No AA in StarCraft II with ATI Cards

[Seero]

Yeah, is just too easy to add a lock out vendor ID to avoid anti Aliasing support on rival's videocard because of the lack of a texture format support, yeah, it's easy to think that... too easy.

Many games comes out with errors and bugs which are fixable through patches and driver updates, why locking out a vendor just for its sake? Please, it's easy to think that... too easy.

Didn't Serious Sam 2 shipped out with a bug that caused blocky HDR effects on X1k hardware and yet, a new patch came out and fix it instead of locking the feature out of ATi hardware?? I guess is too hard for you to understand.

Batman doesn't support AA, SC2 doesn't support AA. Nvidia added AA in both cases, the different is the control which allows you to turn it on. In batman, it is in-game. In SC2, it is in Nvidia Control Panel.

ATI didn't add AA support in both cases. In batman, they accuse Nvidia for blocking them, otherwise it will work. In SC2, they claim that it hurts performance, and therefore won't support it in CCC.

It really isn't hard to see who worked on it, and who didn't. Bring Batman in won't change the fact that ATI doesn't support AA in SC2. Try another hero.

 

[Xarick]

ati shouldnt add AA to sc2. Their performance is already subpar compared to their counterpart. Unless they can code it with minimal hit then the damage AA will do to fps on ati cards will just make matters worse.

 

[evolucion8]

Batman doesn't support AA, SC2 doesn't support AA. Nvidia added AA in both cases, the different is the control which allows you to turn it on. In batman, it is in-game. In SC2, it is in Nvidia Control Panel.

ATI didn't add AA support in both cases. In batman, they accuse Nvidia for blocking them, otherwise it will work. In SC2, they claim that it hurts performance, and therefore won't support it in CCC.

It really isn't hard to see who worked on it, and who didn't. Bring Batman in won't change the fact that ATI doesn't support AA in SC2. Try another hero.

I'm gonna tell you something, Batman AA Anti Aliasing implementation works like a champ with ATi hardware when you change your deviceID name with software like ATi Tray Tool, I experiment that myself and worked like a champ with no issues, I was able to activate Anti Aliasing directly from the Ingame Control panel.

Also since day 1, AMD users were able to force Anti Aliasing with Catalyst Control and also worked like a champ.

So don't lecture me with your cheap baiting and troll posts because unlike you, I know what I'm posting without a fanboy attitude and you can notice that easily across all my posts, so STFO of my conversation with Scali.

It was Ryan's Smith, GAIA Hunter and Wreckage who brought that back, not me, so before accusing me, read the whole thread before posting meaningless crap, it makes you look a lot less smarter than you already are Hero.!!!

If AMD had not fixed the missing texture format problem, then the game would simply have crashed on AMD hardware on release. THAT is why the vendor ID check is there. nVidia kept the game from crashing on AMD hardware when they developed it.
The check just never was removed, but that is not nVidia's responsibility... Seems to be a QA issue of the developer. Nobody seems to have bothered to look into the issue.
I think people would have complained a LOT more if the game crashed on AMD hardware. So I understand EXACTLY why nVidia locked out other vendors (not just AMD, but you don't hear S3 people complaining).
In fact, if you use older AMD drivers (where the texture format is missing), and you use the vendor ID spoof to enable AA, it probably still crashes.

Aside from that, nVidia's workaround also uses the NVAPI, because nVidia made it work on their DX10 hardware, while technically it's a DX10.1 feature. So it's not exactly standard vendor-agnostic DX code.

I understand your point, but there had been games that has crashing issues than nVidia and AMD had solved in the past. If Batman crashed on AMD, instead of getting angry with the developer of Batman like happened, they would get angry at AMD and using the error reporting tool would make AMD to fix the issue, and then that's it. If I'm a developer I'd prefer to users to get angry at AMD instead of me or my company where I work.

Even though it uses the NVAPI, that workaround works on AMD too, don't know how thought, but probably the DXCall that NVAPI uses is identical to the DX10.1 call. Because it isn't like magically changing a DeviceID to a rival's card makes the rival features like for example, PhysX works like intented.

 

[Seero]

I'm gonna tell you something, Batman AA Anti Aliasing implementation works like a champ with ATi hardware when you change your deviceID name with software like ATi Tray Tool, I experiment that myself and worked like a champ with no issues, I was able to activate Anti Aliasing directly from the Ingame Control panel.

Also since day 1, AMD users were able to force Anti Aliasing with Catalyst Control and also worked like a champ.

So don't lecture me with your cheap baiting and troll posts because unlike you, I know what I'm posting without a fanboy attitude and you can notice that easily across all my posts, so STFO of my conversation with Scali.

