Graphic features rant

[ET]

There has been no time since the 3D accelerator came into being where there has been such a difference in abilities between actively selling cards. I'm not even talking about old cards or integrated chipsets. The difference between the GeForce4 MX and the Radeon 9500 is enormous. Even the difference between the GeForce4 MX and the Radeon 9000, both of which sell in the same price range, is huge.

I started seeing the reason for this in a new light because of the recent criticism about 3DMark03. The sentiment that it doesn't represent game performance coupled with the complaint that current games don't even use DX8 features much shows clearly the catch 22 situation hardware users put themselves into.

All the reviews on hardware sites compare how graphics cards run the latest games, or, in some cases, the not so latest games. The single way to judge how good a card is becomes speed. It may be speed with certain "quality features" enabled, but it's still pure speed. If the Radeon 9000 is slower than the GeForce4 MX, then the only conclusion is that it's a worse card, even if it's way more advanced than the GeForce4 MX.

This is only natural, of course. Gamers always want the fastest speed in their games. But it's a snowball, and one that causes developers to stay with a low end features set. Because only speed counts, NVIDIA can get away with releasing chips with few features. Because NVIDIA does so, and these chips are very popular, developers have to code DX7 level code if they want most people to be able to run their games.

This holds the games back. If you think that "DX7 compatibility" is easy, think again. It's not only a matter of writing another rendering path (which is annoying in itself), but the level of graphic features the game uses affects the way the artists must do their work. The same set of artwork won't work the same when rendered in different ways. So supporting several levels of graphic features is more work for both the programmers and artists. No wonder it's not used that much.

DOOM 3 is unique in that it tries to take advantage of all the latest graphic features. I don't think there has ever been a game like that (correct me if I'm wrong -- my memory isn't great). But few developers can afford to do that.

Unfortunately, I don't think this will change. I really wish we had slow DX9 compatible cards instead of fast DX7 ones. It would have made things so much better.

 

[Dio]

I think John Carmack has always gone above-and-beyond. Quake wasn't designed for the 'below Voodoo1' market that was the majority of chips around at the time (which isn't to say they didn't work, but they didn't work that well).

A few have stuck their necks out and narrowed their market to the high-tech cards, on the guarantee of sales to the IHV's for bundling. Descent, Incoming, Expendable and Aquanox are probably the best examples of this. The bottom's largely fallen out of the IHV bundling as far as I can see (I see this as pretty important in the demise of Rage) which means there isn't currently the drive to go forward here like there was.

So back to John Carmack, who can do it because ID have an 'effectively infinite' supply of cash (given the amount they have earned and the small size of the business) and they want a high-end engine they can sell a couple of hundred licenses for over the next 2-3 years.

I think only a cash-rich developer with several grade-A titles under their belt would dare develop a product that didn't run at all on DX7 cards and I suspect this would be the case even if they were starting work on it today for release in 18 months. So that's Blizzard or nobody, then

 

[Nagorak]

I think only a cash-rich developer with several grade-A titles under their belt would dare develop a product that didn't run at all on DX7 cards and I suspect this would be the case even if they were starting work on it today for release in 18 months. So that's Blizzard or nobody, then

Blizzard is a pretty poor example. Their games run on very low end systems. It's really one of the major reasons they've been so successful.

 

[ET]

I think John Carmack has always gone above-and-beyond. Quake wasn't designed for the 'below Voodoo1' market that was the majority of chips around at the time (which isn't to say they didn't work, but they didn't work that well).

Hmmm, thinking about it, there probably never was such a gap as today. Even those low end chips had most features. They were much slower, and offered lesser image quality, but they mostly could run the games with the same code path as the more powerful chips. When Unreal came out, many people rushed to the PowerVR and Voodoo because they were the only cards that ran it an a reasonable speed, but it did run on my Rage II+ (with single digit FPS at 320x200).

 

[Maverick]

Of course, back then you had to write a software renderer as well...

 

[Simon F]

I really wish we had slow DX9 compatible cards instead of fast DX7 ones. It would have made things so much better.

I think that is called a CPU.

 

[Dio]

Blizzard is a pretty poor example. Their games run on very low end systems. It's really one of the major reasons they've been so successful.

Oh, I completely agree. But can you think of another cash-rich developer wallowing in grade A titles?

 

[Rodéric]

I really wish we had slow DX9 compatible cards instead of fast DX7 ones. It would have made things so much better.

I think that is called a CPU.

