Richard Huddy of AMD says DX API & Consoles holding back PC gaming visuals.

[mnewsham]

Good read, thanks for the link

 

[notty22]

Huddy's comments were mentioned in another thread, I'm sure they can be merged, what bothers me if you listen to this LONG video from 2008 at around the 19.00 minute mark , he mentions how important it is to have standards, DX.
http://tv.hexus.net/show/2008/09/Interview_with_AMD_s_Richard_Huddy/
There is alot of Nvidia 'bad' ,pro ATI themes, he was a employee of Nvidia from 98-2002 I believe.

 

[Athadeus]

I am not a professional developer, but I believe more and more performance is getting lost to APIs and compilers as time goes on. I'd like to see a comparison of performance increase for gaming systems vs supercomputers (somewhat optimized vs extremely optimized), though such tests would be difficult. You would have to have a game that had been around for 8+ years with no frame rate limit and drivers that continued to run it well. The supercomputing system performance increase would have to be at a similar cost, and running the same application.

I was so frustrated when I started programming in a BASIC like language on ti-87 and ti-89s and I was not aware that there was documentation and software freely available to work at the low level. My crappy text based games and graphic rpgs on the 89 could not touch the performance and features of those space shooters and stuff developed that way. Different but similar issue.

A game could be developed with incredible graphics compared to what we have now. Unfortunately, development cost and portability/compatibility would suffer. Maybe something targeted for the elite could be profitable?

 

[HeXen]

i read a while back somewhere that Tim Sweeny or whatever his name is, mention that for the U4 engine, they plan to not use an API, somehow the engine itself talks to the hardware. What all that really means or how it will benefit i don't know.

what i would like to see regardless is a completely cross platform game regardless of OS used. I would use Linux 100% if i could play my games on it.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Maybe something targeted for the elite could be profitable?

Not a student of gaming history, are we? LookingGlass software released Ultima Underground, which really required a cutting edge system to play (high-end 386/486), and due to lack of sales, the company went out of business. The game was technically a masterpiece for it's time, especially graphically, but due to market conditions, games like that just can't survive in the marketplace.

 

[wahdangun]

Not a student of gaming history, are we? LookingGlass software released Ultima Underground, which really required a cutting edge system to play (high-end 386/486), and due to lack of sales, the company went out of business. The game was technically a masterpiece for it's time, especially graphically, but due to market conditions, games like that just can't survive in the marketplace.

how about farcry, tesblivion, metro, and crysis? Isn't they are cutting edge ? Even after 4 years nothing can thrown crysis as the most graphical intensive games. So i don't know what do you mean

 

[Lonbjerg]

This is just Fuddy doing his PR-spin-thingy again again.

Not long ago Fuddy hailed DX11 as the second comming.

Then first NVIDIA beat AMD's DX11 performance.
And now "fusion" is closing in.

Add 2 + 2 and then wonder why a PR guy talks about hardware/software...and not engineers.

This is all about "fusion"..and AMD's marketing of it...not DX.

 

[shangshang]

Linux is free. OpenGL is a lot "free-er" than DX. So why didn't the 2 combination dethrone Microsoft? Was it not DX that slowly stick a knife into OpenGL? MS was able to do this, why? Were the consumers and developers accomplices to the rise of Windows and DX dominance?

"Standards" are the norms in the tech industry. Back in the days when there were no standards (or loose standards), you had a lot of smaller fishes vying for dominance. Well... the results of that competition killed a lot of fishes, and the remaining fishes get to make up the rules (standards). I'm sure in the future, the DX standards will either evolve drastically or get replaced (this has always been how it is in the tech industry). But until that day, i'm willing to bet AMD (and Hurdy) might go away before DX will!

(A sidenote: It's amazing today watching Apple rise to dominance in the smartphone & tablet field. Apple back in the 80s were really ahead of MS in the PC world. Then Apple died off beause consumers and developers both hated the closed/restricte Apple OS. Apple as a company went into hibernation, until they struct gold with iPod, iPhone, and now iPad. These new Apple products are still restrictive like all Mac/Apple products, but they are still selling like hotcakes anyway.)

