[homerdog]

Originally Posted by AlStrong

They probably didn't even bother to add support for LR (UE3 -> multiplatform, don't give a crap port); does the game even have a D3D10 path?

Exactly, and no it doesn't have a DX10 path that I'm aware of.

Which is kinda what I was getting at, it's a slack port and lacks support for AA only out of laziness (or perhaps a lack of perceived ROI...how hard is it to add a DX10 path and AA support in UE3?(honest question)). All I know is if Mass Effect 2 doesn't have an option for AA I will be very

[pjbliverpool]

Originally Posted by suryad

I am not convinced of that. Cod4 and Cod5 looks stunning!!! Also I would count this as a pro and not a con but you do not need super powerful hardware to run the games at max settings which would also explain why they sell quite well. So does the Last Remnant as a matter of fact (I am talking about the look and not the hardware requirements). Heck the cutscenes in that game look like shite compared to the in-game which does not cease to amaze me.

Yeah but doesn't it make a setup like yours (and by extension, kinda the whole concept of PC gaming) irrelivent if the graphics never go beyond console levels? I mean, aside from a slightely sharper picture, COD4 and 5 will look and play almost identically on my 3 year old 8800GTS as they will on your monster machine. Now imagine what they would look like if they had catered to real high end hardware. So maybe you could only run at 1920x1200 and top out at a 60fps average but the graphics would blow away the current version and be more akin to Crysis on maximum.

[obonicus]

Originally Posted by pjbliverpool

Yeah but doesn't it make a setup like yours (and by extension, kinda the whole concept of PC gaming) irrelivent if the graphics never go beyond console levels? I mean, aside from a slightely sharper picture, COD4 and 5 will look and play almost identically on my 3 year old 8800GTS as they will on your monster machine. Now imagine what they would look like if they had catered to real high end hardware. So maybe you could only run at 1920x1200 and top out at a 60fps average but the graphics would blow away the current version and be more akin to Crysis on maximum.

Yeah, exactly. Having games that cater to the lowest-common denominator is great for sales and all, and for keeping a healthy PC environment but it's not really encouraging anyone to create a new Crysis. In fact, it's the opposite -- it's encouraging people to create games for consoles and port them to PC. And even if you're happy with just added AA and higher resolutions and better framerates, it also means people will design games around console controls and console limitations in general.

[suryad]

pjbliverpool and obonicus I am not disagreeing with you at all. You guys are right on the money. The whole conversation started with Crytek and our concerns that their next games will not be unfortunately catered to push the high end machines to their limits and beyond. All I am saying is I wont keep my hopes up for Crytek to remain true to their roots and keep pushing the PC envelope. But I could be wrong because those are an awfully talented bunch of guys and perhaps they will figure out a way to have console games + PC games that push PC hardware to their limits.

[Rangers]

Originally Posted by trinibwoy

I predict a surge in Crysis sales in Q4. Because there won't be anything else around to show off the new hardware with.

Yup, this dynamic has probably served Crysis well for 1.5+ years now, and will continue.

[pjbliverpool]

The way I see it, PC games have to scale anyway so the ideal would be to have high end PC games akin to Crysis, that can scale down to lower end hardware which also work on cosnoles at those lower settings.

e.g. Crysis on Medium.

Unfortunatly the money and hence the incentive just doesn't seem to be there any more.

[suryad]

Originally Posted by pjbliverpool

Unfortunatly the money and hence the incentive just doesn't seem to be there any more.

Bingo! Also the number of people who like to shell out money for top end hardware is a small slice of the market and it makes sense for the game developers to cater to that. Another reason why a lot of people are moving to consoles at least that I know of because it is ridiculous to keep spending money on super awesome hardware. There's only so many people who are on beyond3d.com after all

But then you read stuff like this http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2...rysis-safe.ars and this gives me hope!

[swaaye]

Shouldn't "technology enthusiasts" be enthusiastic about all technology? Console devs occasionally do more with the hardware than PC devs, by virtue of the games-only designs of the software and hardware of the machines.

