NV50 being optimized for UnrealEngine 3?

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

I doubt any developer is going to hurt their sales by not supporting as wide an audience as possible, and I doubt they would sign up for any marketing campaign that insists on such a restrictive deal.

That depends how well the IHV involved compensates you...

It would have to be a hell of a lot to live with the reputation of your software being buggy or crippled on either the ATI or Nvidia hardware. You could be sure it would be the developer who gets the blame for shabby coding for whoever wasn't putting some extra money in their pockets.

Look at the grief and rep Bioware, Gearbox and Valve have at the moment because of issues with either the Nvidia or ATI hardware, even if (in Valve's case) it really isn't their fault.

 

[jb]

I kind of agree with DT on this:

If you have two IHV cards X and Y. And Lets say new game ABC comes out with this awesome new feature DFG that both cards X and Y supports. If the devleoper limited their game ABC to only allow Card X to run this DFG feature only because Card X IHV paid them money then you get into very murky waters. If my card supports feature (meaning no hardware/driver limation) for DFG I better well be able to get DFG in that game. If not, then I would think twice about getting game ABC. Now if my card did not support feature DFG, then no big deal. Optimizing for one IHV is ok so long as perfromance on the other IHV is not adversly affected.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Optimizing for one IHV is ok so long as perfromance on the other IHV is not adversly affected.

I agree with that, but I'm afraid that they're going to use the term "optimized" to me crippled on the competitors card rather than improved on the IHV backing the game.

 

[RM. Andersson]

It will be bad enough if it´s only a few effects that only work with one IHV.
Perhaps you can enable somewhat better looking lightning effects if you own a Nvidia card.

That would be enough to make ATI owners angry. At least if they know that it would be possible for ATI cards to support the extra bonus effects if the game developer really wanted to and was prepared to do some extra work.
If the game developer has a special contract with Nvidia and get lots of money from them they will not do that extra work.

And they will tell ATI owners: - The game runs fine with ATI harware. You only get a little bit lower quality on a few effects.

I think something like that would be serious enough to make me upset.
If my hardware can support all features and effects in a game it must all be possible to enable. And if that means they must waste more time they should do it.
I will pay the same price for the game regardless if I own a Nvidia or ATI card. Thus I feel that I have the right to get the same quality, effects and features regardless what card I own.
That´s reasonable from the consumers perspective. The consumer should not have to investigate and find out what other companies the game developer has agreements and contracts with every time he wants to buy a new game. The consumer should get what he pays for and not less.

So I hope that there will be no effects that only work with one gfx-card companies products in future games. It´s not an honest way to do bussiness IMO.

 

[LeGreg]

Heck, for UT2K3 Epic even had someone putting effort into writing code for Voodoo cards

Thus I feel that I have the right to get the same quality, effects and features regardless what card I own.

even if (in Valve's case) it really isn't their fault.

Hell yes!

I want to be able to play HL2 on my Voodoo with full effects!

 

[Mark0]

And they will tell ATI owners: - The game runs fine with ATI harware. You only get a little bit lower quality on a few effects.

I think something like that would be serious enough to make me upset.

If so, you simple don't buy that game. And, maybe, you could write a polite mail to the devs, saying that you liked the game very much, but choose to not to buy it for this and that reasons.

Bye!

 

[LeGreg]

So much speculation about nothing.

This "I got an effect that you don't have"/"I have an exclusive on that game" is so old and boring.
Voodoo had a game the savage had not. PowerVr had volumetric shadows but not the others. Matrox could do EMBM but not the other cards (well they could later but that's not the point). Nvidia had shadow maps or depth clamping and ATI had not. And so on..
My little cousin had the special he-man with a superman cape and I had not.
Try explain that to those console fan guys. (hey my box is at least bigger than your cube)

There would be no point in selling hardware if they were all look alike and there would be no joy wandering on a board if there was nothing to rant about (like I do).

