Do games REALLY need more power atm?

RobertN · 19 Jul 2009 at 13:37

pc exclusive games are dead consoles are where the money is the gfx card market is stagnat with lack of software

basicly i dont expect any great leaps in gfx or hardware untill new consoles are on the horizon

the doom3 engine ran on the original xbox the new rage engine is being designed with the 360 as the platform so doubt it will be that taxing on current hardware

Rroff · 19 Jul 2009 at 13:37

Rage and Doom4 were some of what I meant

I'm not that impressed with the new wolfie personally

while its quite fun to play in its own right - it doesn't really have the wolfenstein feel

if anything its closer to max payne - which isn't a bad thing in some ways - but still a departure from the "right feel".

Rroff · 19 Jul 2009 at 13:40

RobertN said:
pc exclusive games are dead consoles are where the money is the gfx card market is stagnat with lack of software

basicly i dont expect any great leaps in gfx or hardware untill new consoles are on the horizon

the doom3 engine ran on the original xbox the new rage engine is being designed with the 360 as the platform so doubt it will be that taxing on current hardware

Rage has a quality setting - thats really for console compatibility - but also works great for slower PCs - which still looks great at first glance (LOD is reduced a bit, but the artistic value still shows through) but gives good performance as well - but if you have a high end PC it will ramp up the LOD nicely.

Its one of the good things about using megatextures for your main world geometry - you can adjust the LOD on the fly without a huge reduction in quality and stream lower res texture tiles/sheets without a huge compromise in quality or complicated changes to the game code to support higher/lower quality.

arc@css · 19 Jul 2009 at 13:42

Oh...I was looking forward to Wolfie

Doesn't sound that great then though to be honest I didn't have my hopes up too much. Anyway, we'll see.

You've played it then? Have you seen anything re : Doom4, artwork etc?

moppy89 · 19 Jul 2009 at 13:43

What is the point of DX11 coming out so soon though? I mean theres only a handful of games that support DX10!

Rroff · 19 Jul 2009 at 13:45

DX11 brings some great improvements to the table including threading support throughout the entire rendering pipeline - which will enable developers to do things that just aren't imagineable right now...

That said as most developers are still struggling to get to grips with the full potential of DX9 let alone 10... I doubt we will see anything truly stunning for awhile.

Rroff · 19 Jul 2009 at 13:49

arc@css said:
Oh...I was looking forward to Wolfie Doesn't sound that great then though to be honest I didn't have my hopes up too much. Anyway, we'll see.

You've played it then? Have you seen anything re : Doom4, artwork etc?

Can't really say much - I think you'd prolly enjoy playing it - it just seems they've taken one aspect of wolfenstein and built a whole game around it - leaving out some of the things that made wolfenstein great.

moppy89 · 19 Jul 2009 at 14:59

Rroff said:
That said as most developers are still struggling to get to grips with the full potential of DX9 let alone 10... I doubt we will see anything truly stunning for awhile.

Exactly. Which is why I cant understand why people would buy DX11 cards as soon as they come out. But I guess early adopters do like their bragging rights

arc@css · 19 Jul 2009 at 15:36

Rroff said:
Can't really say much - I think you'd prolly enjoy playing it - it just seems they've taken one aspect of wolfenstein and built a whole game around it - leaving out some of the things that made wolfenstein great.

Fair enough mate

Still, very much looking forward to John Carmack's keynote this year. Can't wait!

I wouldn't be surprised if Doom4 is the next gaming benchmark and since its, iirc, built on the same engine as Rage, idtech5, then we should see it not too long after Rage is released.

Rroff · 19 Jul 2009 at 17:22

I think we are gonna see some great stuff out of id in the future... with the bethesda/zenimax aquisition we have a combination of robust engine design from one side and solid gameplay/content crafting on the other...

Alexrose1uk · 19 Jul 2009 at 17:40

moppy89 said:
Exactly. Which is why I cant understand why people would buy DX11 cards as soon as they come out. But I guess early adopters do like their bragging rights

Usually because like always, the next gen of graphics cards are a redesign and are ALWAYS faster at the LAST generation of games, so they benefit straight away, not just because they're DX**

arc@css · 19 Jul 2009 at 18:29

Rroff said:
I think we are gonna see some great stuff out of id in the future... with the bethesda/zenimax aquisition we have a combination of robust engine design from one side and solid gameplay/content crafting on the other...

i.d. are one of my favourite developers of all time. Probably wouldn't be too far an exaggeration to say that J.Carmack's work allows us to sit at our desks and play fps games. The guy is a genius.
Yeah, I agree, with zenimax / bethesda involved now we should get some great games with an rpg depth, hopefully.

