Hairworks, apprehensions about closed source libraries proven beyond reasonable doubt?

[MfA]

Time to stop shitting up the Witcher 3 thread I think.

So, is there anyone who can look at the current situation of Hairworks in Witcher 3 while contrasting it with the TressFX in TR3 situation and not come to the conclusion that the perverse incentives closed source libraries from the hardware developers create are not just theoretical but actively hurt the majority of gamers? Not just on competitor hardware, but also on older hardware.

It's not fundamentally different from PhysX/Mantle. Mantle was at least promised as open source though and in the end it kicked Microsoft into gear so it has become irrelevant. Physics never did suit GPUs too well and the consoles necessitating efficient CPU paths the damage was limited (though it will likely get worse now with GPUs becoming faster and better at multitasking and AMD owning the consoles).

In the end if NVIDIA just keeps using their size this will lead to a monoculture, not just in hardware but also software. They won't just hurt AMD but also all the third party solution providers and they might even put a lot of engine programmers out of work if they decide to take the next step up (I could see them buying Epic). Might actually make game development cheaper, also rather boring though.

 

[hughJ]

It would be interesting to see how much of Nvidia's budget is devoted to developing, marketing, and supporting these proprietary systems and to developer support in general, and to what degree that would change if they couldn't be leveraged as a proprietary value-add over AMD's products. Would developers be willing to trade Nvidia's ecosystem and developer relations for something comparable to what AMD offers right now? I'm sympathetic to the philosophy behind open source and non-proprietary IP, but when I look at which libraries I use and the quality and stability/longevity of the literature and support chain that are behind them, it's clear there are huge advantages to proprietary tech. At this point though, unless Nvidia somehow falls flat on its face, I'm not seeing how this trend isn't going to continue until whatever the inevitable conclusion is.

 

[lanek]

Im not sure tthe problem is a question of proprietary vs opensource, but how the proprietary stuff are implemented on the developer level. and what control they have over it.

 

[MfA]

It would be interesting to see how much of Nvidia's budget is devoted to developing, marketing, and supporting these proprietary systems and to developer support in general

All the money comes from us, we pay for it one way or the other. It's more efficient to have one source develop it all, but it also leads to less innovation.

Normal third party closed source solutions aren't designed to advantage one hardware developer or the other ... and the source is still open to the hardware developers most of the time. Intel, NVIDIA and AMD take a look at the source code of closed source software from others all the time.

 

[Rodéric]

Do you mean that it would be better for those solutions to be open source so that every vendor could change the code to make it work flawlessly on all hardware instead of one vendor willingly making it work well only on its hardware and crippling competitors ?

 

[Deleted member 2197]

And since the TW3 developers decided to use their own in-house AA techniques, I guess you can throw this into the mix. Can this cause issues with all vendors hardware (Nvidia & AMD) when used with HairWorks which utilizes these specific anti-aliasing techniques? If indeed TW3 was following the money and Nvidia had control over development I'm pretty sure there is no way TW3 would have been allowed to substitute their own in-house AA.

To tackle jagged edges, CD Projekt RED has developed their own post-process anti-aliasing solution, as hardware anti-aliasing techniques such as MSAA and TXAA are incompatible with REDengine 3's renderer. This unnamed post-processing technique operates with a level of fidelity similar to FXAA, but with an added temporal anti-aliasing component to reduce the crawling and shimmering of anti-aliased edges when the camera or player's viewpoint is in motion.

http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/gu...g-guide#the-witcher-3-wild-hunt-anti-aliasing

 

[Alexko]

Time to stop shitting up the Witcher 3 thread I think.

So, is there anyone who can look at the current situation of Hairworks in Witcher 3 while contrasting it with the TressFX in TR3 situation[…]

I know that this is a spin-off from the Witcher 3 thread, but just what is the situation of Hairworks in this game?

 

[Rodéric]

I know that this is a spin-off from the Witcher 3 thread, but just what is the situation of Hairworks in this game?

Abysmal perf on AMD hardware. (Don't know about Intel's.)

 

[Deleted member 2197]

Not so sure HairWorks is the issue, perhaps the lack of a timely, proper driver is more relevant. The entire Witcher 3 performance review at Guru3D was performed w/o HairWorks enabled.

