Nvidia GameWorks HBAO+ Behind Visual Corruption In Gears Of War Ultimate Edition

Boomstick777 · 5 Mar 2016 at 23:20

Earlier this week Gears of War: Ultimate Edition was exclusively released on the Windows 10 Store as the world’s first DirectX 12 game. An event that was supposed to represent Microsoft’s commitment to PC gaming and a community that has been growing inpatient for many years with a company that it believes has effectively abandoned it in favor of chasing the elusive “living room” market.

Read more: http://wccftech.com/nvidia-gameworks-visual-corruption-gears-war-ultimate-edition/#ixzz424cT4ff2

We’ve just learned that no one at AMD was informed by Microsoft that review codes were being handed out to journalists for performance testing earlier this week and only found out after the fact.

We have also tested the game again with the newly released patch. This patch was intended to fix the visual corruption issue with ambient occlusion turned on. However, it appears that all this patch does to address the issue is forcibly disable Ambient Occlusion, even if enabled through the menu.

Sadly what we ended up with was a broken mess and “one of the most disastrous PC game launches in years” writes Forbes’s Jason Evangelho.

As it turns out HBAO+ wasn’t the only thing hidden behind a veil..

PhysX is enabled by default in the game and because any changes to the file are overwritten automatically upon game start-up means it can’t be disabled

Boomstick777 · 5 Mar 2016 at 23:21

Gameworks ruining game launches is beginning to become far to common, come on Nvidia sort it out

thesmokingman · 5 Mar 2016 at 23:28

All this gameworks crap has got to be illegal. If MS can be breaching legalities with how they messed with Netscape, what NV is overtly doing with GW is ten times what MS did.

drunkenmaster · 5 Mar 2016 at 23:37

MS and Nvidia in bed, both corrupt as hell companies. DX10 had advanced features removed from it because Nvidia failed to support them. MS could have kept DX10 as it damn well should have then Nvidia wouldn't have been DX10 compatible(which they weren't) and missing features would have had worse performance. One of the few devs to work to and include some of those features which were put back with DX10.1 which AMD supported and Nvidia didn't amazing had the dx10.1 patch pulled thanks to Nvidia as well.

Gameworks using games seem to by and large suffer far more problems than non gameworks games, this is for AMD and Nvidia. But people will still throw more money at nvidia for worse value because they won't blame who is responsible for so many problems with games and forums are utterly full of shills who constantly lie about AMD drivers and fight against anyone pointing out Nvidia's problems.

As for Windows store, it's great to have absolutely no control over the games we buy. Game overrides any changes you make because windows 10 store knows best and we can't have access to the game folder.

N19h7m4r3 · 5 Mar 2016 at 23:38

I'll just quote myself from the other GoW thread

Seriously MS don't seem to give two ***** about their customers, or gamers. Just avoid anything they put out on their own store. until they finally wake up.

The fact that their fix was just to disable it, screams they don't have a clue or that their own UWP is such a mess they can't even get something like HBAO+ to function.

In Rise of the Tomb Raider it only had a 6fps loss ( even a smaller loss on the Fury X than 980Ti ), and here it's a visual corrupting mess. Ugh.

So much for MS caring about PC gamers, and changing their ways.

smogsy · 5 Mar 2016 at 23:43

Boomstick777 said:
Gameworks ruining game launches is beginning to become far to common, come on Nvidia sort it out

Cannot blame nvidia for this one.

Ms are forcefully stopping your turning off physxand ao not nvidia.

This whole MS store api closed system needs to die. Unless MS allows modding/SLI/XFIRE patcches it will not work for a majority if gamers and will send PC gamers back 5 years with no modding enhanced features....

Some advanced effects in Dx12 can not be run in border less mode. Why making it then MS??

Its MS LIVE all other again but worse. Now their pushing developers to Crete two paths in their code if they want to launch on steam and the store...

AlamoX · 5 Mar 2016 at 23:55

the pattern of broken gameworks games have been established, there is no need to blame nvidia, now it's publishers/devs who are to blame for implementing it.

JediFragger · 6 Mar 2016 at 00:14

Boomstick777 said:
Gameworks ruining game launches is beginning to become far to common, come on Nvidia sort it out

/waits for a change of opinion when a nVidia card is owned

tommybhoy · 6 Mar 2016 at 00:27

^
Nah, he's always slated GW's no matter his revolving gpu addiction.

Nv DX12 GW's support----------check
Nv DX12 Async support---------not on your ****ing life, that's what GW's is for.

Sin_Chase · 6 Mar 2016 at 00:28

So MS forcing HBAO on is.....nVidias fault.

Right.