My point??? When it comes to "consumer electronics", forget trying to use "standards" to project success/failure. What Apple (and Steve Job) has taught me is that if you have the right products at the right time, make it hip with the masses, have a great marketing infrastructure... you're gonna become the standard setter!

I don't see AMD or NV or any game developer having the weight to solidify any standard. At the moment, the main player is still MS.

 

[Dark Shroud]

Anyone who thinks APIs are the problem is either young or full of it. I've been PC gaming since the 80s and I don't want to go back. I didn't mind the hardware check list as much as others but all the mess that came after it was another story.

Trying to help people install games or getting them to work. You think it's bad with people not know what's in their systems now, well it was far worse back then. Just trying to find out if someone's sound card was MIDI capable. Then there was the whole issue with video cards... I'm not even going to discuess the issues with drivers.

Lastly this was all done over dial-up and most people didn't have dedicated modem lines or switch boards either.

 

[gorobei]

nevermind, threads merged

 

[HeXen]

Anyone who thinks APIs are the problem is either young or full of it. I've been PC gaming since the 80s and I don't want to go back. I didn't mind the hardware check list as much as others but all the mess that came after it was another story.

Trying to help people install games or getting them to work. You think it's bad with people not know what's in their systems now, well it was far worse back then. Just trying to find out if someone's sound card was MIDI capable. Then there was the whole issue with video cards... I'm not even going to discuess the issues with drivers.

Lastly this was all done over dial-up and most people didn't have dedicated modem lines or switch boards either.

i remember gaming on the trash 80, the apple 2, couple of dos versions on IBM's, Atari ST and C64, amiga 500. what the heck trouble are you talking about? i played em all fine and was just a kid not knowing much about computers.
and video cards? in the 80's?...well i'll be damned.. i remember the amiga had a Blitter but i guess i never thought of it as a video cardD: but whatever.

 

[taltamir]

John Carmack says DX is actually pretty decent now. Even better than OpenGL. I trust the word of John Carmack more than an anonymous game developer.

carmack said DX is a little better right now than openGL because it makes changes unencumbered by maintaining backwards compatibility. Not enough to make it worthwhile to switch over to it.

So:
1. Its not a huge difference.
2. He is discounting the value of backwards compatibility. Older games are often pretty neat games to have, and trying to get an older DX game to work is a nightmare because MS is not maintaining backwards compatibility.

 

[Blitzvogel]

This is just Fuddy doing his PR-spin-thingy again again.

Not long ago Fuddy hailed DX11 as the second comming.

Then first NVIDIA beat AMD's DX11 performance.
And now "fusion" is closing in.

Add 2 + 2 and then wonder why a PR guy talks about hardware/software...and not engineers.

This is all about "fusion"..and AMD's marketing of it...not DX.

I think someone already mentioned the idea of his complaints not necessarily being towards DX11, but the continued support of DX9. Despite lack of clarification, that could be his issue with the API, and many other gamers were pretty happy to see some games abandon DX9 for DX10 like Just Cause 2.

 

[SickBeast]

So what are we gonna do? Turn the PC into a ginormous game console? You want a closed platform? That's what Macs are for, and you can all see how that turned out for gaming.

If Apple moved to exclusively using AMD or nVidia GPUs, I could see this type of thing taking off, but I'm not sure that it's got legs.

I was under the impression that the tools available to developers in DX are incredible and are very useful. John Carmack even admitted as much recently, and went so far as to say that DX is faster than OpenGL.

 

[Idontcare]

John Carmack even admitted as much recently, and went so far as to say that DX is faster than OpenGL.

I figured there had to be some reason why OpenGL fell by the wayside. Carmack would know, but isn't he also the guy that thought Larrabee was going to destroy Nvidia and AMD? These guys don't seem to have a good track record at predicting the future of their industry.

 

[SickBeast]

I figured there had to be some reason why OpenGL fell by the wayside. Carmack would know, but isn't he also the guy that thought Larrabee was going to destroy Nvidia and AMD? These guys don't seem to have a good track record at predicting the future of their industry.

