AMD to demo GPU physics at GDC next week

[Lightnix]

Well we'll see if it's all flash and no bang next week, won't we? No point in trying to undermine GPU accelerated Havok just on the grounds that you seem to think ATi, who are supporting it, are some horrible industry hindering beast.

I think this'll be very widely supported once it's out, Havok, after all, has no shortage of developers who are and have been using it, and arguably has a stronger lineup of games that use it than PhysX (with titles like Half-Life 2, and other source engine games, Bioshock, Company of Heroes, Oblivion, Fallout 3 - all of which are high profile triple A games that have scored over 90 on Metacritic).

 

[layte]

Intel have had plenty of time to throw their weight around without much impact so far...

Why would they bother right now? I would guess that things will be very different once the Larabee release is immanent.

I will go out on a limb and say that unless NV port PhysX to OpenCL it will go the way of other similar proprietary API's (GLIDE for example) into nothing more than a Wikipedia entry.

 

[layte]

Well we'll see if it's all flash and no bang next week, won't we? No point in trying to undermine GPU accelerated Havok just on the grounds that you seem to think ATi, who are supporting it, are some horrible industry hindering beast.

As we all know, ATI are now a part of AMD. You know, that company well known for hindering the industry with style over substance rubbish like this..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64

 

[Rroff]

That would be hard to say right now... while overall within the industry havok has more of a foothold, nvidia do a lot more towards interacting with developers and it could sway them...

Seriously if you'd ever done anything within the gaming industry... just as an example*you go to both companies and say you want specular lighting support... nvidia will normally say sure we'll look at getting support for that in our next drivers... ATI will come back and say hey your game would be so much better if you used our new texture compression system, never mind the specular lighting you didn't really want it. Then if you were silly enough to actually implement their texture compression you'd find they broke it in the next driver release and never support it again.

* for those who don't get this is just an example... specular lighting support has been around for 10+ years in the drivers (and hardware) for most 3D cards...

 

[Rroff]

As we all know, ATI are now a part of AMD. You know, that company well known for hindering the industry with style over substance rubbish like this..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64

yeah so maybe in future we'll see more promising things...

your not gonna win in an arguement against me... you can waste a lot of time trying or you can find better things to do with your time... I'm quite happy to entertain you.

 

[uv]

your not gonna win in an arguement against me...

roffl

geddit?

Are you friends with Helmut, perchance? You have exactly the same stubborn attitude.

 

[Rroff]

Unless you have a structured factual response that opens my eyes, opinion on these subjects from people who demonstrate little to no experience in the area of game development have little weight.

 

[layte]

yeah so maybe in future we'll see more promising things...

your not gonna win in an arguement against me... you can waste a lot of time trying or you can find better things to do with your time... I'm quite happy to entertain you.

I am not arguing, just putting across succinct facts that go against your rather skewed view of things.

Pretty much everyone else here thinks that open standards that are available for the benefit of the entire industry are the way to move forwards. I am not going to waste my time in pointless point/counter point with somebody cheerleading closed proprietary formats.

 

[uv]

from people who demonstrate little to no experience in the area of game development have little weight.

that's rather ironic..

one of your arguments is that ATI haven't implemented specular lighting in their driver set, which they have.

obviously, if you have the experience that I don't, then you'd know this already.

 

[Rroff]

thats the thing... I'm not cheerleading closed proprietary formats...

I'm just looking for the best way forward... which ideally would be a stable, well documented open format... but when was the last time that happened?

You have a choice of an established, stable, well documented, easy to use and well supported closed format...

or

A new, untested (for the most part), possibly an open format thats still little more than talk and has a history of poor support despite the promises of better things in the future...

then have someone throw $1million at you to use the first one...

 

[Rroff]

that's rather ironic..

one of your arguments is that ATI haven't implemented specular lighting in their driver set, which they have.

obviously, if you have the experience that I don't, then you'd know this already.

When did the this is just an example bit escape you...? I've been using specular lighting in directx 7 based engines that I've written from the ground up (my youtube videos can demonstrate this).

 

[layte]

I'm just looking for the best way forward... which ideally would be a stable, well documented open format... but when was the last time that happened?

You profess to be a games programmer, I am sure you must know of at least one rather famous example.

 

[Rroff]

sheesh I wasn't saying it never happens... lol...

it was a rhetorical reflection of low odds rather than an absolute statement of zero odds.

 

[LoadsaMoney]

Look at Nvidia holding things back (Dx10.1 for example), we've all seen the boost that gives, it brought the ATi cards up to their (Nvidia's) performance in Ass Creed, so what did Nvidia do, they kicked up a fuss and had it removed.

 

[Rroff]

now thats a can of worms...

not a nice move on nvidias part but in the main it only inhibited a rivals performance rather than blocking feature developers were actually interested or asking for...

if I was a real nvidia fan boy - and I'm not honest - you could even spin it as they kept focus on features that were really needed rather than devoting time to features that only compensated for ATI's hardware choices...

However deffered shaders open a whole different chapter too... take a look how badly they run on nvidia hardware when you start ramping up the anti aliasing... and what they can do potentially for lighting effects and so on and you could spin an different take on the effect they could have for game development if they were properly supported...

 

[londonbairn]

I'm a troll because I point out all the tripe you post about ATi and the industry? Joe consumer does not give a damn if in theory this and that, in theory anything is possible, but in reality people want cost effective products.

You wonder why people give you such responses, but you're a mirror of helmut, if anyone disagrees, they're a troll. You need to get rid of this "I am better than you" attitude and how supposedly you know more than us, are you one of these posters sent by companies to PR for them or something?!

 

[uv]

When did the this is just an example bit escape you...?

Then perhaps you can give an actual, real world example, rather than one that never happened?

 

[Rroff]

Joe consumer might not care... but at the end of the day... since when can joe consumer really give a valid opinion on anything in game development... they know what they want but not what is involved in bringing them what they want... at the end of the day joe consumer not caring doesn't make anything any more possible or impossible...

Your mis-reading me if you think I'm out to get ATI... I'm very skeptical of their ability to help game development along and I've been vocal about that.

I'm not very good at explaining my thoughts even when given time to type them up and correct as I go along... people seem to find it amusing to make fun of that, derriding me when things don't quite come out as I intended - that is where the attitude comes from and when people start doing that to me I tend to have a very low opinion of them so if I'm coming off like that towards you... maybe have a long hard look at yourself as well.

 

[uv]

Your mis-reading me if you think I'm out to get ATI... I'm very skeptical of their ability to help game development along and I've been vocal about that.

All I'm asking is for one real-world example of ATI hindering game development, a reason behind your scepticism.

 

[Rroff]

Then perhaps you can give an actual, real world example, rather than one that never happened?

Like when they were pushing 3dc at the expense of things like SM2? (we could have had games like bioshock upto 2 years earlier).

And the myriad of little things that would be meaningless to people like lacking support for basic texture formats like certain 24+8 formats that were needed for the development of several games (including even more recently ETQW) and instead pushing things like temporal anti-aliasing, resulting in game developers having to cut features that would have enhanced the game considerably.

Or ATI pushing truform at the expense of many other features and then when some developers did adopt truform ATI dropped the support they needed leaving them high and dry.


I'm sure we could pull some bad things nVidia have done too... but they atleast have TWIMTBP program and actively support developers to get features they need into the drivers (look how many times nvidia have a beta driver out a couple of weeks before or at the latest the same day a game goes retail with specific support updates for that game and ATI you have to wait for a hotfix upto 2 weeks after launch).