Which approach to graphics features is better for gamers

[Keysplayr]

thats what i was saying.

So Nvidia isn't just cranking up the tesselation without reason. It actually does make things look better. That is what you meant? I just want to make sure I'm getting it right. Never can tell these days.

 

[Azix]

So Nvidia isn't just cranking up the tesselation without reason. It actually does make things look better. That is what you meant? I just want to make sure I'm getting it right. Never can tell these days.

Some english lessons might help.

he said there was a quality effect because of how the announcement was worded

I said it was worded like that because the setting is a quality setting so if changed it would be responsible to say it affected quality even if it was impossible to visually see the change (maybe some pixels are different)

nvidia is addicted to tessellation and, based on past examples, one wouldn't expect they'd use it sensibly.

 

[Keysplayr]

Some english lessons might help.

he said there was a quality effect because of how the announcement was worded

I said it was worded like because the setting is a quality setting so if changed it would be responsible to say it affected quality even if it was impossible to visually see the change (maybe some pixels are different)

nvidia is addicted to tessellation and based on past examples, one wouldn't expect they use it sensibly.

You're wording is atrocious. ^bold... What???

 

[stahlhart]

Some english lessons might help.

Along with some in manners for you.
-- stahlhart

 

[Azix]

You're wording is atrocious. ^bold... What???

Can you stop? OBVIOUSLY the word missing is "that". I should get on your case about using you're instead of your. Read harder man.

Along with some in manners for you.
-- stahlhart

if you see someone trying to punch a nail into wood with their head is it bad manners to tell them they need a hammer? If he needs english lessons, he needs english lessons. you're rude for trying to hinder his progress in life.

Infraction issued for moderator callout.
-- stahlhart

 

[Keysplayr]

Can you stop? OBVIOUSLY the word missing is "that". I should get on your case about using you're instead of your. Read harder man.



if you see someone trying to punch a nail into wood with their head is it bad manners to tell them they need a hammer? If he needs english lessons, he needs english lessons. you're rude for trying to hinder his progress in life.

You're right. I mix up your and you're all the time. Could be worse though. I could completely omit words and leave all of you to figure out what should fill in the blank.

 

[Blitzvogel]

TressFX and Hairworks really is a waste of time, as it doesn't really add much of anything.

AMD and Nvidia should be focusing on making interactive physics on GPUs more common.

I thought it was an enormous waste of processing power.

 

[Azix]

I thought it was an enormous waste of processing power.

That would be graphics in general then. Might as well run dos graphics with that sentiment.

 

[Silverforce11]

So Nvidia isn't just cranking up the tesselation without reason. It actually does make things look better. That is what you meant? I just want to make sure I'm getting it right. Never can tell these days.

That's exactly what people have been saying.

I've played heaps of W3 already, tested HairWorks with various forced Tessellation. At x16 mode, there's no noticeable difference in quality. At x8, we can see some major IQ reduction. Thus, for me, the best optimized setting is x16. Not the default x64. If you gamers on NV had the ability to control the setting ingame, you too would arrive at the x16 so you can have HairWorks and it runs much faster.

x64 is sub-pixel tessellation. A single pixel rendered cannot confer that information. This is the Crysis 2 flat-surface tessellation repeating itself, just wasteful, unoptimized (something I'd bet gamedevs hate, as the good ones always balance IQ vs performance).

 

[Keysplayr]

That's exactly what people have been saying.

I've played heaps of W3 already, tested HairWorks with various forced Tessellation. At x16 mode, there's no noticeable difference in quality. At x8, we can see some major IQ reduction. Thus, for me, the best optimized setting is x16. Not the default x64. If you gamers on NV had the ability to control the setting ingame, you too would arrive at the x16 so you can have HairWorks and it runs much faster.

x64 is sub-pixel tessellation. A single pixel rendered cannot confer that information. This is the Crysis 2 flat-surface tessellation repeating itself, just wasteful, unoptimized (something I'd bet gamedevs hate, as the good ones always balance IQ vs performance).

