Creative claims similar shadowing tech as id Software

Maybe, but then I think 75% of the proceeds he gets should go to the inventors of relief texture mapping ...

 

Maybe, but then I think 75% of the proceeds he gets should go to the inventors of relief texture mapping ... cause lets face it, it wasnt created in a vacuum. Nothing is, and the leap he took was smaller than the leap relief texture mapping took.

 

its pretty clear that the Creative patent would not be enforceable either for prior art or non-obviousness but of course that was never the point. These kind of "submarine patents" are for bullying the little guy who can't afford the legal battle/triple damages or as corporate bargaining chips to achieve a nefarious aim - the latter would seem to apply here...
There is nothing wrong with the principle of software patents, however abuse of the system to further (generally) corporate land grabs is what everybody (justifiably) fears...

 

You're right in more ways than you think. 3dfx did actually follow the same path that Aureal took and decided that it'd be a good idea to compete with their customers by making their own branded products. So, instead of selling chips to a number of vendors, each producing their own cards and promoting in parallel, Aureal started making their own cards. Chip sales dropped off as vendors moved on to other technology (who wants to compete with their supplier?), and Aureal couldn't maintain the market saturation that their former customers could. Creative bought Aureal's technological assets after the company went under. Aureal's death was not by the hands of Creative, but rather a suicide.

Same thing happened with 3dfx. Their downfall was swift and sure after the 3dfx branded cards hit the market. I made a prediction based on the experience of the Aureal fiasco that 3dfx would be dead less than a year after introducing their own cards, and I was right.

Such a shame too. Thief with A3d was one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had, and it was all because of the sound. I still have my Diamond MX300 in a drawer here, but sadly it'll never get used again.

 

Just don't know when to quit huh?

Maybe my post was too technical for you. Either that or English is your third language; because what I posted above is quite clear to someone who isn't reading and comprension deficient. I didn't develop my website, someone else did and its their choice to use whatever they bloody well like. Apart from that, I don't use GIFs for anything, I use PNG and JPG files and this is quite obvious all over my site where I post screen shots and the like from my games; content which I have control over.

Nice try. Here, have a carrot.

Well said!!

ps: wow, any minute now, the GameBoy that is running the site, is going to croak and give up the ghost. Looks like the site's being hammered pretty good - hence all the new guest postings (and some undesirables whose posts have so far been deleted).

 

Repost from the B3D thread on this stuff

OT stuff:
While PNGs/JPGs are vastly superior to GIFs in image-quality, GIFs are still heavily used by web developers and will continue to be heavily used right up until Internet Explorer properly supports transparent PNGs.
Oh, and Unisys' remaining patent on GIFs recently expired so they are now free to use without any legal worries

 

What does that have to do with anything? Everyone knows Derek has a history. I have found his posts on this particular thread very informative; and this is from someone who at one time had pretty strong negative feelings toward him (See that whole W buffer issue he mentioned in an earlier post)

The last Creative product I bought was a Live! 5.1, but it is no longer being used. I would gladly send it back to Creative.

 

Take the possibility of patenting out of the equation and problem solved. That's an invalid, circular reason to allow software patents .

 

While that person chose the wrong way to make his point, I think his point is quite valid. .gif is not obscure, nor is it dead. The whole unisys/lziw patent fiasco did not kill gif, it spawned the birth of a valid alternative, not a successor. Now that the patent is expired, .gif can run free, with little concerns over patent violations.

You chose a bad example to make your point, 'tis all.

 

The subject of parallax mapping reminds me that while very different in effect, the Z-Fail algorithm is only a small change to Z-Pass. There are takeoffs on parallax mapping, too. I read a paper awhile back about an alternate technique that alleviated the nasty skewing you get at steep angles to the surface, but the only difference was the lack of a divide operation. Similarly, I wouldn't be surprised if Tim Sweeney's (I assume it's his) virtual displacement mapping technique, as seen in the Unreal 3 engine movies, was very close to parallax mapping.

These tiny little takeoffs are enough to justify their own separate patents, just as Z-Pass versus Z-Fail have been legally distinguished by Creative's patent. Perhaps Epic was wise to not include the word 'parallax' in their technique's title.

I don't really know about patents, so I apologize if any of this is outright false.

I don't think you'll get anywhere by patenting an implemented shader. That's like patenting the robot that puts the wings on a 747. Patenting the shader's algorithm, though, is like patenting the process used to put a 747 together. The next level up is patenting the 747 class of aircraft, or patenting images produced with parallax mapping. The level at which the patent is made depends on where the money is. Boeing probably patented the 747 and not the production process.

Boeing can make the most money on its 747s by being the exclusive provider thereof. If I make a 747 in my back yard, Boeing will knock on my door. Id Software will be making money using Z-Fail-shadowing, and so Creative wants their share. Nonetheless, damn them.

IGDA chapter meetings are going to be pretty exciting this season.

Kevin Conner
Raleigh, NC
connerk at gmail

 

creative sucks... now they suck even more... i guess it's just me and my revolution 7.1 from now on...

 

Nice try, yourself. But your assertion that GIF is all but dead and obscure seems, in this case, to apply only to your personal use and perception, as the format is obviously anything but dead to your web designer. It is also neither dead nor obscure to any web designers who require transparency and Internet Explorer compatibility. Furthermore, it is far from dead or obscure to those who wish to incorporate simple animation without having to resort to the use of Flash or to embedded video.

