AMD & nVidia at it again over Batman

[RavenXXX2]

Lets keep it simple, Nvidia calls the shots on this title and ATI got screwed over, no big loss, game is good for one time play through only.

 

[Rroff]

I'm not ignoring the evidence... there are the words of a marketing person contradicted by the words of a technical person... who themselves are putting heavy spin to try and misdirect people... and its working... sadly...


To create a "solution" i.e. a custom multisampling implementation thats better than just forcing AA requires knowledge of the render targets used, post processing effects in operation the details of various buffer objects and how they are used by the game, what shaders are used and what shaders aren't as this can make a massive difference to how you implement your AA - to viably work on a solution like this would require good access to both the developer and the engine...

So why would Eidos go to the trouble of providing them with that access and then laugh in their face? especially as the very words of Mr Huddy when you remove the spin backs up the fact that ATI were not involved directly with Eidos in implementing a solution and have no interest in doing so.

 

[Rroff]

If this is true then it shows they had agreement and nivida is/was defending that ip ownership,which locked out AMD

They didn't lock out ATI from providing their own implementation tho... they prevented them from using the nvidia one... atleast as far as any evidence we have to work with.

 

[james.miller]

the difference between code that enables a path on certain hardware and one that disables it on everythign else is purely down to how you percieve that code. In reality, there is no difference.

the AA doesnt work on anything but nvidia cards ergo whether it enables or disables it is one and the same thing.

If nvidia had a hand in developing that AA code then the decision is fair enough. if nvidia paid the dev's to lock out AA on other hardware well.....i'd say that's probably fair enough too. But one of those and possibly two are lying their arses off. Past experiance points at nvidia BUT ati were known not to help game dev's. The second offender if there is one is most definately eidos.

They didn't lock out ATI from providing their own implementation tho... they prevented them from using the nvidia one... atleast as far as any evidence we have to work with.

That's where your argument falls down. there is no more evidence to say that edios didnt lock ati out than there is to say ATi didnt offer there own code. It's pure conjecture.

 

[RavenXXX2]

FFS, I would go with the views of an ATI developer over someones rantings on a retailers forum. Simple fact is ATI gave them an option to implement AA on ATI cards, they chose not to because Nvidia wanted it all their way, its painfully obvious to all expect the most blatant NV fanboys. Were talking about ATI here, not some cowboys, ATI could come up with an AA solution in their sleep.

 

[Rroff]

Theres a difference tho between that code not enabling itself on unsupported hardware... and that code purposely preventing AA working on other cards when alternative routines are used - people seem to be unable to comprehend the finer point of this.

I would say the biggest offender here is Eidos for not making more effort to atleast write a generic AA path into the game... or failing that make more effort to engage with ATI - the 2nd biggest offender I would say is ATI as I can say with complete confidence based on my past experiences that for the most part they traditionally have no interest in supporting game developers...

Now if we find nVidia has infact paid off Eidos to prevent AA being implemented for any other vendor then that is disgraceful tho I guess its business - but as a gamer I'd personally be quite happy to see them go to court on that count... despite the mass hysteria tho there is nothing that put any substantial link between nVidia and the lack of support for AA on other vendors other than the mis-understanding of the general masses... and plenty of evidence to support ATI and Eidos not getting down to business.

 

[james.miller]

Theres a difference tho between that code not enabling itself on unsupported hardware... and that code purposely preventing AA working on other cards when alternative routines are used - people seem to be unable to comprehend the finer point of this.

explain the difference for us, code examples would be helpful

 

[Rroff]

explain the difference for us, code examples would be helpful

Someone already did...

 

[james.miller]

Someone already did...

not adiquately enough to refute my post.

If ( NVIDIA_CARD_FOUND ) {
   DoNvidiaAACodePath();
}
else
{
   DoGenericCodePath();  // This Path has no AA yet
}

has exactly the same end result as

if (NVIDIA_CARD_NOT_FOUND) [
   DoGenericCodePath()
}
else
   DoNvidiaAACodePath()
}

one enables the AA on certain hardware, the other disables it on everything other than. Whats the difference?

 

[mmj_uk]

the difference between code that enables a path on certain hardware and one that disables it on everythign else is purely down to how you percieve that code. In reality, there is no difference.

the AA doesnt work on anything but nvidia cards ergo whether it enables or disables it is one and the same thing.