N19h7m4r3 · 6 Mar 2016 at 00:34

Sin_Chase said:
So MS forcing HBAO on is.....nVidias fault.

Right.

Not only that, but their latest patch to fix the corruption simply disable Ambient Occlusion haha. What a mess that UWP system must be.

MrMarvelous · 6 Mar 2016 at 00:42

Jesus Christ, what a mess.

Boomstick777 · 6 Mar 2016 at 00:48

tommybhoy said:
^
Nah, he's always slated GW's no matter his revolving gpu addiction.

Nv DX12 GW's support----------check
Nv DX12 Async support---------not on your ****ing life, that's what GW's is for.

Yeah exactly, Nvida's business practice is awful (And also kind of evil genius), I have always said this. Times they have the best hardware, so it doesn't stop me buying the cards. Gameworks just seems to cause massive problems at launch for every game that supports it. I don't know anyone can enjoy that.

AMD mess up to (Overclockers Dream, EEEEEEEEE), but this Gameworks stuff just seems to bring nout but problems.

Sin_Chase · 6 Mar 2016 at 01:06

Boomstick777 said:
but this Gameworks stuff just seems to bring nout but problems.

The funny thing is, not on nVidia hardware. So really, can you blame them? From a purely business point of view, why should they care *shrug*

bru · 6 Mar 2016 at 01:07

I must admit the amount of games that use gameworks stuff that have problems is rather high. Even if it is the developers that keep getting it wrong, then somebody at NVIDIA should be helping them out to fix these issues before launch, not finding out about them after the fact.
Personally I don't see Gameworks necessarily as a bad thing but there are too many problems with new titles for it not to be something that needs to be sorted out. Whether it is the developers or NVIDIA themselves that needs to change the way they do things but something needs to happen.

Sin_Chase · 6 Mar 2016 at 01:08

bru said:
I must admit the amount of games that use gameworks stuff that have problems is rather high. Even if it is the developers that keep getting it wrong, then somebody at NVIDIA should be helping them out to fix these issues before launch, not finding out about them after the fact.

Just to play devils advocate. Why should nVidia help developers resolve issues for their direct competitor?

For everyone's benefit, in an ideal world, all games would perform well and work flawlessly on all GPU hardware. But let's be realistic here.

layte · 6 Mar 2016 at 01:22

Sounds like developer incompetence. HBAO+ has been used in many games without such issue. Looking at this, the performance impact is actually higher on NV hardware than it is AMD. http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/gpu_displays/fallout_4_retested_hbao_performance_impact/1

But yea. Lets not let that get in the way of this giving the same tedious bores a chance to repeat their tired old dogma.

AlamoX · 6 Mar 2016 at 01:36

Sin_Chase said:
Just to play devils advocate. Why should nVidia help developers resolve issues for their direct competitor?

For everyone's benefit, in an ideal world, all games would perform well and work flawlessly on all GPU hardware. But let's be realistic here.

maybe because this hurts the consumer's experience ? it's one thing to wanna make experience better for your users, but it's something completely different to degrade the experience for a consumer that doesnt buy your product.

Sin_Chase · 6 Mar 2016 at 01:42

AlamoX said:
maybe because this hurts the consumer's experience ? it's one thing to wanna make experience better for your users, but it's something completely different to degrade the experience for a consumer that doesnt buy your product.

Again, you are not addressing the point. Why should nVidia care that AMD GPUs suffer with GW? It's designed for NV cards, not AMD. Nobody is disputing the fact that for everyone's benefit all things would be equal. But why are people surprised/horrified that NV's best interest are for it's own products?

Nothing is stopping AMD doing the same. The problem with AMD is they would rather spend less money and dine out for time eternal on the "We want open standards and rainbow unicorns for everyone!"

drunkenmaster · 6 Mar 2016 at 01:42

Sin_Chase said:
Just to play devils advocate. Why should nVidia help developers resolve issues for their direct competitor?

For everyone's benefit, in an ideal world, all games would perform well and work flawlessly on all GPU hardware. But let's be realistic here.

Many of the games have simply massive numbers of bugs and this is the issue, gameworks games seem to have more than your average number of bugs than other games being released, even so far as the more gameworks features the worse the problems seem to be.

This is a game giving AMD problems, but plenty of gameworks games have been unstable and problematic on Nvidia cards as well.

However the coincidence with Gameworks games having broken features of performance problems with AMD are significantly higher than any other type of games. Gaming Evolved games where AMD has worked with them, or ones using TressFX all run fine on Nvidia with no sign of a higher incidence of problems with Nvidia.

This is not about Nvidia helping AMD, but stopping Gameworks having a negative effect on any gamers, AMD or Nvidia gamers.