The consoles have turned into poor man's FPS machines anyway. Other than the keyboard/mouse factor they do it well too. A Crysis-like console game would undoubtedly have powerful positive mind share and sell gazillions at this point due to the Crysis' legendary hardware demands and visual quality. They just need to have some multiplayer that's worth playing too cuz that seems to be the big draw for most console FPS fanatics.

I am a rather balanced person when it comes to PC vs. consoles. I've been on both sides of the fence forever. I'm more into older consoles though cuz the PS3/360 line ups are also on PC and I'd rather play the games there considering I have a monster PC hooked up to a 50" TV and it's way faster than the current consoles (even tho 2yrs old now lol). Don't own 360 or PS3 yet and not sure I ever will. Just bought a Dreamcast though .

I predict that when the current consoles get replaced that we'll see a new visual level on all platforms. A good time for a new over-the-top game from Crytek. Anything they put out right now for the 360/PS3 isn't going to even reach Crysis' level of imagery.

[pjbliverpool]

Originally Posted by swaaye

Shouldn't "technology enthusiasts" be enthusiastic about all technology? Console devs occasionally do more with the hardware than PC devs, by virtue of the games-only designs of the software and hardware of the machines.

Yeah but for me, there is nothing interesting about fixed hardware running fixed software. It runs the same every time, there is no unpredictability, no uniqueness no customisation. No matter how great the hardware is there is nothing special in owning it since everyone else has the exact same hardware and everyone else runs the games in exactly the same way.

Plus of course, no matter how great the hardware is to begin with, it gets old and boring pretty fast.

To be honest, when PC gaming becomes "no longer worth it" I think I'll become a casual gamer at best.

[suryad]

I consider myself a 'casual gamer' but I do find myself tweaking and mucking around with game setups to get more performance, or enabling this feature and that feature and that seems for a lot of games to be sometimes even more fun than the game itself. Its like a sense of accomplishment once I can get something just right and the game runs just the way I want it to. Thats what I love about PC gaming.

Other times I just want the f*$king game to work because I want to pop the optical medium in, click and icon and be off with no fiddling around with patches, and hotfixes, and hacking .ini files and so on and that is when I wish I had a console.

So I do agree in essence with what you are saying pjbliverpool but more often than not I feel like PC users are being given the short end of the stick already right now and we are nothing more than beta testers for the game devs. Therefore I already consider myself a casual gamer on a PC.

[homerdog]

That's some rig for a casual gamer

[suryad]

Originally Posted by homerdog

That's some rig for a casual gamer

Ok I am a spoiled casual gamer... that said I use it for a lot of other things than just gaming. Its my all in 1 setup.

[Silent_Buddha]

Heh, I have to say I'm probably more casual now than I used to be. I no longer have the time nor desire to tweak anything.

The sole amount of tweaking I do on PC games is now down to...

Run game, configure to either 1920x1200 windowed or if no windowed mode then 1920x1200 or 2560x1600 fullscreen. Max out all options except shadows. Turn AA to at least 4x and AF to 8x-16x. Run game. If game too slow, disable shadows entirely. If game still too slow, reset any Very High options to High. If game still too slow, put it on shelf and wait for better hardware.

Anyway, I'm still not sure why Crytek making their engine able to run on all platforms with the same assets and resources is going to degrade a game.

It's like saying that because Crysis is able to run on all PC's (within reason) with the same assets and resources is going to degrade the game's visuals.

I'm sure that while all 3 platforms will be able to look the same, on PC you'll still have the options of maxing out all the bling, as well as resolution (I'm sure rending on Console at 720p will be far easier than PC at 1600p), texture detail, AA levels, etc...

Despite it being the exact same engine, the Crysis demo looks far better on my current machine than it did on the machine I originally tried it on. Just because I could crank up the details.

Sure on console a dev may have to pick and choose what to enable and what not to enable, and perhaps the default PC setup will have the same choices, but that doesn't mean they'll leave out all advanced graphics options for a user to turn everything to the max if their hardware can handle it.