So if NVidia's code had a negative effect on ATI hardware that would be okay?

What if NVidia starts adding customised code to games that are beneficial to NVidia hardware but runs inefficiently on ATI hardware? and forcing it to run regardless of the brand of card detected?

 

[james.miller]

So if NVidia's code had a negative effect on ATI hardware that would be okay?

What if NVidia starts adding customised code to games that are beneficial to NVidia hardware but runs inefficiently on ATI hardware? and forcing it to run regardless of the brand of card detected?

wait, there's a difference between not enabling something and making something worse. You have to decide what it is eidos are actually doing and that has not been proven.


As i understand it, and feel free to prove me wrong, is that we have a game where there is specific code which has been added with help from a vendor to apply AA on their specific hardware. we do not have the situation where we have generic code to do AA on all hardware but that code is disabled on specific hardware only.

Again, thats my take on it. feel free to prove otherwise but this thread is entirely lacking in any facts at all, other than AA working on nvidia cards only in the full game and Ati cards also in the demo.

 

[Rroff]

If nvidia were preventing - with their code - the use of other AA implementations then they would have to provide code that had something like:

inline void DoATIAACodePath()
{
// hahah we broke your code
}

Which as you can imagine would be extremely clumsy and its not like there is actually going to be a predictably named function that alone enables the ATI AA.

 

[KWJay]

So if NVidia's code had a negative effect on ATI hardware that would be okay?

What if NVidia starts adding customised code to games that are beneficial to NVidia hardware but runs inefficiently on ATI hardware? and forcing it to run regardless of the brand of card detected?

Then that would be anti-competetive behaviour and they should be duely punished. It's not the same thing though.

I seriously doubt that a dev as large as Eidos would allow themselves to be bossed about. The crux of the matter is did they initially intend to add AA to the game? IF not and NV approached them with an offer to get it working on their cards then i don't see a problem with what's happened. If they did intend to and NV paid them off not to then that would be terrible. Thing is we don't know, all we have is a slanging match between 2 companies, and unless someone provides evidence then this "debate" is going to be never ending.

So far of the games that have used the UT3 engine that i have had experience of only 1, Gears of War, has had AA. Bioshock didn't, UT3 didn't, but you could force it at driver level.

 

[Rroff]

I think originally with this version of the unreal engine they originally planned to do edge detection in the deferred shader pipeline - but finally realised that it just looks bad.

 

[FlukeRogi]

AMD should lock out DX11 to nVidia cards, then we'll see how everyone likes it. And tessallation to boot.

Not really possible...

 

[Lightnix]

Not really possible...

It's exactly as possible as Nvidia's locking out of AA in Batman for certain games, actually. They're helping out on a few titles (STALKER: CoP and DiRT 2 to name a couple). They could indeed just lock them out by detecting the vendor ID and creating a licensing agreement like Nvidia are doing to AMD at the moment. However, I expect they won't - they didn't for the DX10.1 titles they were involved in, at any rate.

 

[Rroff]

They can't really lock nVidia out of using standard DX functionality in those games without things majorly kicking off...

Now if they provided extra visual effects which were enabled on ATI cards when one was found to be present that would be an entirely different story - and similiar to the one we have here.

Unfortunatly this finer point seems to be lost on most of the people posting in this thread.

 

[str]

The NVIDIA AA code works fine on ATI cards yet it's still being blocked?

Surely the politics or whatever of the past shouldn't matter when the above is true?

 

[james.miller]

Unfortunatly this finer point seems to be lost on most of the people posting in this thread.

.. people seem to be unable to comprehend the finer point of this.

stop making yourself out to be of superior intellect, its irritating.

what we have here is a lot of assumptions. nothing more than that.

 

[Lightnix]

The NVIDIA AA code works fine on ATI cards yet it's still being blocked?

Surely the politics or whatever of the past shouldn't matter when the above is true?

In an ideal world this'd be true. Nvidia, however, just want to get a one-up on the competition (which, as a business, in general is okay). Unfortunately they're not being as competitive as they'd like to be at the moment on the basis of performance per dollar, so it seems as though they're resorting to engineering opinions about their cards by having exclusive features put into some games. It's not how I'd like the two companies to compete, it'll ruin the PC games industry, but otherwise it's perfectly fine for them to do that, even if it's not beneficial to the market.