Why aren't you guys reading carefully. Here is my post again:

"So Nvidia isn't just cranking up the tesselation without reason. It actually does make things look better. That is what you meant? I just want to make sure I'm getting it right. Never can tell these days."

This is why I question things so much. I want to make sure people understand what they read when they comment on it. Silverforce, you answered me as if I said the complete opposite sentence and it is confusing to say the least. We must read more carefully. I'll make the same effort.

 

[Piroko]

"So Nvidia isn't just cranking up the tesselation without reason. It actually does make things look better. That is what you meant? I just want to make sure I'm getting it right. Never can tell these days."

This is why I question things so much. I want to make sure people understand what they read when they comment on it. Silverforce, you answered me as if I said the complete opposite sentence and it is confusing to say the least. We must read more carefully. I'll make the same effort.

I honestly understood it the same way everyone else did.

You can take the same argument for - let's say - Anti Aliasing. It would be trivial to increase AA to 16, 32 or 64 samples per pixel and yet noone does it. The performance decrease does not justify that theoretical increase in rendering accuracy. And it isn't even a given that we see it as an image quality increase as it would probably reintroduce/increase pixel flickering.

Tesselation is still in its early stages, game devs need to learn how to use it for maximum effect. Tomb Raider could have used it for more than just Laras curves, Crysis 3 could have used it more intelligently than on surfaces that are almost flat regardless.

As for the approach to graphics features, I'd say both are wrong.
Nvidia has an issue of trust with the game devs - why else are most of their features implemented in an eyecandy only way? Why is there no Portal 3 with PhysX? Or Splatoon?
And AMD lacks broader support, only a couple of game studios pick up their features to implement it. This is related to a lack of documentation, hotline support, public demo implementations. Stuff that makes it easier for gamedevs. Stuff that will also make it potentially more locked down to you as a service & hardware provider.

 

[kasakka]

As for the approach to graphics features, I'd say both are wrong.
Nvidia has an issue of trust with the game devs - why else are most of their features implemented in an eyecandy only way? Why is there no Portal 3 with PhysX? Or Splatoon?

The features being Nvidia only is a big barrier. As consoles are all now AMD-based they instead go for universal physics engines like Havok or Bullet. PhysX is most likely more advanced (at least outside the usual collision detection and rigid body dynamics). I don't know what's the performance impact of something like fluid simulation in PhysX but it's most likely quite heavy so we're unlikely to see something like that in games as these extra effects can't really be a crucial part of gameplay since they have to work on AMD cards as well.

Probably the best thing now would be to give players more control over Gameworks features beyond simple on/off if things like reducing tesselation can heavily improve performance with negligible image quality reduction. Based on what I've read though tessellation is handled better by Nvidia GPUs overall so that could explain much of the performance difference.

 

[zlatan]

So Nvidia isn't just cranking up the tesselation without reason. It actually does make things look better.

Without reason... certainly not. But what is the reason? I don't even know why Hairworks uses tessellation, it doesn't necessary to do it. 64 vertices per strand is more than enough, no need to overdo it. Especially not when all strands rendered into a 8x multisampled render target. Also using geometry shader (and not vertex shader) for extruding segments into front-facing polygons is just a stupid thing, because it will create too long pipelines. The biggest problem is the poor quad occupancy with the really unnecessary 64x isoline tessellation, and this will cause a huge amount of unnecessary work. A 16x tessellation might help, but the actual versions of Hairworks don't allow to modify the tessellation factor for the devs.

Two possibilities exist:
1. Nvidia just want to artificially increase the system requirement with these unnecessary workloads. Making sure that the customers will buy new cards more often.
2. The research budget (or time) for Hairworks was very limited, and the team made several bad decisions about how they should make a good quality hair/fur simulation effect.
Both are equally terrifying, but the second one is acceptable, because everyone makes mistakes.