LOL !

 

[Nagorak]

Oh, I completely agree. But can you think of another cash-rich developer wallowing in grade A titles?

Unfortunately, I think to make a grade A title you pretty much have to focus too much to appeal to the masses. Thus, you don't end up with a lot of cash.

Maybe if id merged with Ion Storm...but that would probably be a match made in hell rather than heaven (ie: instead of combining their strengths, they just wouldn't agree what approach to take toward making games).

 

[BoddoZerg]

Problem is, "grade-A title" has nothing to do with "pushing the 3d graphics envelope".

How many times more copies of Half-life were sold than Quake 3? Probably 10 times more.

 

[DeanoC]

This logic is fatally flawed by the fact Doom 3 runs on any GF2 or higher (GF2 = Dx7).

So while it supports the high end it is purely Dx7 technology. Stencil buffers and Dot3 is nothing new here. Thats how good Dx7 level tech can look at reasonable low frame-rate/resolution. Doom 3 doesn't require any highend hardware features. In fact its been John's main requirement that it would look largely the same across all hardware.

Id want to make money, they want the largest market segment for the next 3 years (licensing is the key). That means supporting everybody who brought a computer this christmas and thats likey to have had a GF2 level video card. How many GF4MX have been sold in the last 6 months?

BTW Quake was designed for software, not hardware. It supported NO hardware at all on release, vQuake (and glQuake) came later.

 

[Dio]

It's a good question as to whether you can do a grade-A title and push the envelope. For Blizzard, Warcraft 3 undoubtedly needs a lot more horsepower than any previous game, you'd have to be good to get far on Battle.net with a sub-DX7 PC - the game got a lot easier when I went from an Athlon 1k with a low-end DX7 card to a P4 2.4 with a decent DX8 card, even though I cranked up the res and effects.

It will be interesting to see how well Doom3 runs on the DX7 cards.

I don't remember ever playing Quake without the GL attachment - I think you are right and it did come out after the game shipped, but it followed very close behind. Generally John has finished most of the engine work months before the product is ready to ship and starts moving onto his next research project (which, currently, might well be 'getting to orbit' )

 

[Joe DeFuria]

This logic is fatally flawed by the fact Doom 3 runs on any GF2 or higher (GF2 = Dx7).

That's a valid point, but only partially true. Yes, IIRC, DX7 cards that support stencil and Dot-3) do have all the "Feature support" needed to run Doom3 with "everything enabled."

However, they lack performance to do so. So the DX7 "paths" (ARB, NV10) do not utilize the same lighting model as the DX8+ paths do.

So, while it's possible to "run" Doom3 fully featured on GF2....it won't.

 

[antlers]

If it wasn't for the XBox I don't think anyone would be making PC games with shaders at all.

 

[Joe DeFuria]

I don't remember ever playing Quake without the GL attachment - I think you are right and it did come out after the game shipped, but it followed very close behind.

Actually, it was not really that close behind. (I believe it was about a year?). V-Quake was I think about 6 months following the original software Quake, and GL followed that.

I still remember the days of benchmarking Quake on 2D cards in software mode! Looking for the latest VESA drivers....Ahh...the Tseng Labs ET4000...

 

[Hyp-X]

And long after GLQuake came out, the pro players still played in software mode, as it was faster and the fps was more stable even though it was in lower resolutions.

 

[Gubbi]

And long after GLQuake came out, the pro players still played in software mode, as it was faster and the fps was more stable even though it was in lower resolutions.

And fullbright were fullbright.

Cheers
Gubbi

 

[Hyp-X]

And fullbright were fullbright.

Yeah I liked the "snowman" skins.
You replaced "base.pcx" and with a skin with non attenuated colours, and you can see everyone even in the darkest corners.
(hmm, "noskins 2" ...)

 

[Reznor007]

And fullbright were fullbright.

Yeah I liked the "snowman" skins.
You replaced "base.pcx" and with a skin with non attenuated colours, and you can see everyone even in the darkest corners.
(hmm, "noskins 2" ...)

In case you didn't know, in modern builds, fullbrights work fine in OpenGL mode.

 

[OpenGL guy]

In case you didn't know, in modern builds, fullbrights work fine in OpenGL mode.

The last time I tried Team Fortress in glQuakeWorld was after playing Team Fortress Classic in Half-life... Team Fortress was too ugly to be enjoyable.

I know people who still play Rocket Arena 2 on Quake 2... sad, just sad