course looks great.

Granted I haven't see all of the physx games in existence but neither have I seen all of the havok ones either....... I just know I prefer a lot more havok based games than physx based, e.g. Half-life / Portal / Left4Dead, Assassins Creed, Bioshock, Company of Heroes, Dead Rising, Fear 2, Fallout 3 (gets boring), Wolfenstein, Spore (ultimately boring but cool), Super Smash Brothers Brawl, etc....

But of course, not all of the physx games listed can be accelerated/offloaded, and in the case of havok of course none of them are.
Physx's unique selling point was hardware acceleration / more complexity now available to game makers - nvidia have just started to take that away - I wonder if any developers will kick up a fuss..... it's down to them if either one (or both) becomes successful which is why Ageia has such a hard time to begin with.

EDIT: Of course, I'm not saying I'm biased against a game / physics software engine - there are a few upcoming games which look like they may be great; American Football does nothing for me but I'll be very interested to see how Madden (if it is using Physx - rumours) will be.... could be a real shot in the arm for all games like that.

Click on the link at the bottom of that list for a list of games that actually use GPU PhysX and the list becomes...much less impressive.

 

[Tempered81]

The AA thing is a big deal, but Physx is even more dangerous for the consumer, IMO. With GF100 being all about GPGPU & CUDA 3.0, you can rest assured that games about a year or two from now will have half of the special effects content locked to an NV hardware ID.

Whats going to happen when everything from glow to motion blur to sunrays to rocket trails, to sparks to shadows to AA and AF becomes a part of CUDA & Physx? TWIMTBR suddenly incorporates CUDA into every major title with marketing muscle & developer payoffs they have a say-so in content control holding the software developers hand...

No reason to buy an ati card, even if it runs the game twice as smoothly with better picture quality, higher framerates, colors, textures etc because now there is no AA, no shadows, no explosions or special effects (unless you alter the physx vendor id check - which by that time will be completely illegal in the EULA). Instead of cheap-shotting the customer with stupid low-blow tactics, why don't they just engineer a faster, efficient, modular GPU? Then we have straight forward competition adhering to programming standards that makes it a win-win combination for the consumer.

IMO, it's pissed off owners of $700 video cards that fully support whatever Nvidia can do to gain an edge on the competition, while blindly misjudging what this will do to the gaming industry in the long run.

 

[MrK6]

Originally posted by: Tempered81
The AA thing is a big deal, but Physx is even more dangerous for the consumer, IMO. With GF100 being all about GPGPU & CUDA 3.0, you can rest assured that games about a year or two from now will have half of the special effects content locked to an NV hardware ID.

Whats going to happen when everything from glow to motion blur to sunrays to rocket trails, to sparks to shadows to AA and AF becomes a part of CUDA & Physx? TWIMTBR suddenly incorporates CUDA into every major title with marketing muscle & developer payoffs they have a say-so in content control holding the software developers hand...

No reason to buy an ati card, even if it runs the game twice as smoothly with better picture quality, higher framerates, colors, textures etc because now there is no AA, no shadows, no explosions or special effects (unless you alter the physx vendor id check - which by that time will be completely illegal in the EULA). Instead of cheap-shotting the customer with stupid low-blow tactics, why don't they just engineer a faster, efficient, modular GPU? Then we have straight forward competition adhering to programming standards that makes it a win-win combination for the consumer.

IMO, it's pissed off owners of $700 video cards that fully support whatever Nvidia can do to gain an edge on the competition, while blindly misjudging what this will do to the gaming industry in the long run.

Do you really think game developers are so stupid as to corner their market like that? They're in the business to make money, plain and simple. NVIDIA wishes it could pull off something like this, but it doesn't have nearly enough money or weight to do so.

 

[Wreckage]

Originally posted by: akugami


Click on the link at the bottom of that list for a list of games that actually use GPU PhysX and the list becomes...much less impressive.

How about the list of list of games that actually use GPU Havok? You do know don't you?

 

[BenSkywalker]

Do you really think game developers are so stupid as to corner their market like that?

Corner the oh so lucrative ~33% of the PC gaming market that offers no advantage over the consoles that are dominating the sales charts? You may want to give PC devs a bit more credit then that, nV's payouts are getting enhanced ports on to the PC at least- everyone else complains about the horrid direct to PC console ports, the ones bucking that trend are the ones nV is paying to do so. Given ATi's marketshare at the moment, I'm not seeing how developers are going to feel any pressure at all not to go along with it, hell, seek it out whenever possible. nV covers development expenses for you then you are out nothing if it doesn't work out, while any nV owner more likely to buy your game is a net gain for you. Have some sense when it comes to business, there is no down side for the developers here. Think Batman is going to suffer over this? At the moment it seems to be front runner for GOTY for the PC and is looking to be at worst one of the top five sellers to boot. If developers had to fear that kind of response, I think they would be lining up to do the same.

