Aquamark3 What about those techniques?

Pffft, you fat-cat reviewers may be, but I'm not there yet.

 

Get it here, Pete.

 

Thanks, Lum. I didn't realize Aquamark is part of Aquanox 2.

Edit: After further searching, I see Aquamark was never released to the public. Pity.

Edit Edit: After further further searching, I now believe Aquamark was based on Aquanox, not Aquanox 2. Not that this really matters anymore.

 

Slightly off topic, Massive talk about hitting cheats in Aquamark 3

http://forum.aquamark3.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=73

Statement of Massive Development regarding AquaMark3 / IHV cooperation & cheating attempts

As a developer of interactive high-end 3D gaming applications and benchmarks we obviously have to collect in-depth Know-How about a specific hardware from it's manufacturer.

This type of cooperation is common practice for all major developers. It serves the sole purpose to utilise the latest technologies in the correct way and thus giving the customer the best gaming and performance experience possible.

You may decide to support a specific hardware platform or a specific hardware feature by a game application. However this not an option for any serious benchmarking application.

While developing AquaMark3 we take precautions in a way so that all IHV's (Independent Hardware Vendors) with a vital interest in AquaMark3 are treated equally. So there is no reason for those vendors to conduct any cheating attempts on AquaMark3.

Once a benchmark is released there are obviously multiple possibilities to cheat its results (both for any IHV and any user). We took precautions to prevent and detect cheating attempts in this post release phase and during the lifetime of AquaMark3. Unfortunately we can not prevent this in all cases by the application itself.

The most powerful anti cheating tool will be the AquaMark Result Comparator (ARC), the online database and the AquaMark3 forum. We will immediately inform all customers about our evaluation of the latest cheating attempts (if they should happen).

As a developer of high end 3D gaming applications we will of course be very specific and accurate when we have to judge if a specific optimization is of general interest or if it only targets AquaMark3 in a questionable way.

We are always open to discuss our policy with interested users in this forum.

Alexander Jorias / Managing Director Massive Development
Ingo Frick / Technical Director Massive Development

 

Here is the problem with their entire statement, and how it contradics what they have already said.

They origionally stated that the benchmark would be *PURE DX9* and no optimizations for vendors. Even rendering results as *invalid* if any code changes were detected.

Of course what they are not saying and what is obvious if you think about it. Any *optimizations* that give an unfair advantage to one IHV at the detrement of others Included in the code prior to release... wel.. will *never* be seen as a cheat. Or even known about unless someone goes public with it.

Which raises an interesting Question. *Real* Dx9 shaders in HL2 according to valve run 5-10x faster on R350 than Nv35. ThUs it stands to reasosn virtually any basic DX9 shader is going to be considerably faster on ATi hardware. *ALL* exsisting DX9 shader tests show that to be true. How is that suddenly going to change for Aquamark3??

Which leads me to two possabilities, Nvidia has paid money, or used similar tactics that they did to Futuremark only ahread of release. To pressure Massive into this new path. OR They were in cahoots with Nvidia from day one and this is just a ploy to draw attention away form it by making it sound legit.

I Really hope ATi DevRel, and Cat Maker follow up on this strong. *ANY* unjust non DX9 *complient* or specialized code in there to favor Nvidia should be identified and done away with or made public.

However, i personally have the feeling that ATi better get some Ky Jelly ready for the reaming these turkeys are going to try to deliver via this *cough* Fair Benchamrk *cough*. Personally i am writting this one of as a rigged up travesty before it even hits the market. I will leave a tiny peephole open for them in case they turn this thng around and embrace what they *Origionally* stated they were.

 

BTW what Raised my eyebrow about all this was this thread at Rage3d.

http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?s=&threadid=33699558

 

That´s not true, the shader performance seem´s higher but these 5-10x claims are not valid.

From what? The benchmark is not even released, so how can we know how it vill perform on Nv/Ati cards?

Ok, soo it´s ATI-people that should do this, not independent websites that not are biased. There are lot´s of sites that actually goes against the stream of [H] and the rest. I feel atleast this should be up to them, not the IHV that are biased.