Nvidia going in aerospace industry...

[silhouette]

by supporting John Carmack's rocket company... Seriously, I just come from Carmack's keynote speech at Quakecon.. He announced that NV is going to be a sponsor for his research on rockets. And, when he announces that, it is one of the few moments that he is smiling like a happy small child

Other than this, he mostly re-iterated what he said before.. Parallel processors are bad, Cell will not be utilized and is not really suitable for game engine, physics processors will be good for making small cool things but will not change gameplay/gamedesign, he is not happy that they cannot be creative anymore as they are really successful at making FPS, and now he has to continue on that, however he praises cellphones as development is cheap and creative ideas can be tested fairly easily on that platform with out taking much risk..

He did not talk much about their new game.. The only thing he mentioned that they are currently developing it on PC, and then, test on xb360 (not develop on XB360 - however he continued to praise the development tools for XB360). They are also looking to release it on PS3 at the same time. He mentioned that he hopes to be able to talk about it next quakecon..

 

[Skrying]

Carmack just proves that he can be payed off even more. That he's truly irrelevent in todays game business. I'm sorry John, but your last game and engine sucked and I'm not having any hope in your future efforts.

 

[Nelsieus]

Carmack just proves that he can be payed off even more. That he's truly irrelevent in todays game business. I'm sorry John, but your last game and engine sucked and I'm not having any hope in your future efforts.

I'd have to agree with that.

And where did the rocket company come from?

 

[INKster]

I'd have to agree with that.

And where did the rocket company come from?

He owns that for years, Armadillo Aerospace.

 

[Nelsieus]

He owns that for years, Armadillo Aerospace.

Oh, cool! How exactly is nVidia going to be sponsoring it, though, or should I say, why?

 

[INKster]

Oh, cool! How exactly is nVidia going to be sponsoring it, though, or should I say, why?

Beat's me...:smile:
Maybe they're buying the rocket fuel or paying the rent, something like that.
Trying to lure a massive and lucrative NASA contract (QuadroFX + Nforce Professional comes to mind) wouldn't be that far fetched either (ok, maybe a little).

 

[Skrying]

Its just another way of making sure Carmack's next engine is a good performer on Nvidia hardware.

 

[DudeMiester]

I hope the best for his rocket endeavour, because that's the only way he'll be going up from here on in.

 

[Mark]

If he can't see the significant advancements that physics and physics hardware will bring to gaming, then he really has lost it.

 

[Gabrobot]

If he can't see the significant advancements that physics and physics hardware will bring to gaming, then he really has lost it.

Lost what? What has physics really done for gameplay? So far physics are used mostly for graphical enhancements, not as serious gameplay additions. Caramck simply thinks that putting extra development into supporting physics hardware is pointless if it doesn't do anything for the gameplay. They already have a physics engine which can do what they need, without adding in the complexity of extra hardware. (And trying to also support players without it)

Its just another way of making sure Carmack's next engine is a good performer on Nvidia hardware.

Because NVIDIA has been succesful in biasing id Software towards NVIDIA in the past. Oh wait.

Carmack just proves that he can be payed off even more. That he's truly irrelevent in todays game business. I'm sorry John, but your last game and engine sucked and I'm not having any hope in your future efforts.

How exactly does the engine suck? It performs well, and is quite versatile (just look at Quake Wars). Unless you have some insight into working with the engine, what exactly are you basing this on? And how exactly is he irrelevant? What does that mean?


Anyway, there's a good Gamespy article which gives some detail into what he talked about. Of note, he gave some tidbits about their next game... (bold added)

Both John Carmack and the rest of id Software were predictably tight-lipped about the studio's current project, which will be a brand-new IP (as opposed to another Quake or Doom or Wolfenstein title). During the keynote's Q&A segment, however, Carmack offered a few tidbits, albeit a bit vague, about the new game.

First, when asked if id Software would ever move away from the first-person shooter genre, Carmack stated that they'd be sticking with their strengths. "We've got millions of people who love what we do, and we're going to probably continue making them happy," said Carmack, who also mentioned the desire to use the current staff. "We're not about to say, 'id decided not to do a first-person shooter, so these six level designers, we don't need you any more.'"

Carmack did mention that the new game should "do things that people have never seen before -- certainly never seen from id before. We are branching out into different directions." However, he did make it clear that the title would still be "a 3D action game."