They're in the business to make money, plain and simple. NVIDIA wishes it could pull off something like this, but it doesn't have nearly enough money or weight to do so.

If it cost them $2Million per game they could handle ~500 titles if they never made another cent and still have more cash on hand then AMD has made in profit in the last five years. Yes, nVidia does have the kind of money and weight to do this if they really wanted to. I don't think they want to push it nearly that hard, they will likely just try to keep up a steady release of titles, maybe one a month or every other month, that take advantage of some nV unique features to try and help them with promotional material and keeping their name in the press. As a business move, this makes a lot of sense for nV and even more sense for developers.

Noone, noone at all loses out in this situation because if nV wasn't footing the bill the added features never would have been there in the first place. ATi fans get what the devs would have released, nV fans get the special version nV paid for. Things like this allow nVidia to charge a premium for their boards, a strategy they seem to have working for them if current market trends are any indication.

 

[MrK6]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker

Do you really think game developers are so stupid as to corner their market like that?

Corner the oh so lucrative ~33% of the PC gaming market that offers no advantage over the consoles that are dominating the sales charts? You may want to give PC devs a bit more credit then that, nV's payouts are getting enhanced ports on to the PC at least- everyone else complains about the horrid direct to PC console ports, the ones bucking that trend are the ones nV is paying to do so. Given ATi's marketshare at the moment, I'm not seeing how developers are going to feel any pressure at all not to go along with it, hell, seek it out whenever possible. nV covers development expenses for you then you are out nothing if it doesn't work out, while any nV owner more likely to buy your game is a net gain for you. Have some sense when it comes to business, there is no down side for the developers here. Think Batman is going to suffer over this? At the moment it seems to be front runner for GOTY for the PC and is looking to be at worst one of the top five sellers to boot. If developers had to fear that kind of response, I think they would be lining up to do the same.

They're in the business to make money, plain and simple. NVIDIA wishes it could pull off something like this, but it doesn't have nearly enough money or weight to do so.

If it cost them $2Million per game they could handle ~500 titles if they never made another cent and still have more cash on hand then AMD has made in profit in the last five years. Yes, nVidia does have the kind of money and weight to do this if they really wanted to. I don't think they want to push it nearly that hard, they will likely just try to keep up a steady release of titles, maybe one a month or every other month, that take advantage of some nV unique features to try and help them with promotional material and keeping their name in the press. As a business move, this makes a lot of sense for nV and even more sense for developers.

Noone, noone at all loses out in this situation because if nV wasn't footing the bill the added features never would have been there in the first place. ATi fans get what the devs would have released, nV fans get the special version nV paid for. Things like this allow nVidia to charge a premium for their boards, a strategy they seem to have working for them if current market trends are any indication.

Are you serious or did you forget to use [sarcasm] tags? No one is this naive, right? If NVIDIA had any kind of weight, their PhysX games wouldn't be mostly from crappy third-tier developers, but from mainstream developers. I think Eidos is the only known developer they've landed yet, and that's only because Eidos probably needed the cash considering they haven't released a decent game since Hitman: Blood Money. The only reason developers bother coding for PhysX is because of monetary compensation from NVIDIA. No developer is going to waste time and resources coding for a proprietary solution with little market penetrance. NVIDIA's pockets aren't nearly as deep as you think.

The fact that you bring "ATI fans" and "NV fans" shows your over-focus on a fanboy war and not the actual situation presented. But hey, if you think NVIDIA is going to save PC gaming, who am I to ruin your dreams, real life will do that quickly enough as it is. Some of the posts on this forum are comedy gold.

 

[BenSkywalker]

If NVIDIA had any kind of weight, their PhysX games wouldn't be mostly from crappy third-tier developers, but from mainstream developers. I think Eidos is the only known developer they've landed yet, and that's only because Eidos probably needed the cash considering they haven't released a decent game since Hitman: Blood Money. The only reason developers bother coding for PhysX is because of monetary compensation from NVIDIA.

Eidos is a publishing label owned by SuareEnix, do you know anything at all about the gaming market? Eidos is not a development studio. In terms of nV using money to get PhysX in games, what do you think gives you power in this markert? Only two possible choices, marketshare or money. In terms of marketshare nV has ATi bested 2:1, in terms of money it isn't remotely that close. I also made it rather clear that I was talking about nVidia paying to get all of these titles ported. In the console market this type of practice is rather common, offering monetary compensation to land exclusive content or just plain exclusitivity. nVidia has the on hand cash to fund this, and they are doing so now on a limited basis which I expect that they will continue. Why do you think that won't be the case?