There is nothing "evil" to what I can read.. Nazis were evil (one goodwin point!) but not an Nv slides claiming anything about a product that is due.. whenever. Or an ATI slide claiming that your most wanted game will run well only on ATI part.. It's just marketing. Aimed at people who seems to care and overreact.. like you.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Hell yes!

Nice misquoting out of context from different sources. What's your point?

So much speculation about nothing.

There would be no point in selling hardware if they were all look alike and there would be no joy wandering on a board if there was nothing to rant about (like I do).

Developers have for the last few years been trying to move away from having to code to lots of different hardware, all with lots of different results. They have for the most part been successful in settling on DirectX or OpenGL, leaving more time and money for developing gameplay and content, rather than a dozen different dedicated paths.

Now we have a situation where Nvidia are paying developers in order to code to their card only, in some cases deliberately crippling code so it doesn't run on a competitor's card. Do you want to buy software that has been coded to *deliberatly* look worse on your hardware?

It's a slippery slope that quickly moves towards games being hardware exclusive, where you can't play some games at all unless you have the correct graphics card. This would be a ludicrious situation that nobody but Nvidia want, that would harm the consumer, and that in the end can only hurt the whole PC gaming market.

 

[CorwinB]

So much speculation about nothing.

Voodoo had a game the savage had not. PowerVr had volumetric shadows but not the others. Matrox could do EMBM but not the other cards (well they could later but that's not the point). Nvidia had shadow maps or depth clamping and ATI had not. And so on..

3dfx had a specific API (Glide) which, while it helped a lot at the beginning of consumer 3D graphics, ultimately proved disruptive and was at least part of the downfall of 3dfx. As BZB pointed out, developers wanted to move to an unified path.

For PVR (not sure) and Matrox (100% positive), the "special effects" were all part of the DirectX specification. That only a G400 could activate EMBM was not a marketing ploy, but came from Matrox being the only IHV (at that time) to implement EMBM in silicon. Try reinstalling Drakan, Dungeon Keeper 2, Expendable, Battlezone 2 or whatever EMBM game with your GFFX or R3xx, and you can run it with EMBM activated...

That comes from the fact that not all manufacturers are required to implement every effect of a DirectX version in silicon to have compliant hardware. So some effects are indeed going to look like they are exclusive, but they aren't... It's just that at one time, there is only one company with shipping products enabling function X or Y. If an IHV can get a developer to implement such a function, then more power to him (for example, IIRC, Stalkers will use some of the GFFX extra capabilities, which is cool).

But asking a developer to cripple the competition's hardware so that an effect that this hardware supports and that is exposed in the driver does not work is deceiptive and should be sanctioned by consumers and exposed by the press.

There would be no point in selling hardware if they were all look alike

Ah, but then you missed the point about different boards of the same generation not always implementing the same functions while being compliant to an API. Even within the bounds of an API, there is still lots to do for differenciation between IHVs (speed, rendering quality, functions...).

There is nothing "evil" to what I can read.. Nazis were evil (one goodwin point!) but not an Nv slides claiming anything about a product that is due.. whenever. Or an ATI slide claiming that your most wanted game will run well only on ATI part.. It's just marketing. Aimed at people who seems to care and overreact.. like you.

I don't see what Nazis have to do with this, and this kind of parlor tricks is not unlike the Good Doctor's and his Al-Quaeda/Nvidia blurbs. How is that for "overreacting" ? And sure, consumer fraud is not "evil" like "Nazi evil". But then again, I suppose that's the case for quite a few crimes. Would you describe the CEOs of Enron or Vivendi as "evil" ?

 

[Xmas]

The original topic was "NV50 will have UnrealEngine 3 specific optimizations". Not the other way round. Since UE3 is going to use DirectX, there is (almost) no way of having features that could be used by UE3 only, and there's no way of having features that could be exposed by NV50 only.

 

[Doomtrooper]

Not all DirectX functions are covered by every IHV, like Truform..STALKER is a classic example...DirectX yet they claim a R300 based card can't render the shaders propely :?

 

[WaltC]

...