When asked about the movement towards photorealism in games, Carmack noted, "Honestly, it's a bit of a worry for me right now, because our next game has lots of people in it," as opposed to the zombies and demons that generally dominate id Software's games. Later, Carmack went as far as to offer conclusions people could take away from earlier comments on the latest revisions on the "megatexture" technology he'd originally developed for Quake Wars. "People can draw a few conclusions," said Carmack. "I said that I'd developed a third-generation megatexture technology at 128,000 x 128,000 textures, so it's a pretty safe bet it's not a corridor shooter."

What does all this mean? Obviously, there's plenty of room for speculation. Is id working on a wide-open, GTA-inspired game played in first-person? Could they be trying to build the nonlinear, mission-based action game that the oft-delayed S.T.A.L.K.E.R. seemed poised to be? It's anyone's guess at the moment, but it's encouraging to hear id may be branching out with its next title.

And as far as NVIDIA sponsering Armadillo Aerospace...

Towards the end of the session, Carmack slipped in a little tidbit about his rocket-building hobby. "NVIDIA is actually sponsoring our rocket for the X-Prize cup this year," Carmack said, greeted with much applause. "We're going to have two vehicles ... we're probably going to call them Pixel and Texel," adding that the rockets will bear NVIDIA logos to boot.

It seems pretty clear it's simply a PR move by NVIDIA.

 

[Skrying]

Because NVIDIA has been succesful in biasing id Software towards NVIDIA in the past. Oh wait.

Are you blind? Nvidia HAS been successful in having id nearly tailor their engine around Nvidia hardware in the past, present and future. Its not secret at all. I'm not sure how you can say such a thing without knowing you're basically skipping over the facts.

The engine sucks because it was a huge investment and has basically done nothing. I struggle to name 4 games that use it. Of the three I know two are id franchises. Previous efforts from id had MUCH better success, because the engine could do everything. The Doom 3 engine has produced games that so far all look the same. Quake Wars being the lone exception, which isnt out yet, that is extremely heavily modified to reach a certain goal.

 

[micron]

The engine sucks because it was a huge investment and has basically done nothing.

That's an oppinion I find hard to choke down.

You're obviously not a Doom 3 fan, and many here arent, but you cant say the engine has done nothing, I love every one of the games that have been built on it.

....but mine is just an oppinion also.

Good luck with the layout change @ Chemical Hardware, I visited before the change, it'll be interesting to see it after.

 

[Skrying]

That's an oppinion I find hard to choke down.

You're obviously not a Doom 3 fan, and many here arent, but you cant say the engine has done nothing, I love every one of the games that have been built on it.

....but mine is just an oppinion also.

Good luck with the layout change @ Chemical Hardware, I visited before the change, it'll be interesting to see it after.

I think Doom 3 as a game was terrible. I think the engine was a commericial failure. I love Prey and it uses the Doom 3 engine, still doesnt chance my thoughts that as a whole the engine didnt do near as well, commericially, as id wanted it to.

Thanks about the site, it is going to be chaning a lot to say the least.

 

[_xxx_]

Are you blind? Nvidia HAS been successful in having id nearly tailor their engine around Nvidia hardware in the past, present and future. Its not secret at all. I'm not sure how you can say such a thing without knowing you're basically skipping over the facts.

Fact is nV had superior hardware before R300 and was his primary dev. board because it could do more stuff faster than the competition. Then as NV40 came, he used that because of PS3.0 etc. Let alone the fact that nV always had and still have the best OGL drivers out there, which is his API of choice. Freebies are just a nice add-on.

The engine sucks because it was a huge investment and has basically done nothing. I struggle to name 4 games that use it.

The engine is revolutionary for its use of dynamic lighting, for example. It was written for the game they wanted to make, it does what it does and that's it. The investment payed off because D3 and the addons sold millions of copies world-wide, as well as Q4 and hopefully Prey too. Good job, I'd say. I don't like D3 either, but the engine is kickass.

 

[NRP]

I don't really understand everyone saying Carmack "isn't relevant" or has "lost it". I mean, he is the one person who is arguably the most directly responsible for the state of the industry today (because he was the first to require hardware 3D accelerators). He has released the source code of almost all of his technology to the general public. He is actively involved with every major IHV and ISV. Yet, for some reason, some of you think he is hopelessly out of touch. Why, exactly?

He speaks out against marketing hype (cell, Xcpu, physics accelerators) and you people slam him for it. Sorry, but i think he's in a much better position to judge the utility of new technology than a few internet beings.

As for Doom 3, I think it was visually gorgeous, and, despite all the negative hype, my X800 ran it just fine. In fact, of all the recent AAA games, I think Doom 3 ran the best across the widest range of hardware. Sure, the gameplay blew, but that isn't exactly the engine's fault.

