AMD: "[Developers use PhysX only] because they’re paid to do it"

trinibwoy said:
It's a simple question. Without nVidia's meddling would ATi users have gotten AA support in Batman? If the answer is no, and that's what it seems to be, then ATi users have no reason to be upset. But that assumes people are rational which of course isn't the case.
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If NVIDIA hadn't been involved, Rocksteady Studios probably would have implemented AA themselves and for everyone. It's a huge third-person AAA game, MSAA is almost a prerequisite.

Would you feel the same way had AMD offered to implement DX 11 in, say, Stalker CoP, only to disable it on GeForces?
 
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Kaotik said:
For one, when they provided (or at least helped to provide?) the AA solution for STALKER (I think it was the first "expansion" or "sequel"), they didn't limit it for their cards only. They also worked on the DX10.1 support, optimized it, and on top of all that, even worked to get many of their improvements for DX10 path, even though at the time AMD had 2 generations of 10.1 hardware and nVidia had only DX10
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To be honest, this means nothing. NVIDIA's dev relation also did a lot of improvements to a lot of games which were not limited to their own hardwares. So this is not a counter example for the issue at hand.

My question is, how is that different from a normal exclusive deal? This is not even new in PC games, as there was some "enhanced version" specially designed only for a GPU (which was not sold, only bundled with the video cards).

Of course, if the game does not make it clear that some functions are only supported on some GPUs then it can be a problem.
 
trinibwoy said:
It's a simple question. Without nVidia's meddling would ATi users have gotten AA support in Batman? If the answer is no, and that's what it seems to be, then ATi users have no reason to be upset. But that assumes people are rational which of course isn't the case.
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The answer is yes, AMD tried to provide a hardware agnostic MSAA solution and the publisher refused to implement it because of their contractual obligations to nVidia. The real problem is that publishers should not be making deals that render half their paying customers second class citizens in the userbase. It's anti-consumer and AMD has been very upfront about refusing to engage in tactics so hostile to the users.
 
Alexko said:
If NVIDIA hadn't been involved, Rocksteady Studios probably would have implemented AA themselves and for everyone. It's a huge third-person AAA game, MSAA is almost a prerequisite.
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Then why didn't they implement this on their own? Why did NV folks need to come by saying "hey guys we can add MSAA to your game"?
By the sound of it everything was done for the renderer and then NV came by saying "we'll buy AA feature for out cards" and Rocksteady said "OK" and the only reason the game even runs on AMD hardware is because NV didn't have enough cash to make the entire game exclusive...

Alexko said:
Would you feel the same way had AMD offered to implement DX 11 in, say, Stalker CoP, only to disable it on GeForces?
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Well maybe it would be better if AMD would come out with an DX11 renderer for Stalker CoP and then NVIDIA would do their own DX11 renderer for Stalker CoP? If they implemented that much of DX 11 into the game that developer is willing to say "it's yours" then go for it.
 
MDolenc said:
Then why didn't they implement this on their own? Why did NV folks need to come by saying "hey guys we can add MSAA to your game"?
By the sound of it everything was done for the renderer and then NV came by saying "we'll buy AA feature for out cards" and Rocksteady said "OK" and the only reason the game even runs on AMD hardware is because NV didn't have enough cash to make the entire game exclusive...
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Or NVIDIA came and said "don't bother with AA, we'll do it for you, and throw marketing money in as well… just don't expect it to run on Radeons".

MDolenc said:
Well maybe it would be better if AMD would come out with an DX11 renderer for Stalker CoP and then NVIDIA would do their own DX11 renderer for Stalker CoP? If they implemented that much of DX 11 into the game that developer is willing to say "it's yours" then go for it.
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Well, I think it would be best if developers wrote their own games and made sure they were compatible with both families of GPUs, but maybe that's just me.
Help offered by IHVs should come with no strings attached, and that seems to be the case as far as AMD is concerned.
 
Alexko said:
Well, I think it would be best if developers wrote their own games and made sure they were compatible with both families of GPUs, but maybe that's just me.
Help offered by IHVs should come with no strings attached<snip>
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100% agreed. For the good of the PC platform even. Not only do we have to put up with straight console ports that run at 300fps on a GeForce 8800 GT with blurry 720p videos, but when we do get something extra we have to make sure we're running the hardware that was favoured during development. I can deal with a small performance loss. Feature loss, when the competitor can handle it just as well is not really acceptable to me.

, and that seems to be the case as far as AMD is concerned.
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Except with FarCry's AMD64 patch /me runs away screaming "never forget, never forgive!"
 
The question already was answered a couple of posts later. It has to be a driver hack, because it isn't covered by DX9 spec.
 
Brad Grenz said:
The answer is yes, AMD tried to provide a hardware agnostic MSAA solution and the publisher refused to implement it because of their contractual obligations to nVidia. The real problem is that publishers should not be making deals that render half their paying customers second class citizens in the userbase. It's anti-consumer and AMD has been very upfront about refusing to engage in tactics so hostile to the users.
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Rather interesting Concidering the UE3 HAS NO AA SUPPORT writen into it and Nvidia had to WRITE the CODE for it. The Dev didn't use AMD SOFTWARE fix because it required the use of NVIDIA's HAND writen code and to play it safe, they told AMD to come up with their own code. AMD BALKED, Nvidia eventually told them(UBI) it was ok.
 