Alexrose1uk · 19 Jul 2009 at 18:43

"Your Zweihander does 80 damage to 'Giant Pink Demon Thing'"

Only kidding, some sort of FPS/RPG Doom hybrid could be fun.

arc@css · 19 Jul 2009 at 19:45

Duran · 20 Jul 2009 at 00:22

If people think that developers will switch back to pc gaming because of DX 11 then they are highly delusional. Crysis was the end of an era, get over it or start buying games.

carrot1401 · 20 Jul 2009 at 00:43

Duran said:
If people think that developers will switch back to pc gaming because of DX 11 then they are highly delusional. Crysis was the end of an era, get over it or start buying games.

Why do you think that? I think Dirt 2 is going to be the deciding point to be honest, with the console version having a 3 month headstart the PC version will (hopefully) be a decent example of what can be acheived with dx11

As for the power question, sometimes people do just want the fastest things. I use to be like that, but right now with my 4850 I shall happily hop along until the next best thing since sliced bread (which will prob be a dx11 card) comes along.....

jorzeh · 20 Jul 2009 at 01:49

Genreally new Tech often causes thease game delvelopers to not optimize there games we have to wait months for a patch because the games run as they should as for DX11 i personally i'm looking forward to the new API but for all our hopes tho let the top end cards be around £200 to £300.. no way i'm playing £450 for a single card (i made that mistake with the 8800gtx) i'll wait for the second gen of cards and games ^^ bargins to be had!.

Strife212 · 20 Jul 2009 at 01:53

There aren't any huge heavy hitter crazy graphic PC exclusives even in development are there?

I think that era has finally ended.

TAC4U · 20 Jul 2009 at 02:22

I'm looking forward to DX11 hardware myself. I have a 4870 and it's hard to justify an upgrade at the moment - buying a new card with DX11 so close seems a waste and adding a second 4870 with dual-slot cooler isn't possible without replacing my 18 input / 20 output PCI soundcard with a Firewire alternative (£400 for the MOTU 8pre). There's also the fact that the vast majority of games run perfectly when maxed out, though I'd definitely like to increase my framerate for games like Clear Sky and Crysis, as well as for upcoming games like DiRT2 and Call Of Pripyat.

I'll definitely be an early adopter of DX11, as long as performance is a definite notch up and prices aren't crazy stupid (£400+). And it looks like ATi is going to be first out of the door with their cards, which at least means prices should be pretty decent (they have been since the X8xx series). I just hope we don't see a DX11.1 fiasco or a significant bump with months of release and it's always possible nVidia will pull a stunner and leave ATi in the dust, though that's always the risk of being an early adopter.

jigger · 20 Jul 2009 at 10:44

Rroff said:
DX10 hasn't brought development to a halt... a lot of developers very literally struggle to put DX9 to proper usage...

As for DX10 - nVidia refused to spend a lot of time and money implementing and supporting features that the hardware at the time and for the foreseable future couldn't have had a hope of running at a decent framerate - I'm not sure why people dig at them for that as the end result was despite ATI's fumblings with DX10+ features and the rather awkwards 2x00-3x00 cards we get decently priced cards that are capable of powering this generation of games at decent performance, once ATI finally settled down to what they should have been doing all along - instead of paying over the odds for cards with tons of features we haven't got a hope in using outside of tech demos and benchmarks.

Your missing the ponit and ranting about how good Nvidia are again ! Nvidia are run poorly, deal with it.

DX10 software development is pointless, that has nothing to do with some programers not getting their heads round DX9C :confused:

but I was talking about how this has messed up hardware development. We have hardly moved on from DX9c I would call that a crawl.

I'm sure Nvidia pulled the plug on 10.1 for many reasons I dont care why now, but we all know it wasnt to anyone's benifit, it just means we all need new cards and DX10 has been a long costly mess.