Looks Like Far Cry will support 3dc, AMD 64, and HDR

[ChrisRay]

http://www.firingsquad.com/print_article.asp?current_section=Features&fs_article_id=1506

Some notable quotes. The ones I found interesting anyways.

Cevat Yerli: Yes definitely. It’s going to be officially supported in 1.3. Which will be coming out hopefully soon. [laughs] The reason why it’s not enabled now is because there are quality issues we have to check, we have to go back and look at it because it's a content-specific application. The technology works but it requires the content to be adapted to it, otherwise you have overexposure, you have too many objects on the screen glowing and things like that. And while that looks cool on screenshots, when you’re playing that’s not as cool. So we need to tweak it and make sure it matches the content.

FiringSquad: So that’s what you guys are playing with right now, just tweaking it until it looks just right?

Cevat Yerli: Yes but we couldn’t do it in such a short amount of time, so we plan to launch it in the next patch. What will be part of patch 1.2 will be the performance gains.

FiringSquad: So basically your requirement for HDR is FP32?

Cevat Yerli: Yes FP32 blending.

FiringSquad: Are there any plans to incorporate 3Dc into Far Cry?

Cevat Yerli: In fact yes. In the next patch, 1.3.

FiringSquad: In addition to SM 3.0, Far Cry will also be patched to take advantage of AMD’s 64-bit architecture in the future – what changes are you implementing in the 64-bit version of Far Cry?

Cevat Yerli: We’ve done it mainly for content development creators and mod creators, there will be huge benefits from it. For the gameplay it will be more beneficial to the environment, you will have some specific content for 64-bit. There will be a 64-bit version of Far Cry, a separate one eventually. That will be essentially content-wise slightly improved over the 32-bit version but it’s not something which, I mean people with the 32-bit version can still compare to the 64-bit version, but it’s optimized for the 64-bit experience. And the user of course will benefit from the 64-bit CPU architecture, which is more registers, better memory controller, but also more addressable memory.

FiringSquad: Will it look any better, or are you just going to use 64-bit to enhance performance?

Cevat Yerli: Well you will have a better experience, not necessarily “the lookâ€; well you will have more environmental objects. If you consider that a better “lookâ€, then yes, but the experience will be better because more things will be happening on screen.

FiringSquad: How many 2.0 instructions are you using in Far Cry today with the 1.2 patch? How many 3.0? When do you think games will begin to hit 3.0’s current maximums?

Cevat Yerli: 2.0 maximum or 3.0 maxium?

FiringSquad: 3.0 maximum.

Cevat Yerli: I think we’re far away from that, but we’re actually hitting the 2.0 maximums now. For 3.0 we don’t really use the amount of instructions really. Our instructions are 96 instructions tops right now.

FiringSquad: Oh really, you’re at 96 instructions with 2.0 now?

Cevat Yerli: Yes, and we’re not using more because we don’t need more. If you look at the image quality you can achieve with 2.0 – with 2.0 you can achieve pretty much any quality you want for right now. And the key benefit between 3.0 and 2.0 is performance really and so we’re using 3.0 for performance gains, not an image quality gain. The image quality you can achieve with 2.0 is good for now so there won’t be any real technology differences other than the performance difference.

 

[Blacklash]

Looks like when I do a complete system overhaul in late summer of next year it's going to be AMD.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Is the 1.2 patch publically available yet? :|

 

[KimB]

I guess it really shouldn't surprise anybody, given that they decided to patch FarCry to support SM3, and supporting 3Dc should be quite a bit easier.

I am wondering, though, how they plant to use 64-bit processing to increase the amount of content. I mean, they'd have to be talking about greater than 4GB of content for that to make a big difference, right? I mean, other than the obvious speed improvement of using a faster processor...

And FP32 blending? I didn't think the NV40 supported that. I mean, I think it'd be excellent if they did, as I think I could make use of it...

Edit: Yep, just checked the docs, and FP32 blending is not supported by the NV40. I have to wonder what the interviewee was thinking...

 

[pat777]

Edit: Yep, just checked the docs, and FP32 blending is not supported by the NV40. I have to wonder what the interviewee was thinking...