Well, Carmack is a programmer, so he probably has a great insight into currently available hardware, but asking him about future designs is probably like asking your hairdresser how to fix your car. :thumbsup::thumbsup:

 

[Seero]

"Fire Richard, and hire someone new. Richard's old standard speech is in the way of gaming." If i can find 2 people in agreement, then it will be "one of the most common requests I get from people" depending on the example space, which will be 3 people, the 2 people above, and 1 random person.

If you think my claim is baseless and weak in nature, then good, you get the point.

API is what made applications so powerful. Without it, compatibility won't exists. Different version of windows can't see the same web page, and iPod won't work on PC. Without it, you can't send a txt file cross platform. Without it, PC is nothing but BSoDs.

In fact, most BSoD, driver issues, and compatibility problems are the result of lack of standardizations. Wonder why USB is so good and how floppy drive ceased? Because USB has its standards, and all manufacturer must follow this standard, and therefore works without issue. DirectX is the exact same thing. GPU is built to support it, and instructions through Dx API will work on any Dx compliant GPUs. Yes, it is general, but that is the point. It serves as the lowest common denominator.

Does supporting Dx means GPU can't support instructions that is not send through Dx APIs? Nope. OpenGL, OpenCL, stream, and CUDA all has nothing to do with Dx. So what exactly is Richard saying? Let me put it in layman terms.

"Developers should stop using any existing softwares, templates and methods in their developments. They hurt performance. Also, don't recycle any codes from previous games, start each from sketches." To hardware vendors, that is the most beautiful things that can ever be said. To us, we give them our fingers. Why? The possible outcomes are a)it won't happen, b) 69,999.99 a game and it comes with the hardware required to run it, c) 100 years of development, and by the time it is done, you will need to use your great grand dad's PC to play it.

Even laymen know PC is faster if all the cores can be utilized as if they are one, and many bitches about it. Some understand why but still bitches about it. However, not even laymen will say "Lets rewrite everything directly-to-metal!" In fact, every coding goes through drivers, he is really believe that developers should and will write drivers for them now? Gee.

 

[gorobei]

DX is great for smaller developers since you dont have to spend as much time coding your own shaders and it makes it easier to know that the game will work on a wide variety of systems.

direct control over the hardware is for developers who want to push the absolute limits of graphics. But we saw how that worked out for crysis1: few systems able to max it, fewer sales to those that could play it.

as stated before, with consoles(known fixed hardware) there are a ton of optimizations that can be done to get a lot out of very limited resources. Whether or not drawcalls is the real problem or if instances in DX11 will solve it remains to be seen. If ever a true DX11 game comes out we can find out.

 

[SickBeast]

nVidia already tried creating their own "C for Graphics" and it was an epic failure. The only time something like this was truly great was with Glide on the 3DFX cards. Perhaps this guy is onto something if AMD can create a "Voodoo 1" for the modern day.

 

[RobertPters77]

Linux is free. OpenGL is a lot "free-er" than DX. So why didn't the 2 combination dethrone Microsoft? Was it not DX that slowly stick a knife into OpenGL? MS was able to do this, why? Were the consumers and developers accomplices to the rise of Windows and DX dominance?

Maybe because Linux is not as free people make it out to be. Who does linux support? Say this. Ol' Grandma who's 86 downloads and installs linux on her dell from 1998. Now she doesn't know where shit is and what she's doing. Who's she gonna call for help? A linux reseller? Tough luck you didn't buy from us you get no support. You got a problem with windows? Any competent PC user can google the symptoms and boom 5 minutes they have either a diagnosis or a cure.

Please don't blame the consumers. OpenGL is like a committee, Every member needs to have their favors done and egos stroked for anything to be approved. DirectX is like a business. 1 guy on top making all the decisions. Shit gets done in DirectX. Whilst in OpenGL they bicker on and on about Z and Y.

 

[taltamir]

OpenGL is like a committee

This is false, OpenGL is not like a committee. It is a committee... well technically it is a standard that is created by a committee... OpenGL 4 for example got delayed for several years due to internal squabbling between members of the committee...