I don't like how this seems at first glance. Hopefully there is something I missed in all this that provides a more positive light. I dislike the idea of a bifurcation of the software market into separate platforms based solely on video hardware.

Maybe I just need a new tin foil hat. :?

The only actual bifurcation which exists here is between "marketing" and "reality." This is exactly the same kind of nonsense that we all heard so much about when nVidia put out press releases implying that its bundling deal with EA equated to "special software support for nVidia hardware as opposed to anybody else's." That never happened, and as such it wasn't surprising to have never seen corresponding EA press releases expressing the sentiments espoused by the nVidia press releases on the subject of "special support" in EA titles for nVidia hardware. All the talk about this came from nVidia--not from EA. Indeed, nVidia press releases never got around to even explaining which features it was, exactly, that particular EA games would support on "nVidia hardware" that weren't equally supported on competing IHV hardware.

What's going to be supported by IHVs and game developers alike is...drumroll...the API. That's what the API's exist for--to give developers and IHVs a target. Certainly, as we've seen for most of the last year, some IHVs will get closer to the target than others in as far as hardware support for API features is involved, and in so far as the performance and efficacy of that API feature support is concerned. But that isn't the same thing at all.

In short, I wouldn't waste any time worrying about it...

 

[Xmas]

Not all DirectX functions are covered by every IHV, like Truform..STALKER is a classic example...DirectX yet they claim a R300 based card can't render the shaders propely :?

But everyone could expose N-Patches. And everyone could use it. So no exclusivity of features at all.

That some developer might limit the use of a certain feature to certain hardware is in no way related to the original topic, I just wanted to point that out.

 

[Doomtrooper]

True

 

[rwolf]

Doomtrooper, the best thing you could do is buy a Nvidia sponsored game and run it on an ATI card. It doesn't buy Nvidia squat.

ATI is smarter because they are buying HL2 and giving it to ATI card owners. That rocks.

 

[V3]

unless you like that type of business practice and forced to buy hardware to play a PC title you may like.

I don't see anything wrong with that. After all we're forced to buy MS Windows, for most PC games.

 

[jimbob0i0]

unless you like that type of business practice and forced to buy hardware to play a PC title you may like.

I don't see anything wrong with that. After all we're forced to buy MS Windows, for most PC games.

MS Windows ~ £100

Highend graphics card ~ £400-~£500

um care to comment?

 

[V3]

MS Windows ~ £100

Highend graphics card ~ £400-~£500

um care to comment?

The principal is still the same. MS is only one company, that you need to pay money to get most games to work, because most developers only support Windows.

Again, I don't see anything wrong with it. Its just business.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

MS Windows ~ £100

Highend graphics card ~ £400-~£500

um care to comment?

The principal is still the same. MS is only one company, that you need to pay money to get most games to work, because most developers only support Windows.

Again, I don't see anything wrong with it. Its just business.

It's bad business. Unless you can guarentee a near monopoly as MS has on the home desktop, all you do is split the market, which benefits neither the game developer (who loses half his sales) or the hardware manufacturer (who finds it impossible to gain customers from the "opposing camp" who has a collection of ATI/Nvidia specific games).

It's a sign of desperation that Nvidia is using it's large reserves of cash in order to effectively bribe developers to cripple their games on ATI cards. If Nvdia cards were good enough, they would stand on their own merits, and Nvidia wouldn't have to piss away their money on this kind of runaround instead of building better chips.

 

[Doomtrooper]

It appears people are happy with Monopolies, Microsoft is for sure one, they enter into whatever business they desire and within months are a the new 'big player' with endless cash to blow...how much money did the X-box lose on launch.

I for one enjoy choice, the PC platform is supposed to be open..always was. Now it is IHVs paying XXX amount of cash to make the other IHVs look inferior. In the end the consumer is the loser here, especially if you don't have the super duper anti-matter powered video card that is sponsoring the title, then you won't see the 'special effects'....the product we as the consumer is 'the effects' it is intangable but still is the product itself.