No developer is going to waste time and resources coding for a proprietary solution with little market penetrance. NVIDIA's pockets aren't nearly as deep as you think.

There are 100 million PhysX capable cards in consumer machines. That is almost double the PS3 and 360 combined. Little maket penetration? Have you even glanced on what types of numbers you are talking about? As far as how deep nVidia's pockets are- oops, you are wrong again. nV has $1.46Billion in cash and equiv, there pockets are actually a little deeper then I implied in my post(click on the balance sheet if you are having problems).

The fact that you bring "ATI fans" and "NV fans" shows your over-focus on a fanboy war and not the actual situation presented.

Like Eidos being a development studio, or nVidia not having over $1Billion they could play with if they wanted to? Or the fact that nV has a staggering installed base of PhysX parts? Or that they have a 2:1 edge in marketshare? My apologies, I'm quite familiar with every one of these elements. The only people that are going to whine about it are the fans.

As a business choice, as I have very clearly explained, this makes sense for the developers to accept in no uncertain terms. The only people that stand to lose in this situation is nVidia themselves if their title selection fails to promote their parts or perhaps those devoted to ATi who want to convince themselves that they are being cheated.

But hey, if you think NVIDIA is going to save PC gaming, who am I to ruin your dreams, real life will do that quickly enough as it is. Some of the posts on this forum are comedy gold.

I never so much as implied that nV was going to save anything at all. What I stated is that they are helping to make sure that we see at least some enhanced ports making it onto the PC from the consoles. This is a point of fact. You can try and consider it comedy, much as I have a hard time not laughing at you lack of knowledge on this topic altogether, I would suggest in the future you may want to look a few things up that you know nothing about before trying to debate them when it comes to the marketplace

 

[TheMeanestGuest]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker
GOTY for the PC

Is easily, hands down, going to be Dragon Age.

Anyone who considers Batmassin's Creed (yes I realize the resemblance is mostly superficial, so no, you may not think what you are thinking) to be a 'GoTY' is in sore need of some good judgement.

Case closed.

 

[BenSkywalker]

Anyone who considers Batmassin's Creed (yes I realize the resemblance is mostly superficial, so no, you may not think what you are thinking) to be a 'GoTY' is in sore need of some good judgement.

At the moment it seems to be front runner for GOTY for the PC

Dragon Age isn't out, although I'm with you on not thinking Batman is all that great. That said, consensus is what seems to win awards, and right now Batman is pretty much across the boards the highest reviewed game for the PC this year. I would, in a way so absolute I would have trouble putting it into words, rather have a Bioware RPG take it over another beat em up/stealth style action game, but Dragon Age needs to ship this year(I know, supposed to be November 3rd, but it has to make that date) in oder to be considered for GOTY, and even then, only one Bioware game ever rated higher then Batman on Metacritic. In no way saying I agree with it, but it is the current reality we are looking at. Such is the state of PC gaming atm

 

[GaiaHunter]

Thank you oh mighty nVidia for paying developers to lock features off the competition so you can do marketing saying your graphics cards are the best and so you sell more and become a monopoly and charge me $600+ for a graphics card!

Thanks for looking for my interests!

And by the way I'll keep playing my titan:Quest, my wc3 and its dota mode and my good old GW.

 

[TheMeanestGuest]

True, I suppose it wouldn't be very surprising at all if DA was delayed again.

 

[akugami]

Originally posted by: Wreckage

Originally posted by: akugami


Click on the link at the bottom of that list for a list of games that actually use GPU PhysX and the list becomes...much less impressive.

How about the list of list of games that actually use GPU Havok? You do know don't you?

I'm not the one trumpeting the benefits of GPU Havok. In fact, I find the state of hardware physics acceleration to be so small as to be so small that it can be considered negligible.

You are the one trumpeting how nVidia cards are great because of GPU accelerated PhysX. You go on to produce a list of games, many of which aren't even on a PC, that may use PhysX but software based PhysX. Pointing out the actual list of games that supports GPU PhysX is pointing out the truth of the state of PhysX.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

Originally posted by: akugami

Originally posted by: Wreckage

Originally posted by: akugami


Click on the link at the bottom of that list for a list of games that actually use GPU PhysX and the list becomes...much less impressive.

How about the list of list of games that actually use GPU Havok? You do know don't you?

I'm not the one trumpeting the benefits of GPU Havok. In fact, I find the state of hardware physics acceleration to be so small as to be so small that it can be considered negligible.

You are the one trumpeting how nVidia cards are great because of GPU accelerated PhysX. You go on to produce a list of games, many of which aren't even on a PC, that may use PhysX but software based PhysX. Pointing out the actual list of games that supports GPU PhysX is pointing out the truth of the state of PhysX.

