nVidia - Why We’re Investing Heavily in GameWorks

[Gregster]

Great gaming hardware needs great games.

We’re not afraid to say we build the world’s most advanced GPUs. But breakthrough gaming experiences—like Borderlands: The Pre Sequel, launched this month—rely on more than great hardware. That’s why we devote a lot of resources to creating terrific software, too.

We do this because we know gamers seek out great experiences. We play these games, so we know what it’s like when a game shows you things you’ve never seen before. And we know how hard developers work to create those experiences. That’s why we built GameWorks—software libraries and tools that put our latest ideas at their disposal.

It’s an effort led by a team of developers at NVIDIA dedicated to advancing the state of the art. Some are veterans of top-tier game development shops with years of coding experience. Others are Ph.D.s from some of the world’s best universities. They help navigate the cutting-edge computational mathematics underlying the most important graphics algorithms.

Tell us about a moment that changed the way you think about games in the comments section below — or share it on your favorite social media network using the hashtag #GamingMoments

It’s paying off, and not just for gamers who use our hardware. More than half of all the top PC games in 2014 now include GameWorks technologies. But, if anything, that understates our impact. Most of the major game engines—CryEngine3, Frostbite, id Tech 5, Source, Unreal Engine 4 and Unity—now include support for GameWorks features. As a result GameWorks technologies find their way into console, mobile and cloud gaming systems.

Let’s touch on a few of our efforts.

NVIDIA HairWorks builds on existing NVIDIA technologies to help developers render hair and fur in a more lifelike manner than had ever been possible.

In Witcher 3, from Poland’s CD Projekt, players encounter a charging wolf that has 200,000 separate strands of fur, all simulated in real time. Animators can control all aspects of the fur’s behavior, from “waviness” to “clumpiness.” The same fidelity is seen on the manes and tails of the horses that are everywhere in the game’s medieval European setting, as well as the hair on many of the human characters.

- See more at: http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2014/10/27/why-nvidia-gameworks/#sthash.pxwQKIfD.dpuf

HairWorks also struts its stuff with Riley, the beloved German Shepherd in Call of Duty: Ghosts. In that game, HairWorks is simulating up to a half million strands of fur on Riley alone, both their primary and secondary motion. We’ve worked hard to make sure this works well on not just our hardware, but all DirectX 11-capable systems.

Explosions

Explosions are a staple of the most popular games, and with explosions comes the inevitable smoke. APEX Turbulence is another component of GameWorks, one that allows developers to render smoke with complete immersive realism. Call of Duty: Ghosts used this NVIDIA software to spectacular effect. Not only is the fog from the blast of a smoke grenade rendered; each particle of smoke becomes interactive and can be influenced by other physics in the game. You can see this when the smoke dissipates as characters run through it, as it does in real life.

Fluids

Interactive fluid simulation has been featured in several popular games, such as Crazy Machines II and Alice: Madness Returns. In Borderlands 2, the fluid effects provide more immersive gameplay. One of the game characters spits **** at players, coating them with goo and making them more susceptible to attacks. The slime takes full advantage of NVIDIA fluid simulation; good players know to avoid it and increase their chance of survival. Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel contains even more realistic fluid effects.

Just Looking

Hair. Explosions. Fluids. This isn’t all GameWorks does. But if you’re looking for a few reasons why we built GameWorks, boot up Call of Duty: Ghosts or Borderlands 2.

Call it a case of what you see is what you get. Forget insidery terms like PhysX, FaceWorks, MFAA, TXAA, middleware or HBAO+ (they’re important—but we’ll get to them in future posts). Instead, take a moment and look.

You can see our GameWorks team’s handiwork when a character’s hair rustles in the wind; or an explosion rips though a room; or a cascade of water runs over a landscape. That’s why we built GameWorks: it’s an investment that gets results gamers see every day.

http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2014/10/27/why-nvidia-gameworks/

Looks like GameWorks is here to stay and is an easy set of libraries for developers to easily code and have these great effects in game. This frees up time and allows developers to code more efficiently and work on other things. I am a massive proponent of GameWorks and I love the effects it brings to games and adds a new level of realism.

Keep up the good work nvidia

 

[snips86x]

It's very impressive - sends shivers down my spine! As an AMD user, you don't see all the hard work!

 

[Boomstick777]

The new grass effects are really impressive, the current cardboard cutout looking grass in all the AAA games does take the realism out of game environment, static, non destructible or non interactive environment totally ruin the immersion imho.