PNG is still far from a centerstage format, however unfortunate that may be. Its use has increased, but it suffers the same public awareness problem as Ogg Vorbis. PNG alpha channel support, the very thing that makes it superior, is supported in by approximately 7% of the browsers in common use. How, exactly, is that centerstage?

 

Real world update

truly, the naivity of some of these posts surprises and amazes me.

one would imagine from the clarity and language that most of you are intelligent, passionate and moral dudes

which is why this dissing of Creative is just madness

1. Are id a small, insignificant studio being manipulated by a hardware company? I don't think so, ladies. id is one of the most powerful brands and studios in the worldwide gaming market - a market lest ye forget that is possibly if not certainly bigger than the music industry.

2. Should Creative then just allow its IP to be used freely by everyone? Lord no. In fact, isn't EAX in its various guises already 'given' to both hardware and software teams anyway? Patents are there for a reason. How would Carmack like it if Valve started using id's patents?

3. No question id makes amazing games, in fact without id, Todd and John would the games industry be as big as it is now - possibly not. Respect to them.

4. Ditto Creative. Invented the first sound card....SoundBlaster....continue to make the best PC gaming sound cards available no question. Would the games industry 'sound' as good as it does today without Creative - possibly not. Respect to them.

4. "The DOOM 3 engine ushers in a new rendering paradigm that allows id and our licensees to bring cinema quality visuals to game players in real time," said Todd Hollenshead, CEO of id Software. "We look forward to further enhancing players' audio experience by working with Creative to leverage their EAX ADVANCED HD audio technology in the DOOM 3 engine."
Does a company so notoriously professional and 'careful' as id sanction such a quote without careful consideration? I don't think so...

5. Am I to believe that id were not aware that they needed to sort out a patent issue until recently????? Has this game not been delayed forever? Whilst I applaud the commitment to programming and not focussing on boring paperwork, some things just have to be done, and not at the last minute.


Look,

Doom3 is eagerly awaited by us all. It will look great, and I for one want it to sound great. Would it sound better with Creative EAX & hardware? Yes it would.

Should Carmack post such an unprofessional post? Hell, why not. It's great PR for Doom3, even if it does contradict Todd H's quote (above).

And you guys are the best PR vehicle id ever had.

Keep yer heads in the sand ladies. And while you're there, enjoy your frame rates without your Audigys or whatever. Cos if Doom3 won't need top audio hardware, HL2 cetainly will.

 

Up to a point, they have to be considered non obvious to some skilled in the art ... but then given the level of non obviousness required for patents that isnt saying much. Still, just because it is a separate patent does not mean the second method doesnt also fall under the first patent. So the amount of patents snowballs as the method is improved, some of them you will be able to bypass ... and some not, giving you the choice of having your game look poorly in comparison with your competitors or licensing the patents. Some problems only have a finite number of solutions.

That is not a direction game developers should want to go IMO.

 

Re: Real world update

The law can say it is its property, my sense of justice tells me otherwise.

 

I would submit that id did the only thing they could to get the game out on time.

But to say it is the right thing, is wrong.

Damn Creative for side swiping someone like this. I guess we should all hide because the lawyers are running the show.

 

RivaTNT Unreal Shadows patch

Creative presumably invented the patented algorithm when they created their own patch for the original Unreal, specific to their RivaTNT cards which came bundled with Unreal.

This patch used the TNT's stencil buffer to add up to 8 dynamic stencil shadows to all creatures in the game.

You could choose how many dynamic shadows to use, 1 - 8, and then every creature gained a shadow for each light. This could cause the framerate to drop dramatically in areas with a large number of creatures, the worst areas were the pools of water filled with fish as each fish had one or more shadows.

Since this was only released for versions 219 and 220 of the Unreal engine it quickly became useless as the engine was upgraded to fix rendering problems that caused some of the transparent textures to disappear but it was impressive while it lasted.


You can find more details here and here.



Paul Rutland

 

haven't touched creative since my SB2. They make me feel. . .slimy.

I never trusted them and rank them neck and neck with via for messes made by some ratio of unknown proportions of bad engineering, bad fabrication, and bad drivers. This new leveraging a company right as they go to market is one of "those things" that'll get you a big NO next time you try to negotiate in good faith. Creative deserves a NO and good smack upside their head for this one.

Oh, and ditton on the fear IBM could create if they went SCO on the industry. . . ..*shudder*

 

A year, eh? Then it's already too late, I first saw it implemented a couple of years ago on the r200.

 

While I am in complete agreement with you that Aureal's decision to "go vertical" was a bad idea, and it did hurt them, I don't think you're giving Creative enough credit here for Aureal's downfall. Remember, Creative didn't just swoop in after Aureal went bankrupt, but they were taking Aureal to court up until that point. Unfortunately, a lot of information on the case has since vanished in to time on the Internet, with VortexOfSound now gone, and taking with it its news page due to keeping it from being archived(thanks to robots.txt), but there is a single surviving summary that describes what was going on.

Aureal won of course, but the wound was still fatal, as they went belly-up the next year. While it's possible that Aureal would have fallen on its own anyhow, defending themselves in court reportedly cost Aureal so much cash, that they spent more on their defense then they did any other facet of their actual sound business in that last year of operations. At the very least, I think it's safe to say Aureal died a premature death due to the efforts of Creative.