Regards,
SB

[green.pixel]

Originally Posted by pjbliverpool

Now imagine what they would look like if they had catered to real high end hardware. So maybe you could only run at 1920x1200 and top out at a 60fps average but the graphics would blow away the current version and be more akin to Crysis on maximum.

Catering just to the high-end for the game to look nice is just plain nuts. It would kill the sales. Optimization is the key. I for sure wouldn't buy the game if it could only look and run beatiful on really expensive system (like suryad's ), but on more modest mainstream/perfomance machines looked and worked like crap.

As for the CoD4, IIRC, it renderes in lower res and then upscales internally to bigger res, e.g. if you set up 1680x1050, it will actually render 1280x800 or something like that. If I'm wrong, feel free to correct me.

Originally Posted by suryad

Its like a sense of accomplishment once I can get something just right and the game runs just the way I want it to. Thats what I love about PC gaming.

Originally Posted by suryad

Other times I just want the f*$king game to work because I want to pop the optical medium in, click and icon and be off with no fiddling around with patches, and hotfixes, and hacking .ini files and so on and that is when I wish I had a console.

Same with me. With time, you jest get tired of all that.

Originally Posted by suryad

more often than not I feel like PC users are being given the short end of the stick already right now and we are nothing more than beta testers for the game devs

I also have the same feeling sometimes.


PC would benefit of some kind of unified platform(s), with vastly improved buses over today's ones, kinda like consoles, but more powerful (), which would be on the market for couple of years and then changed again. Devs could target those, not the hundreds of combinations that we have today.

I wonder what are the perfomance gains with fixed hardware vs. the same hardware but not optimized with just one spec in mind. Let's say you have Penryn + G80 in one box and code just for it, and on the other hand, you have to count for tens or hundreds different machines, which include the same Penryn + G80. Could the difference be like ~2x the FPS/details/resoulution

[suryad]

Originally Posted by Silent_Buddha

Anyway, I'm still not sure why Crytek making their engine able to run on all platforms with the same assets and resources is going to degrade a game.

It's like saying that because Crysis is able to run on all PC's (within reason) with the same assets and resources is going to degrade the game's visuals.

I'm sure that while all 3 platforms will be able to look the same, on PC you'll still have the options of maxing out all the bling, as well as resolution (I'm sure rending on Console at 720p will be far easier than PC at 1600p), texture detail, AA levels, etc...

Well said and I agree heartily with that.

[pjbliverpool]

Originally Posted by m.fox

Catering just to the high-end for the game to look nice is just plain nuts. It would kill the sales. Optimization is the key. I for sure wouldn't buy the game if it could only look and run beatiful on really expensive system (like suryad's ), but on more modest mainstream/perfomance machines looked and worked like crap.

I'm not sure why a game that caters to high end systems needs to look crap on lower end systems. Crysis is the perfect example of what i'm talking about. It catered to the highest end rigs and actually made good use of the more powerful PC hardware uinlike most console ports. But that didn't stop it scaling down and still looking great on more "normal" systems.

I'm saying it would be better if all games on PC were like that. i.e. max details in COD 4 (equivilent to console graphics) should only have been medium for the PC version. High and Ultra modes would have been preferable, even if my PC couldn't handle them (yet).

Settling for mere console graphics at insane resolutions / framerates will ultimatly kill PC gaming IMO.

[pjbliverpool]

Originally Posted by suryad

I consider myself a 'casual gamer' but I do find myself tweaking and mucking around with game setups to get more performance, or enabling this feature and that feature and that seems for a lot of games to be sometimes even more fun than the game itself. Its like a sense of accomplishment once I can get something just right and the game runs just the way I want it to. Thats what I love about PC gaming.

Same here. The tweaking and benchmarking is at least as much fun as the gaming itself for me. Although I do get through my fair share of gaming (although probably less than 6 hours per week in reality, does that make me casual already? )

Other times I just want the f*$king game to work because I want to pop the optical medium in, click and icon and be off with no fiddling around with patches, and hotfixes, and hacking .ini files and so on and that is when I wish I had a console.