Looking forward to next gen tech like that being introduced into new games. Little details make all the difference, making you feel more immersed.

 

[Ayahuasca]

Every little helps, I'd prefer games to start pushing the top tier graphics cards hard for max settings. Not just upping resolution, whilst 4k looks good I'd still rather have little things that create immersion than just more pixels.

 

[Boomstick777]

Every little helps, I'd prefer games to start pushing the top tier graphics cards hard for max settings. Not just upping resolution, whilst 4k looks good I'd still rather have little things that create immersion than just more pixels.

+1

Games look nice already, becoming more interactive, would make them more 'next gen' than just upping resolution or textures.

The turf effects for example would be great for tracking an enemy's path, in jungle or forest environment. Destructible / interactive environments are essential as well for creating more immersion.

If the future of 4K is just console ports in a higher res it will be much prettier but ultimately lackluster, let's get some real next gen effects into games, at least Nvidia look like they are trying.

 

[Orangey]

I fully agree that middleware and tools are hugely important for modern game development and think GameWorks is great for Nvidia users but ideologically my preference is for standardized code that works across ISAs sharing certain common design elements (DX spec, OGL). Nvidia are using features to sell their cards rather than touting specs, so we should expect to see a widening gap between the user experience on AMD/NV. I just hope it's mostly kept to Ultra settings and we don't get a situation where you have to buy both GPUs and keep swapping between them.

 

[Gregster]

Having gamed at 4K, I can honestly say it is the future. More choice would be better of course and people like 120Hz/IPS/G-Sync, so when there is 4K with those features, it has a good chance of becoming mainstream. Couple 4K with GameWorks and a GPU that can power it, that will be the future I want to be a part of

 

[Ayahuasca]

Thing is with resolutions you say 4k is the future but why not 8k which is already on the horizon? It's all well and good having more pixels and reducing the need for AA but it doesn't add much if any immersion. To really progress they need to add things that make you feel you're in a totally realistic environment.

I have to agree with Orangey as well, splitting the market up where you need both sides hardware to get the most out of certain games is going to be terrible but I guess both sides are too stubborn to avoid this so it's looking inevitable.

 

[Gregster]

Thing is with resolutions you say 4k is the future but why not 8k which is already on the horizon? It's all well and good having more pixels and reducing the need for AA but it doesn't add much if any immersion. To really progress they need to add things that make you feel you're in a totally realistic environment.

I have to agree with Orangey as well, splitting the market up where you need both sides hardware to get the most out of certain games is going to be terrible but I guess both sides are too stubborn to avoid this so it's looking inevitable.

I ran 4K with a pair of Titans and heavily clocked they struggled in a couple of games, so 8K would require a tad more horse power. As for GameWorks usurping AMD users, that isn't true and Batman: Arkham Origins was the first game to use GameWorks and that runs better on AMD hardware than it does on nVidia, as proven by the Bench thread that I run. The only real obstacle for AMD users is PhysX, which is a shame as it is an integral part of gaming for me and the effects are pretty darned good. I am sure there is people who don't care for PhysX though, so for them it is no loss at all.

 

[drunkenmaster]

The new grass effects are really impressive, the current cardboard cutout looking grass in all the AAA games does take the realism out of game environment, static, non destructible or non interactive environment totally ruin the immersion imho.

Looking forward to next gen tech like that being introduced into new games. Little details make all the difference, making you feel more immersed.

Yup, it's why something like TressFX can be implemented, hardware agnostic, doesn't run slower on Nvidia, costs nothing to use. It's been showcased for grass, hair, fur, all the ways Nvidia spends ages promoting it as several different things, then locking it down and making it hit performance badly.

I know what I'd prefer as either user, the one that made more impact(hair on main character, or on a ******* dog that was retarded in every way that was forced into the game for no reason other than Nvidia wanted to showcase their fur thing, which hit performance pretty badly and was not at all hardware agnostic nor free to implement.


It's also hilarious that they call Borderlands the presequel as a "breakthrough gaming experience" , seriously, what. It's a pretty basic game, that can run maxed out at 120fps on my single 290x without breaking a sweat, that barely uses memory. It has a nice visual style but graphically advanced it is not. The entire engine is designed around an incredibly low performance requiring style. Artistically it is a nice idea but it's pretty bland and boring also, graphically speaking it's pretty low tech and very very little has moved on it in graphically in years.

