Right, I’m not aware of any games with interactive volumetric effects. Games are certainly not doing everything PhysX did 10 years ago. But less is better because nobody is winning I guess.
Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2023]
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Right, I’m not aware of any games with interactive volumetric effects. Games are certainly not doing everything PhysX did 10 years ago. But less is better because nobody is winning I guess.
Or maybe nothing needs to change, and Nvidia and Intel can continue to push their own advanced technologies on a game by game basis.. at their own cost, while the broader console gaming community waits for lagging AMD to cobble up something "close enough" for next time, like usual.
I remember just 4 years ago people were downplaying ray tracing so hard... DLSS was a complete gimmick too... If a company like Nvidia didn't push for it as hard as they did, for all the selfish reasons that they did... we wouldn't be having any of these conversations right now.
There's obvious reasons why we should all want things to be as broadly supported as possible... but let's not act like everything needs to be. If ML is so important to the future of gaming, then it will happen one way or another.
My mistake. I thought you only got the source if you paid for developer licenses.
There are many examples of innovation and technological advancement being driven by competition. I would wager most innovation nowadays stems from competition. Standards will come eventually and likely come much faster when someone is incentivized to push the envelope and move the industry forward.
The current state of machine learning is incompatible with an even playing field. It is simply too expensive to hire the brilliant people to define these models and run the hardware to train them. There needs to be an industry standard for integrating ML in games but even then where will the models come from? Is Microsoft going to train the one model to rule them all and share it freely with all the IHVs as part of the DirectX SDK? To the people unhappy with Nvidia’s trailblazing, what exactly do you propose should happen instead?
The ML/tensor thing is a bit of a red herring anyway. Where we do have standard apis (DXR, VulkanRT) there are still vast differences in the level of IHV support and investment. So that’s no silver bullet.
The current state of machine learning is incompatible with an even playing field. It is simply too expensive to hire the brilliant people to define these models and run the hardware to train them. There needs to be an industry standard for integrating ML in games but even then where will the models come from? Is Microsoft going to train the one model to rule them all and share it freely with all the IHVs as part of the DirectX SDK? To the people unhappy with Nvidia’s trailblazing, what exactly do you propose should happen instead?
The ML/tensor thing is a bit of a red herring anyway. Where we do have standard apis (DXR, VulkanRT) there are still vast differences in the level of IHV support and investment. So that’s no silver bullet.
Flappy Pannus
Veteran
Wait - you didn't play games with shadows enabled at all until about 2-3 years ago?
Dude, wtf.
Flappy Pannus
Veteran
Yeah, this is a problem. There's a tremendous amount of computing power and engineering resources that's continually poured in to keep updating these models. Who takes over that responsibility with an open standard?
The more they push their own proprietary technology, the more splintered the industry becomes and the closer multiplatform development meets its eventual demise. They can go and feel free to fund enhanced console game ports as much as to their hearts content if they truly wish to take up that mantle all around ...
I don't know about you but I'm not opposed to the idea exclusivity reappearing en masse again however should content releases start skipping Nvidia's hardware, their proponents deserve absolutely no sympathy for groveling about AMD or consoles anymore because that's simply the end result of them lambasting about the concept of parity ...
I've said this before as my prediction for the eventual future of consoles.. and it kinda ties into what I'm saying now. Microsoft's next console should be a prebuilt small form factor PC. There's no reason anymore to mess around with bespoke console hardware. Get all your developers making a single sku which works across all your supported platforms. Hardware-wise go back to the idea of the original Xbox... literally a PC in the living room. Partner with Nvidia and Intel for the GPU/CPU and take advantage of all the future pushing technologies it provides. With PC, Nintendo, and Xbox sporting Nvidia's hardware, you may just see developers adopt Nvidia's technologies and less whining all around. 
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Flappy Pannus
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I've said this before as my prediction for the eventual future of consoles.. and it kinda ties into what I'm saying now. Microsoft's next console should be a prebuilt small form factor PC. There's no reason anymore to mess around with bespoke console hardware. Get all your developers making a single sku which works across all your supported platforms. Hardware-wise go back to the idea of the original Xbox... Partner with Nvidia and Intel for the GPU/CPU and take advantage of all the future pushing technologies it provides. With PC, Nintendo, and Xbox sporting Nvidia's hardware, you may just see developers adopt Nvidia's technologies and less whining all around.
Would be far and away the most expensive console without the ability to lock the user into a single storefront and services, so you've got to sell the hardware at a profit - and now you're trying to recoup R&D investment into a custom SOC on top of it. This would just be a Surface Gaming PC - a boutique item.
Why would it not have the ability to lock the user into a single storefront?
Flappy Pannus
Veteran
If it does, then it's not a 'small form factor PC'.
An X86 APU PC in a small form factor, but locked to one storefront? It exists now. It's Xbox.
Are you suggesting Microsoft couldn't create a pre-built SFF PC using Nvidia and Intel parts, and hardware lock it to only run games from their store?
Being generic hardware instead of being custom built is the point I'm making. Gives them flexibility.
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That's just another console except this time Microsoft won't have backwards compatibility and they'll be forced to use suboptimal PC APIs. They tried doing this unsuccessfully with UWP ...