I'm not sure I agree thats really necessary though. You have the option to do all that stuff with PC gaming but if you really don't want to do it, then most games will play with default settings perfectly fine straight after install and never need an update. Of course most people would prefer to take out 5-10 mins the first time they play the game to select the optimal graphics and control settings but that very minor task has certainly never made me wish for the simplicty of a console. Afterall, once its done, its done. Playing the game from then on is exactly like playing a console game except you can generally get away without using a disk at all and spend less time waiting around at load screens.

As for patches/hot fixes etc... even as a hardcore tweaker myself, I very rarely install patches or fixes for the games i'm playing - not unless they seem to add something major anyway, and even then I would stumble upon them by accident on the web and not actively seek them out.

[green.pixel]

Originally Posted by pjbliverpool

I'm not sure why a game that caters to high end systems needs to look crap on lower end systems. Crysis is the perfect example of what i'm talking about. It catered to the highest end rigs and actually made good use of the more powerful PC hardware uinlike most console ports. But that didn't stop it scaling down and still looking great on more "normal" systems.

I was thinking about the game that could potentially be perfomance hog so that even highest speced rigs would be brought to knees, just because of some overhead/bad coding thing and at the same time the visauls couldn't justify hardware requirements.

Crysis is not like that, it's a great example how games could look and play on virtually all systems. I mean, CPU/GPU combo from 2006 can drive the game in ~45- 50fps with tweaked VH settings at 720p, and looking beyond anything on consoles and PCs. That's a feat.

[almighty]

Originally Posted by suryad

Ok I am a spoiled casual gamer...

Your a heavily CPU bottlenecked gamer

[PhilB]

Originally Posted by almighty

Your a heavily CPU bottlenecked gamer

His CPU is fine.

[pjbliverpool]

Yeah baring in mind Suryad plays at 2560x1600. Add on some 8xTSAA and 16xAF and I think he will be GPU limited in most if not all games.

[suryad]

Originally Posted by pjbliverpool

Yeah baring in mind Suryad plays at 2560x1600. Add on some 8xTSAA and 16xAF and I think he will be GPU limited in most if not all games.

You are right I do play at 2560 x 1600. I have max AF and AA set if the games have in-game settings to control that.

For example I am playing the Last Remnant, and I am using a custom profile for that game to enable AA and its set to 16x in the Nvidia control panel. It makes a decent bit of difference. There are still some jaggies but barely noticeable...only if I am scrutinizing it very closely.

There are points in the game, when there is a lot going on in the combat, when I do notice a bit of an fps drop but I dont blame the system. I do think I am bottlenecked by the CPU. Maybe I should try and bump it another 400 MHz. For example in 3dmark06 (I know I know) I still get only 19,000 points. But thats at that stock settings for 3dmark.

I did consider getting a Nehalem 965 but then I heard of the D0 stepping (IIRC) and the 975 but argh I dont think I should.

[pjbliverpool]

Yeah if you get the 975 and a good cooler you should be able to get it up to 4Ghz. That would blow the doors off your current CPU. That said though, there shouldn't be any game out there that your current CPU can't breeze through anyway.

[almighty]

His CPU will just about run a single GTX, theres article on the net showing CPU scaling with a single 280GTX and it shows bottlnecks up till about 3.8Ghz in some of the newer graphic intense games.

And his is running his cpu at 3.4 and running 2 cards with it?

Overclock it to 3.8ghz and watch your FPS grow, it will especially bring your 'min' FPS up

[suryad]

Originally Posted by almighty

His CPU will just about run a single GTX, theres article on the net showing CPU scaling with a single 280GTX and it shows bottlnecks up till about 3.8Ghz in some of the newer graphic intense games.

And his is running his cpu at 3.4 and running 2 cards with it?

Overclock it to 3.8ghz and watch your FPS grow, it will especially bring your 'min' FPS up

I am gonna do that tonight lets see if I notice a difference.