Did the docs say "FP32 blending is not supported" or did they just not say "FP32 blending is supported". If it's the latter than FP32 blending could still be supported.

 

[anaqer]

Did the docs say "FP32 blending is not supported" or did they just not say "FP32 blending is supported".

IIRC nVidia explicitly said "supports FP16 blending". I don't think they'd say that if FP32 was also available for blending.

 

[KimB]

Edit: Yep, just checked the docs, and FP32 blending is not supported by the NV40. I have to wonder what the interviewee was thinking...

Did the docs say "FP32 blending is not supported" or did they just not say "FP32 blending is supported". If it's the latter than FP32 blending could still be supported.

There was a graph with all of the various pixel formats and supported features on them. The FP32 format had an "N" in the blending section.

 

[cho]

Did the docs say "FP32 blending is not supported" or did they just not say "FP32 blending is supported".

IIRC nVidia explicitly said "supports FP16 blending". I don't think they'd say that if FP32 was also available for blending.

nvidia said supports fp16 texture filter and fp16/fp32 "frame buffer" blending.

 

[Evildeus]

Is the 1.2 patch publically available yet? :|

Today they said.

 

[pat777]

Edit: Yep, just checked the docs, and FP32 blending is not supported by the NV40. I have to wonder what the interviewee was thinking...

Did the docs say "FP32 blending is not supported" or did they just not say "FP32 blending is supported". If it's the latter than FP32 blending could still be supported.

There was a graph with all of the various pixel formats and supported features on them. The FP32 format had an "N" in the blending section.

This is strange. Now that I think of it I think I remember. It was in the GPU Programming guide. Was Cevat high? Maybe nVIDIA didn't want developers to use FP32 blending formats because they feared performance losses.

 

[KimB]

nvidia said supports fp16 texture filter and fp16/fp32 "frame buffer" blending.

Look at page 34 of this pdf:
http://developer.nvidia.com/object/gpu_programming_guide.html

 

[jvd]

Well its going to be nice to see how much 3dc will speed up the x800s .


Any idea when the 1.3 patch is due out ? a month ? two ?

 

[pat777]

nvidia said supports fp16 texture filter and fp16/fp32 "frame buffer" blending.

Look at page 34 of this pdf:
http://developer.nvidia.com/object/gpu_programming_guide.html

For a moment I thought NV40's texture formats were on page 42. Then I realised that those were GeForce FX's texture formats.

 

[KimB]

Considering 1.2 isn't out yet, I wouldn't hold my breath. As for the speedup, that will be interesting to find out. You have to remember, of course, that they may also use the legacy compression scheme for other graphics cards (apparently they do care, however, that the quality remains high, so we'll have to see, it will be an interesting comparison).

I do doubt the performance difference will be as high as it was with the initial DXTC benchmarks, as those compressed all textures that were in use, whereas this will only compress some of them. At first guess, I'd say it'd be in the ballpark of 10% increase in many situations: more in indoor scenes, less in outdoor scenes.

 

[rainz]

Well its going to be nice to see how much 3dc will speed up the x800s .


Any idea when the 1.3 patch is due out ? a month ? two ?

Prolly 2-3-4 months ... easy

RainZ

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

DID YOU HEAR THAT EVERYBODY? 64BIT!!

Who gives a damn about 3Dc or PS 3.0 or HDR. FarCry will be 64b.

 

[jvd]

DID YOU HEAR THAT EVERYBODY? 64BIT!!

heh. Yea now if only we had an os and stable fast drivers on par with the 32bit drivers.

Till then my a64 is wasting away

 

[KimB]

Do Linux!

Seriously, I wonder if they're planning on going for Linux, if they want to support A64's? Seems like a bit too much work.

 

[Tim]

Please ignore/delete this post, I was posting nonsense.

 

[L233]

Actually we allready knew that 3Dc would be added to the Crytec engine, Serius Sam 2 was used by Ati presentating the benefits of 3Dc.

Serious Sam 2 uses the Crytec engine?

Err, Crytek != Croteam.