Nvidia unofficially, officially caught cheating in Crysis 2

[Marine-RX179]

On the flip side here Marine, if you went to 4 different seafood restaurants and got ill from eating at each of them, and then found out they all use the same local seafood supplier, would you say eh never mind its probably just coincidence or would you avoid restaurants that use that supplier from now on.

To put it into prospective using your example, people indeed to have the right to choose avoid the resturants (aka games by Crytek), but instead they are starting a riot at the local supplier base on that assumption that they are responsible, despite the food at the supplier has not yet been taken to get examined and proven to be the cause.

 

[drunkenmaster]

Thats the point they wouldn't have spent time - spending time would have meant implementing adaptive tessellation mechanisms, ensuring the mesh didn't tear, etc. slapping tessellation over the top of the objects carelessly using the displacement image can easily result in the kind of issues we are seeing.

Also its not a (totally) flat object, the bump/displacement map has depth for several features on it - which is usually the source of data used to generate the tessellated version of the mesh.

On the flip side I'd also like to see whats happening on the nVidia side - unfortunatly I don't have Crysis 2 to test it with my cards - at this point we can't even rule out it being AMD hardware rendering it incorrectly and actually working fine on other GPUs - I haven't seen/can't find any screenshots showing what the meshes look like on non AMD hardware.

Yes we can rule that out, because you can use AMD's driver panel to over ride the level of tesselation ITS TOLD TO USE. The game is simply telling the card to use an absurd level of tesselation, the driver can over ride this and drop the tesselation down dramatically and improve performance...... the point isn't tesselation done right or wrong, you shouldn't be wasting a single instruction on tesselating a flat board that looks identical tesselated and non tesselated. Also yes, the objects are flat, look at where the tesselation is, its all over every pixel of surface area, yet other than a board being on top of the concrete slab itself, the slab is flat and the board sitting on top of it is flat, and both look the same without tesselation. The tesselation IS added to flat textures, the textures are sitting on top of each other as they are in dx9.

One tiny piece at the top of the slab is different in dx11, its also so basic and so dull that it most certainly doesn't need to be tesselated to be done.

 

[Rroff]

Yes we can rule that out, because you can use AMD's driver panel to over ride the level of tesselation ITS TOLD TO USE. The game is simply telling the card to use an absurd level of tesselation, the driver can over ride this and drop the tesselation down dramatically and improve performance......

That doesn't rule out anything... I'm not saying it is the case but its not outside the realm of possibility that the drivers are getting the level incorrect for some reason... wouldn't be the first time something like that has happened.


We all agree this level of tessellation isn't needed so not sure why your still banging on about it - its not evidence directly in any direction.

 

[An Exception]

lol, there is no question, Nvidia did it or had it done, there is no other option.


There is no credible reason AT ALL for a dev to spend time tesselating a pointless object that remains flat, no reason at all.

Also don't forget people, this is an AMD SDK tool, its showing what an AMD card is doing frame by frame. We haven't confirmed Nvidia is also using the same level of tesselation for the increased performance. Its possible that they've both increased the tesselation level just to kill AMD performance, its also possible that Nvidia cards don't use the same level of tesselation.

There is no logical reason here, theres no argument, there is ONE reason to add insanely high level of tesselation to flat objects, to increase the load on the gpu, with zero IQ benefit. Theres a thousand other objects in the game that aren't flat that they could have tesselated, but didn't.

It doesn't matter if Crytek did it on Nvidia's command, or Nvidia did it. As Rroff has had no trouble pointing out frequently in the past, TWIMTBP division has a LOT of programmers and advisors who go to all the companies they work with and work CLOSELY with the company. There is literally no chance in hell, its literally impossible Crytek did this, on a whim, and Nvidia did not see it and have a chance to tell them it was stupid.

They didn't, so we can very very very safely assume Crytek did not do this accidentally, or for some random made up reason. Nvidia paid Crytek $2mil, its a TWIMTBP title, it was not dx11 on consoles, Nvidia were closely involved in working with Crytek to deliver dx11........... and this tesselation part of it is nothing more than sabotage, cheating, dispicable, and hurts everyone.

Exactly, there is no other plausible explanation...

 

[Rroff]

There is no logical reason here, theres no argument, there is ONE reason to add insanely high level of tesselation to flat objects, to increase the load on the gpu, with zero IQ benefit. Theres a thousand other objects in the game that aren't flat that they could have tesselated, but didn't.

Why? it would make far more sense from nVidia's perspective to overdo it on non-flat objects as its far less obvious... it also hints at there being more than one reason why it happened... your looking at it too one dimensionally its also possible it was newbie error - hence addressing point below.

It doesn't matter if Crytek did it on Nvidia's command, or Nvidia did it. As Rroff has had no trouble pointing out frequently in the past, TWIMTBP division has a LOT of programmers and advisors who go to all the companies they work with and work CLOSELY with the company. There is literally no chance in hell, its literally impossible Crytek did this, on a whim, and Nvidia did not see it and have a chance to tell them it was stupid.