And as for "linux being free"... so is the labor of building your own car, house, plumbing, etc... but you don't see grandma trying it. Linux is NOT simple and easy, it doesn't just work. Windows does.
Ubuntu is decent but still has a ton of things that just don't work and need to be manually fixed. My dad wanted to burn a CD, tried brasero, doesn't work. I had to go online, find the problem, and fix it in terminal (it works now). He wanted to plug in a USB floppy... doesn't work. I had to go online, find the solution, fix it in terminal. (and it still only reads and doesn't write unless mounted manually). My dad wanted to change the colors of his desktop background, I had to go online, find a solution... that one didn't actually require a terminal, just installing the right program from the GUI package distribution. Etc...

 

[RobertPters77]

This is false, OpenGL is not like a committee. It is a committee... well technically it is a standard that is created by a committee... OpenGL 4 for example got delayed for several years due to internal squabbling between members of the committee...

Lol. Wow. Really? I did not know that. I thought opengl was a side project of some video software companies, That use opengl as a springboard for selling their products based on it.

And as for "linux being free"... so is the labor of building your own car, house, plumbing, etc... but you don't see grandma trying it. Linux is NOT simple and easy, it doesn't just work. Windows does.

That's why linux is not suitable for the average user. Besides what is it now? <3% global market share? Windows ~90%, osx/ios ~7%.

 

[taltamir]

Lol. Wow. Really? I did not know that. I thought opengl was a side project of some video software companies, That use opengl as a springboard for selling their products based on it.

Yep, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khronos_Group

The Khronos Group is a not-for-profit member-funded industry consortium focused on the creation of open standard, royalty-free APIs to enable the authoring and accelerated playback of dynamic media on a wide variety of platforms and devices. All Khronos members are able to contribute to the development of Khronos API specifications, are empowered to vote at various stages before public deployment, and are able to accelerate the delivery of their cutting-edge 3D platforms and applications through early access to specification drafts and conformance tests.

Members of Khronos Group

In 2006, some of the OpenGL ARB Working Group members were:
AMD/ATI
Apple Inc.
ARM Holdings
Creative Labs
id Software
Ericsson
Google
Intel Corporation
Motorola
Mozilla
Nokia
Nvidia
Samsung Electronics
Sony Computer Entertainment
Oracle/Sun Microsystems
Texas Instruments

There you have it, some of the members of the committee in question. Remember where carmack said that latest DX is a little better at doing some things (not good enough to justify the effort of switching though) compared to OpenGL? He said specifically that the reason for it is that DX dropped legacy compatibility stuff.
With openGL4 the argument that dragged on and on was about whether they should do the same. With companies that make corporate software that uses openGL vehemently opposing and eventually winning. The only reason the issue was ever settled is because DX went from being behind to being so much ahead that the openGL group members realized that either they make a decision now or they become irrelevant.

That's why linux is not suitable for the average user. Besides what is it now? <3&#37; global market share? Windows ~90%, osx/ios ~7%.

That being said, it can be used by a non expert who has someone to help. My dad manages just fine with ubuntu on his laptop because I am there to fix those problems that he couldn't. He just points it out and I fix it so it works the way he needs it to without him ever needing to do anything crazy like open a terminal. Its a real shame because if I had to describe ubuntu in terms of "just works" I would rate it "so very close".

 

[Dribble]

nVidia already tried creating their own "C for Graphics" and it was an epic failure. The only time something like this was truly great was with Glide on the 3DFX cards. Perhaps this guy is onto something if AMD can create a "Voodoo 1" for the modern day.

? - nvidia created CUDA which started off as C, but is now C++ for graphics, it seems to be doing ok.

Glide (GL ide) is just cut down late 90's OGL cause the voodoo couldn't implement the full spec well (e.g. 16 bit textures).

 

[Cerb]

how about farcry, tesblivion, metro, and crysis? Isn't they are cutting edge ? Even after 4 years nothing can thrown crysis as the most graphical intensive games. So i don't know what do you mean

Not the same. Minimum requirements are what matter. A game that can stress a high-end system with high settings has added value; a game that needs a high-end system just to run is a mainstream failure.