It was Ryan's Smith, GAIA Hunter and Wreckage who brought that back, not me, so before accusing me, read the whole thread before posting meaningless crap, it makes you look a lot less smarter than you already look Hero.!!!

Troll?
Since day 1, ATI user needs to Heck to use ingame AA in batman. Let me spell it out for you. ATI user needs to use a fake DeviceID to confuse the game to misunderstood it as a qualified hardware for that particular function to be enabled. Are you seriously telling me that means working as intended?

If you have read this thread, then you will have known that on multiple occasions I said that a) ATI is not at fault, and b) it isn't a big deal. You, on the otherhand claims that Nvidia is blocking ATI user for using in-game AA where you don't seems to understand that the game really doesn't support AA. What makes AA possible is the code that is written by Nvidia. Eidos/Rocksteady can enable or disable the AA menu in-game, but they can't change the under-lying code which owned by Nvidia. Yes, Nvidia's code works on ATI hardware too, but that is very different from ATI user has the right of accessing/utilizing properties of Nvidia. I can spend your money, sleep at your bed, drive your car without any issue, but that doesn't mean I have the right do it WITHOUT your permission because YOU own those properties. I can heck whatever accounts you own and mess with it and say "You are bad because you block me from using your staffs as your staffs are nothing special." That doesn't change the fact that I am committing a crime doing so.

Batman is history, we are here on SC2. Are you going to look for a way to heck Nvidia Control Panel to work with ATI cards and start saying that "Nvidia is playing dirty as Nvidia Control Panel works with my ATI card all along?"

You can break my legs, call me a troll, or pull out my teeth one by one, but it won't change facts. The facts are, until now, ATI still have not make AA possible for their own customers in Batman, and not about to make it possible for SC2.

 

[JeffreyLebowski]

It is beyond dumb. WTF is AMD thinking? This game is going to sell millions of copies over many years. To not have everything work at launch is simply not acceptable.

Does now one read. BLIZZARD didn't put AA in the game. It's not ATI/AMD or Nvidia's problem.
If Nvidia tweaked their drivers to impliment AA in the game, good for them, but to get pissy at ATI/AMD and blame them for no AA in the game is rediculous.

that's like saying it's Ford's fault for not making a pick up truck with a 12 foot bed because Home Depot has 12 foot long 2x4s.

 

[evolucion8]

Troll?
Since day 1, ATI user needs to Heck to use ingame AA in batman. Let me spell it out for you. ATI user needs to use a fake DeviceID to confuse the game to misunderstood it as a qualified hardware for that particular function to be enabled. Are you seriously telling me that means working as intended?

I used ATT to spoof Batman's Vendor LOCK faking my card like being a GTX 280 and I was able to use Batman's AA Anti Aliasing control panel and it indeed worked, the game looked smooth and ran faster than using forced Anti Aliasing through Catalyst Control Center and;

What part of its also possible to force Anti Aliasing using Catalyst Control Panel works on Batman AA don't you understand? Is just that it comes to a steep price in the performance department.

You can break my legs, call me a troll, or pull out my teeth one by one, but it won't change facts. The facts are, until now, ATI still have not make AA possible for their own customers in Batman, and not about to make it possible for SC2.

Yeah troll, I don't have to. You are doing a pretty good job yourself. If you ever bothered to read the whole thread again, the CCC maker stated that the driver is in testing stage and will be released shortly and will enable Anti Aliasing on SC2.

I wonder why they never did the same for Batman AA but like I told you eons ago, since day one when BAA was launched, all Radeon HD users were able to use Anti Aliasing through Catalyst Control Center, is just that nVidia's solution in the game's control panel used a smarter approach which impact less in performance and also looks slightly worse, but since its an easy game in the graphics department, (HD 3870 can max it at 1680x1050 with 4X FSAA and will stay above 35fps), a patch would be needed to allow to use Anti Aliasing through the game's control panel and makes no sense to release a patch for that if it currently run great on AMD hardware regardless of the higher impact in performance.

 

[Scali]

I understand your point, but there had been games that has crashing issues than nVidia and AMD had solved in the past. If Batman crashed on AMD, instead of getting angry with the developer of Batman like happened, they would get angry at AMD and using the error reporting tool would make AMD to fix the issue, and then that's it. If I'm a developer I'd prefer to users to get angry at AMD instead of me or my company where I work.