They didn't, so we can very very very safely assume Crytek did not do this accidentally, or for some random made up reason. Nvidia paid Crytek $2mil, its a TWIMTBP title, it was not dx11 on consoles, Nvidia were closely involved in working with Crytek to deliver dx11........... and this tesselation part of it is nothing more than sabotage, cheating, dispicable, and hurts everyone.

Yes nVidia work closely with the game studio/publisher, they will provide samples, guidelines even work with implementing certain features, I don't think you really understand how it works tho, nVidia won't have had the final say, they may not even have been involved at all with the actual ingame implementation beyond providing sample source code that the crytek devs then worked from, final Q&A would likely have been done by a division of the publisher to - unless theres actually a problem they may not even go back to nVidia to review the final results depending on the structure thats in place - the inhouse devs usually like to do the final tweaking themselves as its "their baby".

From a technical point of view - even assuming malicious intent - I find it very very hard to swallow that nVidia would purposely set it up like it is ingame where there are far more elegant ways to stress out geometry performance that would have a much bigger difference in performance if they wanted to purposefully make AMD hardware appear to run slow and show nVidia hardware in a better light... meanwhile from a technical perspectice it smacks far more of newbie error than it does conspiracy... tho its impossible to rule out conspiracy without more inside information.

 

[Marine-RX179]

Yes we can rule that out, because you can use AMD's driver panel to over ride the level of tesselation ITS TOLD TO USE. The game is simply telling the card to use an absurd level of tesselation, the driver can over ride this and drop the tesselation down dramatically and improve performance...... the point isn't tesselation done right or wrong, you shouldn't be wasting a single instruction on tesselating a flat board that looks identical tesselated and non tesselated. Also yes, the objects are flat, look at where the tesselation is, its all over every pixel of surface area, yet other than a board being on top of the concrete slab itself, the slab is flat and the board sitting on top of it is flat, and both look the same without tesselation. The tesselation IS added to flat textures, the textures are sitting on top of each other as they are in dx9.

One tiny piece at the top of the slab is different in dx11, its also so basic and so dull that it most certainly doesn't need to be tesselated to be done.

I don't think people are arguing that tessellation is not being poorly implemented/applied here, so I don't know why you keep going round in circle.

You want to believe that Nvidia is the big bad that is responsible you have every right to do so, but making a statement to claim they are responsible without supporting evidence, all you manage to achieve is gathering a bunch of people together mindlessly bashing Nvidia. I don't see how is that constructive in anyway

If you DO have something that proves Nvidia IS responsible for the delibrate poor tessellation to show, do save me a space in the Nvdia bashing party so I can join in and personally spit at Nvidia myself.

 

[Rroff]

If you DO have something that proves Nvidia IS responsible for the delibrate poor tessellation to show, do save me a space in the Nvdia bashing party so I can join in and personally spit at Nvidia myself.

Hell I'd quite happily bash nVidia if it was proved to be their work, if for nothing else than its pitiful poor game development...

 

[LeJosh]

Let's clear the air a little before drunkenmaster LOSES his mind. And GOES on about how NVIDIA are extremely EVIL furthermore.

 

[Final8y]

I'm not really talking about the game aspect here...I'm talking about the rationality here. It is wrong to pass off "assumption" which itself is base off someone else's "assumption" as facts without evidence.

The title and OP post of this thread is stupid, as it is not about providing room for people to discuss round the subject, but instead it is about pushing own opinions as facts onto others. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to defend Nvidia here of the possibility that they might really be behind it, but what I'm trying to say is that if people are condemning them base on assumption alone without proper evidence, it would be no different from "burning the witch". If there's proper evidience that point to Nvidia being responsible, I would gladly jump on the Nvidia bashing wagon too; but there ain't any...there's only assumptions. Let's say someone got sent to jail by the court for a crime he may or may not have commited without any evidence, but base only the fact that there are lots of people believe he's gulity...does that sound right to you?

And reading the article, the dx11 patch for Crysis 2 wouldn't even exist without Nvidia's help...so shouldn't people be grateful for that? The game could had been just a dx9 console port game (not that it is not a console port at the moment...but may be adding tessellation to a console port is partly what contribute to the poorly implemented/applied of tessellation since the dx11 was pretty much added afterward, rather than the game being built ground up with dx11 feature?).

On the flip side here Marine, if you went to 4 different seafood restaurants and got ill from eating at each of them, and then found out they all use the same local seafood supplier, would you say eh never mind its probably just coincidence or would you avoid restaurants that use that supplier from now on.

Its fine saying evidence evidence evidence but at some point you have to look at the chain of events and use your own common sense.

Thank you.

 

[Stanners]

Let's clear the air a little before drunkenmaster LOSES his mind. And GOES on about how NVIDIA are extremely EVIL furthermore.

It is ok, as i recall he predicted a while ago about how Nvidia would be going bankrupt, so once that happens he can focus on his managerial comitments at Arsenal

 

[LeJosh]

Well NV's share price has dropped 10 dollars since the last time I looked which was around 12 weeks ago. But there has been a lot of crap happening in the economic world right now.