What happens to either AMD or Sony remains a total mystery thereafter but with Microsoft out of the picture, they'll just push out more wild/divergent hardware designs at which point developers will have to decide to release between either PC or console and skip out on the other ...
Xbox backwards compatibility is a mirage which was never going to last. Get the transition over and done with. There is no such thing as guaranteed future compatibility and Microsoft will have to dump Xbox compatibility at some point anyway. PC is the future for Microsoft's "gaming preservation". Figuratively and literally.
And yes, that's the point... developers are already forced to use suboptimal PC APIs... you're not losing anything. No sense in them messing around with more APIs and creating 3 or 4 different skus for various bespoke platforms under Microsoft gaming. Make one and deploy everywhere.
Microsoft wouldn't be "out of the picture"... they'd be painting their own picture... not far off from what you suggested Nvidia do.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Graphics are fine as long as they don't detract or distract from the gameplay. Before a certain point shadows were so artifacty, weird, low update, expensive, host of other things that it was a distraction while playing. So, off they went until their quality and performance became good enough to have enabled.
As long as I didn't move in game or move the camera they were decent in some games, but as soon as you started to move around, ooof, them shadows were the suck for me.
Ever since Quake 2 and Unreal this is the order of importance for me. Gameplay > Framerate > resolution > any graphical technique or effect. So up until I got a 120 Hz display if the game couldn't maintain a nearly locked 60 FPS (any dips below 58 FPS was generally annoying in game from a control and visual standpoint) at a minimum of 2400x1500 resolution. Everything else could and would be lowered in order to lock those in starting first with any effects that were distracting in motion (like shadows, AO, motion blur, DOF, reflections in certain games, etc.). Hell I would even stop playing games if their AA solution wasn't up to the task of removing edge artifacting (stair stepping, shimmering with specular, etc.) sufficiently and a driver solution couldn't be forced at acceptable frame rates.
I'm pretty demanding of what I require in games, it just happens to be different from people who prioritize graphics > everything else.
Regards,
SB
DavidGraham
Veteran
It's not "whining", it's demanding that PC developers do their due diligence to support the majority share of PC hardware, current gen games now target GPUs on the level of 2060 at the very least, at this level NVIDIA GPUs outnumber AMD GPUs at least 15 to 1, if you are releasing a game that skips out on features for 90% of your target audience then you are not doing your job right. Parity be damned if you are gonna downgrade your game for the sake of ... for the sake of what exactly?
Imagine releasing a console game that targets Series S features only, ignoring Series X and PlayStation 5 completely, oh boy the backlash would be huge.
Brace yourself, it's gonna happen soon enough. NVIDIA already has a studio that successfully ported two games to the portable Shield, running on Android (Half Life 2 and Portal), so they are no strangers to doing very hard ports.
And using RTX Remix, NVIDIA has a plan to comb through the famous PC games of the past to remaster them with Path Tracing and ML upscaling. In a year or two it's gonna be rainning Path Tracing left and right.
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Are features like Temporal Super Resolution (TSR) and Chaos physics considered "like the rest of the engine"? Could be other features but at one point I knew they were proprietary but may have been open sourced.
Who said anything about implementing feature XYZ ? Why stop at just a single feature when we can start making whole games exclusive for consoles if you truly desire PC hardware to be so different from them ?
Mods for old PC games isn't exactly compelling content in comparison to AAA console exclusives. I wonder what the reaction is going to be like here if a certain console vendor decides to take another crack at their exotic hardware design strategy to be as different as possible just to spite the other platforms out of AAA game ports ?
Walled gardens works both ways for and against everyone including the likes of Nvidia ...
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Just do it then. Sony holds all the cards apparently.. if its that easy for them to spite players out of games and have pubs/devs drop PC. AAA is unsustainable as it is.. so good luck.
Nobody desired consoles to be made from bog standard PC components... blame consoles for not being exotic... not PC for trying to be...
Also devs better not blame us when publishers demand they make two very different versions.
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I’m not sure if you see the irony in this statement; they clearly are - That’s why UE5 and Starfield can run on some really old hardware. These games could be ported to mobile as well because no bespoke hardware is required.
I love nvidia, and I’ve only ever bought them, but some of these perspectives are myopic - we are also talking about supporting generations old of nvidia hardware as well like Pascal. Supporting older generations of GCN.
Imagine ensuring the features are designed to run on Series S?
Sure, that means these games can run on steam deck and ASUS ROG, and soon the iPhone 15 pro.
If games are to have longer and longer shelf life like (GTA) why not target a larger population and focus on game design instead. these engines can shrink all the way down to mobile GPUs should they ever release with enough power some day; they can release these titles there as well.
Let’s be real, games like Cyberpunk Overdrive PT will only ever run on nvidia hardware for the rest of its lifetime. They would likely have to rewrite everything to support any other vendor, and by the time other hardware vendors have the technology to do it, they won’t make the updates to support it.
It’s a double edged sword for developers because you have to hedge your bet for nvidia. If they choose to make their own bespoke software solution, then leave them be. DirectX is meant to be the standard to develop against, anything Nvidia offers on top of that is additive.
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