Richard Huddy - Gaming Scientist Interviewed

[_Alatar_]

Not a hint of irony - your opening statement and 2 (or the rest of the post for that matter).

Over tesselation achieves absolutely nothing whatsoever, either in gameplay or visuals .. all it does is lower peformance, but crucially it lowers performance more on AMD than NVIDIA, hence why it's done. Having signifcantly (massively) more draw calls available and making use of them allows you to do a great deal more from a gameplay and visual perspective. You're spewing the crap that you accuse Huddy of spewing.

The problem is not the over use of draw calls or the extreme tesselation.

It's the use of those two to do things that don't give any meaningful benefit. Theoretically both StarSwarm's motion blur and batman's cape offer more visual fidelity but both are overdone to the extreme to play into AMD's or Nvidia's strengths.

Or are you going to tell me that a motion blur effect that causes a ~70% fps hit is any better than an overly tesselated cape?

 

[drunkenmaster]

Gameworks can't be disabled? I wish people would stop using Watchdogs as a universal quantifying for gameworks.

Multiple games use physx in a way that you CAN'T turn off, that also enable turning certain physx effects up or down but there are games that do not allow physx to be turned off.

Likewise faceworks, when used.. you think you can turn off faces in game, good luck with finding that option. Watchdogs uses two commonly used settings that in most games can be turned on and off, it is not the be all and end all of gameworks.

But when there have been cases of gameworks features you can't turn off, saying you can is just ridiculous.

People potentially jumped to conclusions about the source of the performance problems in Watchdogs, that doesn't imply that the source of performance problems in other Gameworks games isn't valid, there is no logical connection there.

 

[drunkenmaster]

The problem is not the over use of draw calls or the extreme tesselation.

It's the use of those two to do things that don't give any meaningful benefit. Theoretically both StarSwarm's motion blur and batman's cape offer more visual fidelity but both are overdone to the extreme to play into AMD's or Nvidia's strengths.

Or are you going to tell me that a motion blur effect that causes a ~70% fps hit is any better than an overly tesselated cape?

Motion blur, if you like it or not, is an option. Over tessellating FLAT SURFACES to decrease performance is not comparable to either a cape being tessellated to improve IQ or motion blur to (questionably) improve IQ. Over tessellating water you can't see, and flat surfaces throughout the game served no purpose other than to hurt performance and was aimed at hurting performance on AMD cards more than it did on Nvidia cards, but it did hurt performance on Nvidia cards as well, that is the levels Nvidia have been shown to stoop to.

 

[GoogalyMoogaly]

Gameworks can't be disabled? I wish people would stop using Watchdogs as a universal quantifying for gameworks.

Multiple games use physx in a way that you CAN'T turn off, that also enable turning certain physx effects up or down but there are games that do not allow physx to be turned off.

Likewise faceworks, when used.. you think you can turn off faces in game, good luck with finding that option. Watchdogs uses two commonly used settings that in most games can be turned on and off, it is not the be all and end all of gameworks.

But when there have been cases of gameworks features you can't turn off, saying you can is just ridiculous.

People potentially jumped to conclusions about the source of the performance problems in Watchdogs, that doesn't imply that the source of performance problems in other Gameworks games isn't valid, there is no logical connection there.

In fairness it started being about GW in general and then B:AO was used as an example and Humbug said he was just talking about Watch Dogs. Hence why people are talking about GW in Watch Dogs as Humbug complained when they didn't.

 

[GoogalyMoogaly]

Motion blur, if you like it or not, is an option. Over tessellating FLAT SURFACES to decrease performance is not comparable to either a cape being tessellated to improve IQ or motion blur to (questionably) improve IQ. Over tessellating water you can't see, and flat surfaces throughout the game served no purpose other than to hurt performance and was aimed at hurting performance on AMD cards more than it did on Nvidia cards, but it did hurt performance on Nvidia cards as well, that is the levels Nvidia have been shown to stoop to.

AMD can turn tessellation down/off in drivers can't they?

 

[Final8y]

AMD can turn tessellation down/off in drivers can't they?

Most reviews will not do that though.

 

[pmc25]

The problem is not the over use of draw calls or the extreme tesselation.

It's the use of those two to do things that don't give any meaningful benefit. Theoretically both StarSwarm's motion blur and batman's cape offer more visual fidelity but both are overdone to the extreme to play into AMD's or Nvidia's strengths.