Borderlands doesn't rely on great hardware, or gameworks, it could run smooth as **** on a 5850, probably would still run pretty damn good on a 4870. Breakthrough gaming experience and they talk up Borderlands... come on.

With their main gameworks partner being one game that is stuck in the past graphically and their other main partner being Ubisoft, the PC hating bunch of scumbags....

What is more important than great hardware and great software, working with companies pushing the boundaries. Ubisoft is doing everything possible to push no boundaries at all. The games they do "push the boundaries" in, like Watchdogs, was a stuttering mess on the PC that they still haven't fixed.

Nvidia, start working with someone other than Ubisoft, or if you insist on working with them, how about going behind getting Gameworks logo's marked on the game sleeves... how about pushing them to optimise for the PC and make a game run smoothly with said effects in place.

Pushing out software to the current worst PC dev and not even pushing them to make the game work well on the PC is ridiculous.

 

[shankly1985]

I like Physx its the only feature I would like. What I don't like and will never support there practice is how they lock out the competition.

They no reason why Physx couldn't succeed outside of Nvidia, hell they could make it so it runs better on there hardware while an AMD user could run it at less performance but still enjoy it.
It works from the CPU is quite a lot of the games released! Why not optimize it better to be run from the CPU? therefore everyone gets a pop at using it. But an Nvidia user will still have the reason to buy the GPU because it will still give them advantage in performance.

 

[Orangey]

What'd be good is AI Works, that would be a leap in immersion. As it stands enemies are dumber than ever (Batman, Elder Scrolls) yet we have more and more unused cores.

https://gigaom.com/2014/03/31/why-nvidia-thinks-it-can-power-the-ai-revolution/
https://developer.nvidia.com/cuDNN

 

[Gregster]

What'd be good is AI Works, that would be a leap in immersion. As it stands enemies are dumber than ever (Batman, Elder Scrolls) yet we have more and more unused cores.

https://gigaom.com/2014/03/31/why-nvidia-thinks-it-can-power-the-ai-revolution/
https://developer.nvidia.com/cuDNN

AI is something that has been crap since I got my first ever C16 and something that has always been bigged up in games as "we nailed the AI" but when you break it down, they seriously haven't.

Take the SP of BF4/3 and you can run up to the enemy whilst they are ducking down behind a car and literally hit them with your knees and nothing, they still stay squatting down whilst you kill them and their mates just carry on like a bad B movie.

I much prefer the SP games as well, so I can stop and pause as I like but AI does need some serious work.

 

[Ayahuasca]

ARMA AI is the best, spot you a mile off and shoot you with a few bullets with some of the worst accuracy guns in the game. Thing is with AI it's either going to be rubbish or so good it's too realistic and ruins the fun in my opinion. Just like in the real world when AI becomes so advanced it can do everything we can already do.

 

[Freddie1980]

I don't like where the graphics market is heading, AMD and Nvidia are making gaming PC's that were once an open platform into two closed ecosystems.

 

[Gregster]

I don't like where the graphics market is heading, AMD and Nvidia are making gaming PC's that were once an open platform into two closed ecosystems.

Well technically AMD and nVidia works with all games. Certain subtleties like PhysX and Mantle are proprietary but neither stop the other from gaming.

 

[andybird123]

ARMA AI is the best, spot you a mile off and shoot you with a few bullets with some of the worst accuracy guns in the game. Thing is with AI it's either going to be rubbish or so good it's too realistic and ruins the fun in my opinion. Just like in the real world when AI becomes so advanced it can do everything we can already do.

The computer controlled entities being crack shots does not equate to good AI, in fact quite the opposite as it indicates they have to use cheap tactics to be challenging

Good AI is where the AI's behave naturally and cooperatively and dont just stand still taking potshots at you till they either kill you or you flank them yourself

Good AI is about making a game unpredictable but fun, not just giving the computer super human senses and the ability to override accuracy settings

 

[Ayahuasca]

I didn't say it did equate to good AI, saying ARMA AI is best was a joke in case you missed it... it's some of the worst I've seen.

 

[andybird123]

I didn't say it did equate to good AI, saying ARMA AI is best was a joke in case you missed it... it's some of the worst I've seen.

No, sorry, the way your post flowed it just read that you were saying the AI in Arma was good. I stand corrected.

 

[humbug]

Are Nvidia going to unlock GameWorks so that everyone can enjoy it or are they still going to with hold it from the rest of the market?

Only when don't restrict the use of GameWorks can they claim can they claim to be doing something for the gaming industry.