That is something that I would NEVER do as a developer.
If what Ryan Smith says is correct, then the situation is like this:
The application checks for texture format X.... the AMD driver reports "Not supported".
It requires an incredible leap of faith to assume that it can be fixed in the driver. This is just 'dumb luck' in this case. Apparently the hardware DOES support the format, it just wasn't implemented in the driver.
In every other situation, you just have to assume that what the driver says corresponds with what the hardware can do. If the driver says it's not supported, it isn't supported, and you'll have to select an alternative rendering method.
You can't assume that they can fix it in the driver, because this is the first time I've heard of that. Normally the hardware just can't do it.

 

[Seero]

I used ATT to spoof Batman's Vendor LOCK faking my card like being a GTX 280 and I was able to use Batman's AA Anti Aliasing control panel and it indeed worked, the game looked smooth and ran faster than using forced Anti Aliasing through Catalyst Control Center and;

You are hecking the game, stealing codes from Nvidia, I know.

What part of its also possible to force Anti Aliasing using Catalyst Control Panel works on Batman AA don't you understand? Is just that it comes to a steep price in the performance department.

I know that too. It wasn't a big deal to begin with. The question is, why do you heck, deliberately accessing Nvidia's code illegally?

Yeah troll, I don't have to. You are doing a pretty good job yourself. If you ever bothered to read the whole thread again, the CCC maker stated that the driver is in testing stage and will be released shortly and will enable Anti Aliasing on SC2.

Is it working yet?

I wonder why they never did the same for Batman AA but like I told you eons ago, since day one when BAA was launched, all Radeon HD users were able to use Anti Aliasing through Catalyst Control Center, is just that nVidia's solution in the game's control panel used a smarter approach which impact less in performance and also looks slightly worse, but since its an easy game in the graphics department, (HD 3870 can max it at 1680x1050 with 4X FSAA and will stay above 35fps), a patch would be needed to allow to use Anti Aliasing through the game's control panel and makes no sense to release a patch for that if it currently run great on AMD hardware regardless of the higher impact in performance.

If that is the case, why did you heck the game? And why Nvidia's code bother's you?

You have a quote on Twitter from an enployee in the CCC department. I have a quote from ATI's official response:

AMD constantly strives to deliver great gaming experiences for our customers and the upcoming launch of Starcraft II is no exception. Blizzard’s focus on incredible game play for all, means that gamers using ATI Radeon(tm) products can enjoy smooth HD gameplay and industry leading image quality with our current generation of ATI Radeon products as well as many of our past generation cards.

In discussions during the development of StarCraft II, Blizzard indicated that they would not initially include options to set levels of in-game anti-aliasing (“AA&#8221. This meant that support for AA within StarCraft II would only be made possible by including it in the driver, an approach that could significantly impact performance.

Some third party reviews of the Starcraft II beta echo our concerns that AA can cause gameplay impairment. In these reviews, the third parties found that 4x AA led to a reduction in fps rendering at lower screen resolutions, which only became more noticeable at larger resolutions.

After evaluating our options, our engineering team opted not to provide AA support for StarCraft II within the Catalyst Control Center, even though the competition has included AA support in their driver at launch.

We are committed to making AA perform at an acceptable level before we release it to our customers. We will continue to work with Blizzard on this matter and hope to offer our customers an acceptable AA solution at a later date.

 

[SirPauly]

The quote from Catalyst Maker was after the official response from AMD.

 

[Nurn]

Crappiest. Thread. Ever.

 

[evolucion8]

You are hecking the game, stealing codes from Nvidia, I know.

Hecking....stealing codes for what? To create my own game engine? Please..... that's a joke, a bad one though.

I know that too. It wasn't a big deal to begin with. The question is, why do you heck, deliberately accessing Nvidia's code illegally?

Heck? HECK? What do you mean by heck? Illegally? Accessing code? You are giving me too much credit, I'm no developer and I just tricked the code to make it work with a tool which is open to everyone, I didn't heck anything, mean Hack....

Is it working yet?

Yeah.

If that is the case, why did you heck the game? And why Nvidia's code bother's you?

You have a quote on Twitter from an enployee in the CCC department. I have a quote from ATI's official response:

Thanks SirPauly, he responded to your quote.

 

[akugami]

That's what I'm really curious about. They helped developers with DX11 in games when theirs was the only card that could do DX11. Are they still helping developers implement DX11 now that Nvidia has viable DX11 cards?

On the other hand, Nvidia was criticized for locking out AA for Batman, but from Ryan's post, it does look like going forward, AA will be available for all games using this engine for both AMD and Nvidia.

So when you cut right down to it. AMD helped developers initially when it would only benefit their cards, but might or might not help all gamers later on. Nvidia did the same thing. Initially AA in Batman was supposed to only benefit their cards, but might or might not help all gamers later on.