 

[Azix]

@Keysplayr

I chose to ignore you after you kept on nitpicking but I have to say I don't really get what your issue is. What people have said is not misinterpreting what you said unless your sarcasm level is over 9000 and its just sarcasm withing sarcasm within sarcasm. In fact, you yourself should have realized, from what others have very clearly said, the answer to your question no matter how complicated you think what you said was.

There is no difference a user can notice between 16x and 64x tessellation. Whether you mean it has effect or doesn't have effect, that answers it. There is no reason to confuse people by persisting. If it really is that people aren't understanding then explain. You are probably confusing yourself even. Read the posts for what they are without trying to solve for x and y.

zlatan addresses the reason bit well. There is always a reason something is the way it is whether good or bad. Could be negligence/lack of capacity or intentionally so.

Seems its up to posters to fill this role since some individuals just drop in witty one-liners like that is how to do what they are here to do.

 

[Keysplayr]

@Keysplayr

I chose to ignore you after you kept on nitpicking but I have to say I don't really get what your issue is. What people have said is not misinterpreting what you said unless your sarcasm level is over 9000 and its just sarcasm withing sarcasm within sarcasm. In fact, you yourself should have realized, from what others have very clearly said, the answer to your question no matter how complicated you think what you said was.

There is no difference a user can notice between 16x and 64x tessellation. Whether you mean it has effect or doesn't have effect, that answers it. There is no reason to confuse people by persisting. If it really is that people aren't understanding then explain. You are probably confusing yourself even. Read the posts for what they are without trying to solve for x and y.

zlatan addresses the reason bit well. There is always a reason something is the way it is whether good or bad. Could be negligence/lack of capacity or intentionally so.

Seems its up to posters to fill this role since some individuals just drop in witty one-liners like that is how to do what they are here to do.

What in blazes are you talking about? As far as Im concerned, after your first loaded question post, it wasnt really worth acknowledging anything you said after that.

I'll show you in a short while how you are making the mistake here. On mobile and its a pain to quote. To be continued..

 

[Azix]

What in blazes are you talking about? As far as Im concerned, after your first loaded question post, it wasnt really worth acknowledging anything you said after that.

I'll show you in a short while how you are making the mistake here. On mobile and its a pain to quote. To be continued..

Not sure why you expect my first post to be neutral. Should I have split it into two? First post to set the general stage and the second to voice my own view? Sorry if I fail at foruming.

looking forward to you enlightening me

regarding the bold... then why bother? I would have greatly appreciated you ignoring me. Honestly. All you did was make me question our sanity. I came out with the conclusion that I was ok and the issue was with you, but still... it was uncomfortable.

 

[sontin]

Without reason... certainly not. But what is the reason? I don't even know why Hairworks uses tessellation, it doesn't necessary to do it.

So, you dont know why using Tessellation could be better?
Here a few reasons:
Nearly non existent memory increase, less CPU overhead, flexibility, better performance with more strands etc.

64 vertices per strand is more than enough, no need to overdo it.

Number of vertices is up to the designer. In the Hairworks 1.1 Viewer there are examples with less than 10 vertices per strand and even the longer assets dont use 64. The number is even controllable in Hairworks 1.1 with the spine mulitplier.

Especially not when all strands rendered into a 8x multisampled render target. Also using geometry shader (and not vertex shader) for extruding segments into front-facing polygons is just a stupid thing, because it will create too long pipelines. The biggest problem is the poor quad occupancy with the really unnecessary 64x isoline tessellation, and this will cause a huge amount of unnecessary work. A 16x tessellation might help, but the actual versions of Hairworks don't allow to modify the tessellation factor for the devs.