Our measurements are taken in game. Our settings are as follows (BTW - Hairworks is DISABLED to objectively compare inbetween AMD and Nvidia cards):

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/the_witcher_3_graphics_performance_review,5.html

Edit: Lol, I wouldn't be surprised to see "additional" drivers coming out from both AMD and Nvidia as well as some Witcher 3 developer optimization patches, but how much more performance can you squeeze when running the game in Ultra settings?

 

[Malo]

I just like that apparently I'll be able to run Ultra + Hairworks at a steady 30fps on my 970, I don't need 60fps for a game like this as opposed to GTAV.

 

[Alexko]

Not so sure HairWorks is the issue, perhaps the lack of a timely, proper driver is more relevant. The entire Witcher 3 performance review at Guru3D was performed w/o HairWorks enabled.

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/the_witcher_3_graphics_performance_review,5.html

Edit: Lol, I wouldn't be surprised to see "additional" drivers coming out from both AMD and Nvidia as well as some Witcher 3 developer optimization patches, but how much more performance can you squeeze when running the game in Ultra settings?

But that's not abysmal performance, Hawaii is a bit faster than the 780 Ti, which is pretty much where it usually stands.

 

[Deleted member 2197]

But that's not abysmal performance, Hawaii is a bit faster than the 780 Ti, which is pretty much where it usually stands.

Agreed! And the GTX 970 is a bit faster than the R9 295x2, so why the complaints?

 

[Alexko]

Agreed! And the GTX 970 is a bit faster than the R9 295x2, so why the complaints?

Apparently that's not the case with Hairworks. I've found this: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2925...nvidia-hairworks-is-enabled-and-thats-ok.html

And indeed, it doesn't look good.

 

[Deleted member 2197]

Well, the point is to compare cards w/o the supposed culprit (which I'm assuming is HairWorks). We've all seen performance reviews dedicated to issues with HairWorks enabled, so this is old news.

Hopefully with new patches on the horizon (including the latest patch released today) and updated drivers from AMD and Nvidia, TW3 gpu performance will start to approach normal levels instead of this "abysmal performance".

 

[gamervivek]

285 is faster than 7970Ghz!

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Abysmal perf on AMD hardware. (Don't know about Intel's.)

Not just abysmal perf on AMD hardware but on most of Nvidia's hardware as well. The 7xx series is hit almost hard (sometimes harder) as AMD hardware is hit. People conjecture that Nvidia does this to try to force it's own consumers to upgrade ASAP to the newest hardware.

For Hairworks in particular though it's interesting that AMD users can mitigate some of the performance hit brought on by excessive tesselation, but that option isn't available to Nvidia users. The only option for users of 7xx series cards is to pay money and upgrade to a 9xx card.

Regards,
SB

 

[Florin]

Or you can just turn off this optional feature.

Or vote with your wallet. I never bought BF4 or Thief even though I played the hell out of BF3. Wouldn't want to support vendors who deliver games with major issues while they waste development effort on Mantle support. At least W3 seems mostly fine otherwise.

And it looks pretty cool for those who have the hardware to utilize it. I suspect by the time this game goes below a tenner on a Steam sale I'll have a card which can run it fine with Hairworks and everything.

 

[Malo]

Yeah TR wasn't judged on TressFX and neither should W3. It shouldn't be a consideration as to the quality of the initial release but rather the point of this thread, the focus on HairWorks itself and its impact on GPUs, game development and consumers.

 

[trinibwoy]

I've heard this argument ad nauseum for years now but still don't get it. How exactly are gamers being "actively hurt" by an add-on optional feature?

The incentives for nvidia and amd are the same - support their brand and increase sales and revenue. One side offers proprietary tools/code etc to help their products stand out. The other side complains about it. Pick your poison.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I've heard this argument ad nauseum for years now but still don't get it. How exactly are gamers being "actively hurt" by an add-on optional feature?

The incentives for nvidia and amd are the same - support their brand and increase sales and revenue. One side offers proprietary tools/code etc to help their products stand out. The other side complains about it. Pick your poison.

In this case it's even more relevant because the open source TressFX is superior to Hairworks in almost every way, especially when it comes to performance across a variety of hardware.

Regards,
SB