Well the point being that AMD provided resources with no strings attached such as, anything that arises out of this shall work only on AMD cards. Whereas nVidia stipulates that anything that comes from our help shall work only on nVidia cards. I think that's the major difference.

And while I'm sure AMD is happy nVidia was late in a big way with their DX11 offerings, no one outside of nVidia really knew how late it'd be. Remember that the early rumor sites had nVidia being late by only a couple of months and not half a year.

 

[Scali]

Well the point being that AMD provided resources with no strings attached such as, anything that arises out of this shall work only on AMD cards. Whereas nVidia stipulates that anything that comes from our help shall work only on nVidia cards. I think that's the major difference.

Not necessarily.
When nVidia was the only one on the market with DX10, did they do anything to stop DX10 from running on AMD hardware?
Nope. They didn't even do anything to hamper performance.

 

[Creig]

That is something that I would NEVER do as a developer.
If what Ryan Smith says is correct, then the situation is like this:
The application checks for texture format X.... the AMD driver reports "Not supported".
It requires an incredible leap of faith to assume that it can be fixed in the driver. This is just 'dumb luck' in this case. Apparently the hardware DOES support the format, it just wasn't implemented in the driver.
In every other situation, you just have to assume that what the driver says corresponds with what the hardware can do. If the driver says it's not supported, it isn't supported, and you'll have to select an alternative rendering method.
You can't assume that they can fix it in the driver, because this is the first time I've heard of that. Normally the hardware just can't do it.

So then why wasn't the AA lockout removed by Rocksteady then? All that bad press must have been embarrassing for them, not to mention affecting potential sales to AMD owners.

If all it took was removal of the vendor ID check, they could have updated the game at any time to allow AMD cards access to in-game AA. Especially after it was proven soon after the game launched that AMD cards had no problem using the in-game AA using a faked vendor ID. The only reason I can imagine is that Nvidia is blocking the removal the vendor ID check from the code they wrote for Rocksteady. Nothing else makes any sense.

 

[Scali]

So then why wasn't the AA lockout removed by Rocksteady then?

Only Rocksteady knows the real answer to that.
I'm just saying why nVidia chose to put the vendor-check in.
Ofcourse it's very 'convenient' to leave it there, once it's in place, but that doesn't mean that it was necessarily an evil thing to put it there in the first place.
I also don't know if the code works exactly as expected when the vendor spoof is being used.

Reminds me a bit too much of discussions about Crysis where people swear they can't see the difference between DX9 and DX10, and such.
Just because it looks 'okay' to the untrained eye doesn't mean that it is working as intended.
And what exactly does the underlying runtime say? Perhaps you get all sorts of exceptions and errors which only a developer with a debugger would see.

 

[Seero]

Hecking....stealing codes for what? To create my own game engine? Please..... that's a joke, a bad one though.

Heck? HECK? What do you mean by heck? Illegally? Accessing code? You are giving me too much credit, I'm no developer and I just tricked the code to make it work with a tool which is open to everyone, I didn't heck anything, mean Hack....

Yes, I can take a peak at some lady under her shirt on the street without their permission, and it is easy to do, and yes, even though it is easy, it is a crime. I don't need to take this lady home or marry her later to be a criminal, the peaking act itself is a crime. So yes, hacking, and accessing Nvidia's property illegally.

Yeah.

So people can use AA through CCC on SC2. Oh wait, according to whom?

Thanks SirPauly, he responded to your quote.

Lets focus on understanding the quotes.

After evaluating our options, our engineering team opted not to provide AA support for StarCraft II within the Catalyst Control Center, even though the competition has included AA support in their driver at launch.

There are options, and they are evaluated. The decision of the engineering team opted not to provide AA support to SC2 through CCC. This is an official statement released to www.hardwarecanucks.com.

The twitter quote. Terry Makedon, on the other hand claims that it is almost ready. So either AMD has a serious internal communication issue, or one of them doesn't know what they are talking about.

However, having AA available to all user doesn't mean ATI has done something. Maybe Blizzard sent 2 emails saying that in-game AA will be ready soon, and therefore, Terry Makedon said it will be ready soon.

Before or after isn't the key. The key is, no AA in SC2 after the game has been released. Is it a big deal? No. Is it a fact? Yes. Will there be a patch for it? Maybe. When? lol, I don't know.

 

[SHAQ]

But why would you opt not to include it? Is giving your customers choice such a bad deal? They were caught flat footed IMO.