:thumbsup:

 

[atran5e]

Physx or no Physx this is an AAA game, haven't heard such a good voice acting since Minsc, Korgan and Irenicus days. At this point you just gotta be thankful it came with AA and physx even if it's NV exclusive, better than a vanilla port. For the future tho I definitely wouldn't want things to go down like this, but I guess that's most likely whats going to happen till new consoles come out.

 

[thilanliyan]

This is the response Fugger got from nV regarding the AA issue in Arkham Asylum.

Originally posted at XS:
"NVIDIA statement on Batman AA
A representative of AMD recently claimed that NVIDIA interfered with anti-aliasing (AA) support for Batman: Arkham Asylum on AMD cards. They also claimed that NVIDIA?s The Way It?s Meant to be Played Program prevents AMD from working with developers for those games.
Both of these claims are NOT true. Batman is based on Unreal Engine 3, which does not natively support anti-aliasing. We worked closely with Eidos to add AA and QA the feature on GeForce. Nothing prevented AMD from doing the same thing.
Games in The Way It?s Meant to be Played are not exclusive to NVIDIA. AMD can also contact developers and work with them.
We are proud of the work we do in The Way It?s Meant to be Played. We work hard to deliver kickass, game-changing features in PC games like PhysX, AA, and 3D Vision for games like Batman. If AMD wants to deliver innovation for PC games then we encourage them to roll up their sleeves and do the same.

NVIDIA Developer Relations"



Merged into the original thread.

Video Mod BFG10K.

 

[BFG10K]

This is clearly the developer at fault then because we know the game?s AA works fine on ATi cards when it?s tricked through the device ID.

 

[Nox51]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
This is clearly the developer at fault then because we know the game?s AA works fine on ATi cards when it?s tricked through the device ID.

BFG can you run through the logic you used to get to that conclusion? Don't take in a bad way I just can't see the way you got there.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
This is clearly the developer at fault then because we know the game?s AA works fine on ATi cards when it?s tricked through the device ID.

This.

If one little change enables it to be done just as well, than it was nothing but a lock-out that was poorly implemented. Sadly next game it will be much harder to alter, I'm sure of it.

nVidia lately is getting worse and worse. A big WTH are they doing over there. I was considering a GT300 purchase, but unfair business practices aren't going over so well. I also think it's quite unprofessional to slap in a "kickass" statement in their PR announcements. Especially as AMD has out a new GPU that trounces nearly everything in it's path. Don't forget it's $120 cheaper than nVidia's best GPU solution.

Nothing kickass is coming out of nVidia as of late. That's for damn sure.

Originally posted by: Nox51

Originally posted by: BFG10K
This is clearly the developer at fault then because we know the game?s AA works fine on ATi cards when it?s tricked through the device ID.

BFG can you run through the logic you used to get to that conclusion? Don't take in a bad way I just can't see the way you got there.

There is an entire thread about this. Look at the Batman AA thread.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

double post

 

[Qbah]

Looks similar to what nVidia did to PhysX:

We helped the developer, we gave him money, the game will run at 100% only on our hardware. The features will be artificially blocked so they don't work on other hardware. You want to play it, buy nVidia only.

As sad as it sounds, that's the recent way of "being competitive" for nVidia - and it's actually very anti-competitive. In a normal environment, the hardware should defend itself with pure power and ingenuity and not artificial blocks. But nVidia can't really compete with the new HD58xx cards. The new ATi cards are both faster and have more features. So it's nVidia's way of showing how much "better" they are. Kinda reminds me of their PR BS about a 100$ card being faster than ATi's newest series in PhysX (hardware accelerated physics). True? Sure it is. Total bullshit? Most definitely.

Every respectful gamer should avoid this game not to give the developer and publisher the idea that it's supported. Then again the game sells extremely well (mostly thanks to console numbers, which don't use either PhysX or AA anyway). Also, wasn't Intel doing something similar and got sued for it?

 

[Nox51]

Originally posted by: Scholzpdx

Originally posted by: BFG10K

Originally posted by: Nox51

Originally posted by: BFG10K
This is clearly the developer at fault then because we know the game?s AA works fine on ATi cards when it?s tricked through the device ID.

BFG can you run through the logic you used to get to that conclusion? Don't take in a bad way I just can't see the way you got there.

There is an entire thread about this. Look at the Batman AA thread.

You mean the one that had specific details about how to get AA running in it? I can't find did it get deleted or something?

 

[TurtleCrusher]

What the heck? Why was that thread deleted?

I can't find it at all now.

Edit: This might be it. At least one of them.

 

[Nox51]

I think because it detailed a way to circumvent the lame lockout placed in the game. Frankly deleting it is pretty fucking piss poor as I think it had some valid discussion in it. Well I can't go back and check on that now can I? Why not just lock it?