Or are you going to tell me that a motion blur effect that causes a ~70% fps hit is any better than an overly tesselated cape?

Starswarm is a tech demo. The whole point of it is to be extremely sapping and use as many draw calls as possible. There is no gameplay. It's meant to be a vehicle to promote how many draw calls (and other stuff) their engine can make use of.

Batman is a game, and indeed the cape adds nothing to gameplay and only a little to IQ. Over tesselation adds nothing and penalises both AMD and NVIDIA.

 

[GoogalyMoogaly]

Most reviews will not do that though.

but they will turn off motion blur?

 

[Final8y]

but they will turn off motion blur?

Motion blur is an in game feature, not a driver control panel feature.

 

[Marine-RX179]

Most reviews will not do that though.

And most reviews on game performance reviews are done on game launches, so it doesn't matter if AMD can somehow improve from the poor performance that "they are responsible for and has nothing to do with Nvidia and GameWorks" 2-3 weeks later, it would already be too late. Go figure

 

[GoogalyMoogaly]

Motion blur is an in game feature, not a driver control panel feature.

But tesselation can still be turned on or off, for AMD anyway.

So if Tessellation was an in-game option it'd all be ok?

 

[Final8y]

And most reviews on game performance reviews are done on game launches, so it doesn't matter if AMD can somehow improve from the poor performance that "they are responsible for and has nothing to do with Nvidia and GameWorks" 2-3 weeks later, it would already be too late. Go figure

Indeed.

 

[GoogalyMoogaly]

And most reviews on game performance reviews are done on game launches, so it doesn't matter if AMD can somehow improve from the poor performance that "they are responsible for and has nothing to do with Nvidia and GameWorks" 2-3 weeks later, it would already be too late. Go figure

Like with Tomb Raider not running well on Nvidia on release then?

 

[Final8y]

But tesselation can still be turned on or off, for AMD anyway.

So if Tessellation was an in-game option it'd all be ok?

Whatever is available in the game options is what counts when it comes to reviews.

 

[GoogalyMoogaly]

Whatever is available in the game options is what counts when it comes to reviews.

Won't they just max it all out?

 

[AlamoX]

Like with Tomb Raider not running well on Nvidia on release then?

not really, with tressfx the code was released on public, nvidia could have picked and optimised it earlier, and it was special because the effect was new and tomb raider was the first game to use it, the code it self needed some work to be good, and it is now.
thing that cannot be done with gameworks, due to this shady secrecy nvidia put around it, and NDAs and licences.
seriously what's the point, if it's propritary it has a patent, if it's ment to make things easier for devs, they really dont need to go through all this blackbox crap.

 

[Orangey]

Electronic Farts

 

[GoogalyMoogaly]

not really, with tressfx the code was released on public, nvidia could have picked and optimised it earlier, and it was special because the effect was new and tomb raider was the first game to use it, the code it self needed some work to be good, and it is now.
thing that cannot be done with gameworks, due to this shady secrecy nvidia put around it, and NDAs and licences.
seriously what's the point, if it's propritary it has a patent, if it's ment to make things easier for devs, they really dont need to go through all this blackbox crap.

Nvidia said they weren't allowed access to it until a few weeks before release.

 

[andybird123]

Motion blur, if you like it or not, is an option. Over tessellating FLAT SURFACES to decrease performance is not comparable to either a cape being tessellated to improve IQ or motion blur to (questionably) improve IQ. Over tessellating water you can't see, and flat surfaces throughout the game served no purpose other than to hurt performance and was aimed at hurting performance on AMD cards more than it did on Nvidia cards, but it did hurt performance on Nvidia cards as well, that is the levels Nvidia have been shown to stoop to.

Not in star swarm it isn't, unless you count hacking settings files as being optional... using the in demo menus the only way to turn off motion blur is to set the game to "low" settings, which means also forcing off most of the other effects and setting the resolution to 720p

 

[gpuerrilla]

Total hairy ******** and can't believe a sig is now the topic of users trolling others, get a grip folks.

The irony in it all.. I agree

Instead of trying to defend the undefendable (people pretending they are neutral when every post is negative toward AMD) some need to take a step back and think about what they are saying or finger pointing.

Some of us are trying to inject the odd bit of humour but the enraged die-hards just love to argue when there's nothing to debate.