 

[Skrying]

I don't really understand everyone saying Carmack "isn't relevant" or has "lost it". I mean, he is the one person who is arguably the most directly responsible for the state of the industry today (because he was the first to require hardware 3D accelerators). He has released the source code of almost all of his technology to the general public. He is actively involved with every major IHV and ISV. Yet, for some reason, some of you think he is hopelessly out of touch. Why, exactly?

I respect the guy, but you're not going to score points with me just because you're a nice person. Releasing source code or your past accomplishments doesnt put you on a unmovable pilar, IMO. Carmack's main issue, IMO again, is that he hasnt produced anything that really can take us forward. He just simply talks about what's bad and what's good without offering anything in the way of improving the overall picture. He's becoming a poster boy, if you've got Carmack's approval you're good to go!

 

[digitalwanderer]

I don't really understand everyone saying Carmack "isn't relevant" or has "lost it". I mean, he is the one person who is arguably the most directly responsible for the state of the industry today (because he was the first to require hardware 3D accelerators). He has released the source code of almost all of his technology to the general public. He is actively involved with every major IHV and ISV. Yet, for some reason, some of you think he is hopelessly out of touch. Why, exactly?

He speaks out against marketing hype (cell, Xcpu, physics accelerators) and you people slam him for it. Sorry, but i think he's in a much better position to judge the utility of new technology than a few internet beings.

You make him out to be some neutral party though and he's not, he's always been and probably always will be nVidia biased.

I like the Carmack, but I don't worship him. I think his game engines are fabulous and his games suck.

(I didn't much care of D3, but I love the D3 engine. )

 

[silhouette]

Well maybe I should add a bit more information about his speech yesterday.

In many points of his speech, he stressed that these are his opinions, he has reservations on those and he might be proved wrong in time.

About multi-processor architectures, he told that the CPU indistry brings almost x3 order of magnitude in the past 20 years, but as we hit the ghz barrier now, it is evident that they can not pull out another x3 order of magnitude in the next 20 years if they stick with single core. He told that's why he understands why industry goes into this direction. The problem he found is programming to multi-core systems is not a solved problem and there is no single way that everybody goes into this direction. I guess whis is what makes him sceptical about multi-core systems at least at this point of time. He re-iterated that current state-of-the-art CPUs are very good about maximizing the IPC count and seems he prefer that to a multi-core simples CPU cores.

When a questions was asked about SIMD architectures, he again mentioned that these architectures (SSE3 in x86, SPE in Cell) are suitable for particular tasks, but if these tasks only takes fraction time of what a game engine does. Than, all you got is a speed-up of what is 20% of the engine. That's why he thinks that as a multi-core Cell like architecture will not speed up the whole engine but let the designer to do some more fancy stuff (as an example he gives top-notch audio engine which can take an entire SPE in this case).

About physics, he says that again those new processors can make a game more cool. Like when a rocket flies through fog, you see smoke swirl around the back of rocket. But, he again says that this won't change the game play. That's his idea..

On graphics front, he says that in this generation the graphics will still be important as a discrimination factor of games. However, in next-next gen, he xpects that it will come to a point that the garpahics will be almost same in every game and more important thing will be the gameplay and design of the game. He gave off-line rendering as an example: cars and chicken-little are two movies with very nice and comparable quality graphics, but 'cars' is more appealing because of the story.

He again says that he is not a fan of procedural synthesis, and he again re-iterates that whatever company goes into that path will likely to fail. (I hope Lucasarts proves otherwise).

In IMHO, he is a very credible guy. He is in this industry for years and years, and he knows things inside and out. But as he also said, the history proved him wrong sometimes, so we will see if whatever he said holds.

Oh lastly, he again mentioned that his next engine will have kick-ass visuals, and it will have lots of people in it

 

[INKster]

You make him out to be some neutral party though and he's not, he's always been and probably always will be nVidia biased.

I like the Carmack, but I don't worship him. I think his game engines are fabulous and his games suck.

(I didn't much care of D3, but I love the D3 engine. )

Ah, the core issue revealed...
So Carmack is no longer relevant because he is Nvidia-biased ?

I'm not biased towards anyone, but i could mention Gabe Newell/Valve and ATI with Half Life 2, Mark Rein/Epic and Nvidia with the Unreal Tournament series, etc, etc, etc.
Is Myamoto irrelevant because he only works with Nintendo, or Kojima because of his close ties with Sony lately ?


Frankly, that argument doesn't stick.

 

[digitalwanderer]

It's not that he's not relevant, I never said that. It's just ya have to figure his bias in with the things he says.

Same as all the others you listed.