 

[mmj_uk]

How is the tessellation implemented on lower levels of detail? is it in the same places and just less complex usage or not present at all?

In my opinion if you set tesselation to 'Ultra' you would expect a hell of a lot of tessellation to be present whether it's a visual improvement or not. Why should they dumb the 'Ultra' setting down to a basic implementation just to appease one GPU manufacturer who are weak in that area? it would no longer be ultra in that case.

In most of the games I've played I usually play one notch below the highest because you often get a big performance hit for very little visual improvemement, the 'ultra' settings are usually just novelty/showcase settings with no regard for the current technology on offer, is it NVidia's fault they offer much better tessellation performance?

 

[Rroff]

How is the tesselation implemented on lower levels of detail? is it in the same places and just less complex usage or not present at all?

In my opinion if you set tesselation to 'Ultra' you would expect a hell of a lot of tesselation to be present whether it's a visual improvement or not. Why should they dumb the 'Ultra' setting down to a basic implementation just to appease one GPU manufacturer who are weak in that area?

Theres no need for the implementation used in this instance tho:

No reduction of resolution with distance - one of the advantages of tessellation is that when used properly it uses more detail for stuff close to the viewer and reduces it with distance. (Not checked to see if its being done at a per object level tho).

No adaptive tessellation used to reduce the creation of un-required polygons - i.e. a large flat surface with detailed parts at each edge only needs the minimum number of polygons to prevent seams opening up at the edges and not subdivided over the entire area.

Odd choice of objects to apply tessellation to i.e. some where it would be beneficial are ignored and others where you can get away with displacement maps are heavily tessellated.

 

[Stanners]

Well NV's share price has dropped 10 dollars since the last time I looked which was around 12 weeks ago. But there has been a lot of crap happening in the economic world right now.

Funny enough i just looked after that post, I am quite shocked at how high they have been in the last year!

 

[Marine-RX179]

Thank you.

What a joke, and you clearly didn't read my reply to KelDG's post at #182.

To put it into prospective using your example, people indeed to have the right to choose avoid the resturants (aka games by Crytek), but instead they are starting a riot at the local supplier base on that assumption that they are responsible, despite the food at the supplier has not yet been taken to get examined and proven to be the cause.

The current mindless bashing at Nvidia is uncivilised at best. How about we get rid of the need of evidences for prosecution, and let police and the court to decide if the person being prosecuted is gulity or not base purely on assumption, pass action and behaviour alone? You would like that huh?

 

[mmj_uk]

Theres no need for the implementation used in this instance tho:

No reduction of resolution with distance - one of the advantages of tessellation is that when used properly it uses more detail for stuff close to the viewer and reduces it with distance. (Not checked to see if its being done at a per object level tho).

No adaptive tessellation used to reduce the creation of un-required polygons - i.e. a large flat surface with detailed parts at each edge only needs the minimum number of polygons to prevent seams opening up at the edges and not subdivided over the entire area.

Odd choice of objects to apply tessellation to i.e. some where it would be beneficial are ignored and others where you can get away with displacement maps are heavily tessellated.

That's probably because tessellation has been bolted on as a late afterthought.

If tessellation was left out though you'd just get DX11 card owners complaining that they're being ignored so what are developers to do?

 

[Rroff]

That would have been my initial impression lacking any other information that given the nature of the implementation it was tacked on over the top of a console orientated game.

That nVidia have a had a hand in development in some unspecified capacity does give reasonable grounds to suspect they may have a motive behind the method of implementation but thats far from certain and a basic technical analysis of the situation raises more questions than answers - looking at it in a more technical capacity you'd struggle to believe either crytek or nVidia were involved in it - it really is that shoddy.

 

[Stanners]

do you think it is possible that it was bolted on just to give them the publicity of having it when infact it is just poorly implemented at a coding level?


(That is of course presuming Nvidia had no shananigans in it)

 

[Rroff]

It is possible, I wouldn't like to make a definite conclusion without more information coming to light and/or seeing it analysed running on nVidia hardware.

 

[Final8y]

What a joke, and you clearly didn't read my reply to KelDG's post at #182.

The current mindless bashing at Nvidia is uncivilised at best. How about we get rid of the need of evidences for prosecution, and let police and the court to decide if the person being prosecuted is gulity or not base purely on assumption, pass action and behaviour alone? You would like that huh?

I did read what you posted at #182 & it changes nothing to that fact that i agree with the reply at #174 that was in response to x173.

The current mindless bashing at Nvidia is uncivilised at best. How about we get rid of the need of evidences for prosecution, and let police and the court to decide if the person being prosecuted is gulity or not base purely on assumption, pass action and behaviour alone? You would like that huh?

Well its your opinion that its mindless because your factors for assessment are limited by your own choosing.

Your opinion that there is no evidence while others say there is enough evidence.

I believe OJ Simpson was guilty & that is not a problem, its only a problem if i act upon it in an unlawful way & no one here is asking any who believes to do anything like going around to NV or Cryteck to start a riot.