Alexko said:
Or NVIDIA came and said "don't bother with AA, we'll do it for you, and throw marketing money in as well… just don't expect it to run on Radeons".
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Sure, if you believe in far fetched conspiracy theories. MDolenc's scenario is the most plausible.
 
AMD is complaining that nVidia is using one of their DX11 games to promote their own cards?! So why is AMD not doing the same thing? Show us a little bit of the future, AMD.
Or must be wait for the year 2012 to see the next game with tessellation in which development amd is involve?
 
XMAN26 said:
Rather interesting Concidering the UE3 HAS NO AA SUPPORT writen into it and Nvidia had to WRITE the CODE for it. The Dev didn't use AMD SOFTWARE fix because it required the use of NVIDIA's HAND writen code and to play it safe, they told AMD to come up with their own code. AMD BALKED, Nvidia eventually told them(UBI) it was ok.
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How to add AA to a UE3 game is well known now. nVidia or AMD can probably cut and paste a solution into an email for any dev who wants it within a day. AMD tried to provide code for Batman but WBI's lawyers said any modification of the existing code exposed the company to possible litigation from nVidia (because of the contract/copywrite). nVidia never said it was OK. It took a separate SKU (the game of the year edition) which is a distinct product from a legal standpoint before the change could be implemented. To pretend AMD were the bad guys in this situation is a pure fantasy.
 
And btw: AMD should stop talking about using open source apis, when they have a problem with dx11 and tessellation.

Brad Grenz said:
How to add AA to a UE3 game is well known now. nVidia or AMD can probably cut and paste a solution into an email for any dev who wants it within a day. AMD tried to provide code for Batman but WBI's lawyers said any modification of the existing code exposed the company to possible litigation from nVidia (because of the contract/copywrite).
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Right: They didn't send anything to Rocksteady at the time they complained about the situation.
It's clear in the e-mails that they wanted to use the same code.
 
http://hardocp.com/news/2010/10/20/benchmark_wars

That last paragraph is fairly damning in my opinion and it raises some big questions. Is Ubisoft in NVIDIA's pocket and pushing technology while ignoring the company with the largest DX11 market share? Is NVIDIA pushing a benchmark of a yet-to-be released game that is somewhat broken on its competitors cards? We know NVIDIA's current GPU has more Tessellation power than AMD's latest, but we have yet to see it make a difference in anything besides a benchmark. I think this shows NVIDIA grasping at straws and I don't think it has anything up its sleeve that AMD does not already have as well; like refinements in TSMC's 40nm process.
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hardocp is all over the place. They don't mind comparing super overclocked cards to stock cards, but they like ot think they are special with their benchmarking.

But this is just another fun thing that nvidia has done like removing the dx 10.1 path from creed 2
 
Sontin said:
And btw: AMD should stop talking about using open source apis, when they have a problem with dx11 and tessellation.
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I'm not sure what DX11 has to do with an open source API as it most certainly is not. AMD doesn't have a problem with dx11 and tessellation. AMD is trying to promote levels of tessellation that work best with current quad based rasterization hardware.

I wish game developers would include the ability to control tessellation via graphics options. Then users can choose for themselves what works best. Also, a piece of trivia many of you might not know that Xenos' max tessellation level is 16.
 
Brad Grenz said:
How to add AA to a UE3 game is well known now. nVidia or AMD can probably cut and paste a solution into an email for any dev who wants it within a day. AMD tried to provide code for Batman but WBI's lawyers said any modification of the existing code exposed the company to possible litigation from nVidia (because of the contract/copywrite). nVidia never said it was OK. It took a separate SKU (the game of the year edition) which is a distinct product from a legal standpoint before the change could be implemented. To pretend AMD were the bad guys in this situation is a pure fantasy.
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Actually, Nvidia did say and was revieled thru emails that they (UbiSoft) could reuse the code some 2-3m after the whole thing started. AMD on the other hand waited til long after its release to offer any kind of help or solution which is why the fix didn't show until the GotY SKU came out. AMD just sucks on DevRel, face it.
 
XMAN26 said:
Actually, Nvidia did say and was revieled thru emails that they (UbiSoft) could reuse the code some 2-3m after the whole thing started. AMD on the other hand waited til long after its release to offer any kind of help or solution which is why the fix didn't show until the GotY SKU came out. AMD just sucks on DevRel, face it.
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half truths again ... ? or just selective memory ?
 
XMAN26 said:
Actually, Nvidia did say and was revieled thru emails that they (UbiSoft) could reuse the code some 2-3m after the whole thing started. AMD on the other hand waited til long after its release to offer any kind of help or solution which is why the fix didn't show until the GotY SKU came out. AMD just sucks on DevRel, face it.
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We were active prior to the games release in order to get AA in the game.
 
trinibwoy said:
Of course it makes a difference. If nVidia did nothing and the result was that nobody got AA, ATi users would be no better off and there would be a lot less complaining. It is the enabling of AA on Geforces that started the whinefest, not disabling it on Radeons.
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We'll never know, because by the time AMD submitted their in game AA workaround after finally getting a final build from them (which they had to fight tooth and nail to get while it was provided regularly to Nvidia), Nvidia had already legally blocked it from being used.

And just to be clear I don't hold the developers or publishers of Batman: AA blameless in this either. I'm never ever buying another Rocksteady game. So in this case, I'm actually laying less blame on Nvidia for doing this than I am for Rocksteady allowing them to do this and going along with it.

Regards,
SB
 
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