 

[evolucion8]

So people can use AA through CCC on SC2. Oh wait, according to whom?

No, that was a misunderstanding, I though you refer to the troll job you were doing.

Before or after isn't the key. The key is, no AA in SC2 after the game has been released. Is it a big deal? No. Is it a fact? Yes. Will there be a patch for it? Maybe. When? lol, I don't know.

Just soon, loll

I also don't know if the code works exactly as expected when the vendor spoof is being used.

At least it worked when I did it and lots of other people across different forums did the same thing and worked. While its impossible to me to check at a debugger level like you stated, the jaggies were anti aliased and there were slightly more jaggies in some areas compared to the forced Anti Aliasing in the CCC which proves the fact that nVidia's FSAA implementation on the game is less agressive and more selective for jaggies than the brute approach typical used in the CCC or nVidia's CP. Such AA image quality results can be replicated using an nVidia card too.

 

[Seero]

No, that was a misunderstanding, I though you refer to the troll job you were doing.

Maybe there are more misunderstanding than that.

When I said "try another hero", I mean Batman doesn't help, try another hero, like superman or something. It was suppose to be a joke, not an attack, or a troll.

 

[evolucion8]

Maybe there are more misunderstanding than that.

When I said "try another hero", I mean Batman doesn't help, try another hero, like superman or something. It was suppose to be a joke, not an attack, or a troll.

Oh I see, it sounded like " Try another, Hero....." No hard feelings anyway, but you are right, I just hope that Wolverine or Iron Man comes with no jaggies or I will be mad.

 

[Seero]

Oh I see, it sounded like " Try another, Hero....." No hard feelings anyway, but you are right, I just hope that Wolverine or Iron Man comes with no jaggies or I will be mad.

I was surprised that you got so upset as you isn't like those who have short fuses. I reread and reread my post and the only thing that I can pick up is that. Now that is out of the way, we can continue with personal attacks in a new way.

 

[GaiaHunter]

For Batman:
a) Nvidia is bad for not allowing ATI to execute their code.

b) ATI is bad for not implementing their own methods of enabling AA.

c) Rocksteady is to be blame for not implementing AA.

Nope rocksteady was lazy as hell and seduced by easy cash, NVIDIA was doing their job of marketing to buy time in face of AMD hardware onslaught, AMD was sleeping, as usual, in the marketing department and the consumers were losing as Batman price was the same, regardless of your card vendors.

For SC2:
a) Nvidia is bad for not allowing ATI to execute their code.

b) ATI is bad for not implementing their own methods of enabling AA.

c) Blizzard is to be blame for not implementing AA.

Blizzard can do whatever they want and they will sell millions of copies because AA in SC2 is pointless, NVIDIA was again playing the marketing card and ATI was sleeping, but will be able to make the modifications, since opposed to rocksteady, Blizzard doesn't want people meddling with their code.

Please, keep your answer consistent. You mentioned ATI catched up, but I still don't see the AA option enabled for ATI in Batman long after Richard Huddy stated that it may be patched in some later time 6+ months ago.

Nor will you see it ever implemented because that will be a breach in the contract between rocksteady and NVIDIA, as rocksteady remarked "with the legal team not letting us".

Not that you will ever accept that.

Both games doesn't support AA by default. In both games, Nvidia took an extra step in delivering what you called "Standard" to its customer while ATI ...

AMD has announced that they will have an hotfix - if they fail to deliver it then you could bash them if you use radeon cards.

Please explain the ATI is catching up part.

I don't know - maybe it is the market share part. Apparently having hardware sooner does wonders over having physX and AA in Batman AA.

So that you know, eyefinity doesn't work on SC2.

Who the fuck cares about eyefinity?
AMD fanboys maybe just as NVIDIA fanboys care about physX and CUDA.

Non-fanboys want good cards for cheap, regardless of vendor that can use the DX features - but that might be an alien concept for some.

 

[Xarick]

I didn't read a lot of this, but does anyone in this thread note that the hotfix is coming out soon so ati will have AA?

 

[SirPauly]

The twitter quote. Terry Makedon, on the other hand claims that it is almost ready. So either AMD has a serious internal communication issue, or one of them doesn't know what they are talking about.

Or, AMD was getting a pulse or feel of how the community reacted and changed their mind and decided to be pro-active.

 

[Zstream]

All hardware. Eyefinity is a definite feather in ATI's cap though. Other than that, all industry standards and not much to do with software and dev support, which is really what we are talking about here. I know we'll disagree on every point ahead of time. So I respect your opinions and agree to disagree with you.

And we are talking about AA?! So what does that matter?