I really like how you find this a problem but using the CPU to calculate thousends or millions of vertices and then do unnecessary work in the vertex shader stage would be much better.
There doesnt exist a performance problem with the usage of the Geometry shader. The DX11 demo from 2010 uses less time with geometry and pixel shader calculations than AMD's TressFX2.0 Demo with pixel shaders alone on a GTX580:
Page 64: http://markusrapp.de/wordpress/wp-c...usRapp-MasterThesis-RealTimeHairRendering.pdf

The same is true for the 64x isoline tessellation because it offloads the amout of work from the CPU to the GPU. They would even use a higher number if it would possible through the APIs to reduce the number of guide strands.

Two possibilities exist:
1. Nvidia just want to artificially increase the system requirement with these unnecessary workloads. Making sure that the customers will buy new cards more often.
2. The research budget (or time) for Hairworks was very limited, and the team made several bad decisions about how they should make a good quality hair/fur simulation effect.
Both are equally terrifying, but the second one is acceptable, because everyone makes mistakes.

Seriously, what? Hairworks goes back to the work of nVidia with their hair rendering techniques:
http://sarahtariq.com/RealTimeHairSimulationAndRenderingOnGPU_2008.pdf
https://developer.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/akamai/gamedev/files/sdk/11/HairSDKWhitePaper.pdf

Generating geometry on the GPU is the way to go. AMD's TressFX is a dead end. It is a memory, CPU and pixel shader performance hog. The amount of work increases with the number of pixels. Unlike Hairworks which is not nearly affected by this TressFX is not good enough for higher resolutions than 1080p if you want better hair and more characters at the same time.

 

[Azix]

Generating geometry on the GPU is the way to go. AMD's TressFX is a dead end. It is a memory, CPU and pixel shader performance hog. The amount of work increases with the number of pixels. Unlike Hairworks which is not nearly affected by this TressFX is not good enough for higher resolutions than 1080p if you want better hair and more characters at the same time.

end of the day performance is what will say which is the better way of doing it. With tressfx on consoles, its looking the better on performance.

Hairworks might save on VRAM like you claim, but then working with many characters on screen with the implementation is terrible on performance.

 

[sontin]

The console version is worst than the pc version:
https://youtu.be/P0PW_VGtKAI?t=224

They dont use OIT for the hair and less strands.

 

[monstercameron]

Afaik gcn under dx11 doesn't support oit,(pixel sync) so I would imagine that you have it backward.

 

[Sabrewings]

The console version is worst than the pc version:
https://youtu.be/P0PW_VGtKAI?t=224

They dont use OIT for the hair and less strands.

Damn, the PS4 version looks clunky in comparison, like she left in too much conditioner.

 

[SolMiester]

sigged

it's sad that this is what this forum seems to have devolved to. i lurked for years because there was good information to be had - but at this point every thread seems to be these pis*ing contests.

I'm sure it's cyclical - but right now (anecdotally) there seems to be a ton of AMD shilling going on, whether overt or covert.

What value does a thread like this have?

EIDT

seriously - like ten threads below this one is a locked thread arguing about gameworks. How many do we need?

EDIT 2


and four below another thread blaming gameworks for poor performance in games that apparently don't even include gameworks?

seriously?

+1

 

[SolMiester]

That is nonsense. See: pretty much every Bethesda game, ever.

Perhaps the thread title should be changed again to something like "Those who believe AMD is a better company agree that AMD is a better company."

Edit: in case someone mistakes that for flaming or trolling, let me quote the first post again:

...LOL

 

[myocardia]

Anything in games that is vendor locked is bad for gamers. Anything that purposefully hurts the competitions products is bad for gamers.

Exactly. I've never seen anyone describe Mantle quite so well. Kudos for finally calling out AMD on Mantle.

TressFX and Hairworks really is a waste of time, as it doesn't really add much of anything.

Indeed. The very first thing I do after buying a new game is open up the in-game settings, and make sure that any and all trash like TressFX or HairDon'tWorks is turned off. I could care less which company's trash it happens to be.

 

[myocardia]

+1

+2