nvidia, the way its meant to be played - NOT

[demalion]

Looks like the annoying practice has gained a firm foothold.

Now, will it be in the final game? In a war for mindshare among enthusiasts, and in response to the Unreal engine games, it seems likely.

Next step is to have vendors pay to get their card recognized and a unique ad to replace the "primary sponsor", and bidding competitions to determine who will be the "primary sponsor". Then, users can get desensitized and annoyed by the proliferation, if that sentiment isn't common already. Finally, a cottage industry for bypassing such title sequences seems the likely result.

Anyways, I hope title screen bypassing command line options become common so I can get to the last step right away.

 

[Matt]

I know they will never do it, but the best way to go about it is to display the logo the first 3 times you run the game, and then after that they disappear and take you straight to the menu when you start the game. There's nothing I hate more than having to wait 30 seconds to a minute to see all the logos (developer, publisher, engine used, sponsors) to get to the ability to play a game. Many times I've found myself deleting movies and files just to get straight to the menu.

 

[noko]

There's nothing I hate more than having to wait 30 seconds to a minute to see all the logos (developer, publisher, engine used, sponsors) to get to the ability to play a game.

I agree!! I call it propaganda which over time starts to sink in to the general population. Equating there favorite game to Nvidia (I guess it could work the other was as well, their worst waste of money of a game with the Nvidia logo on it ). I paid to play and not paid to watch the same advertisement over and over again (gritting teeth, swearing I will never buy another Nvidia product . . .).

 

[Crusher]

If you're lucky, there's often times a command line switch to skip a lot of the crap. Personally, I find the logo's and advertisements less annoying than the "please register now" shit.

 

[Mr Jolly]

ultimately it will prob end up as ati sponsoring a game that the hero wears an ati t-shirt and the games begins with the evil villain beating a poor little innocent child while wearing a "nVidious" t-shirt......

then nvidia respond with the RTCW sequel... the nazi's reveal their previously unknown support for "atai" having that on their shirts....
then have pics of the ati driver team faces and texturing them on...
which might backfire and have that as the no1 best selling game for ati users wanting to take revenge ?


how long till the kyro2 pdf becomes a brown envelope with green bits of paper in it that ends up with rival 3d card being "slowed" just enough to win a benchmark ?
they make games for $ not fun these days afterall

 

[chavvdarrr]

http://spong.com/index.asp?art=4697
Half-life2 exclusively for NV cards ?! OMG....

 

[Randell]

does anybody seriously want that to happen? PC Games to be developed for one IHV or another? I checked the date but its dated April 2nd, not the 1st.

 

[blake_mooney]

NV is bashing 3DMark03 for not being a valid gaming benchmark and demanding that games be used for benchmarking. Nvidia is pissed cause the shipping products don't score well and their DX9 product is a flop.

What are they going to do about "The way its meant to be played" program. They are paying ISV's to optimize for NV hardware and exclusively locking out ATI.

For example UT2003 was obviously payed for the logo and splash screen in the game but it is being used almost everywhere for benchmarking. Doesn't seem fair. I don't see ATI whining, I see them releasing fast hardware and seriously ramping up their software development to compete and win.

And what about Electronic Arts only using nvidia logos on their boxes. How much did this cost NV? It must be an exclusive agreement as EA used to use ATI logos and the games still perform very well on ATI. Why not include an ATI logo? I read somewhere that Tiger Woods and Madden 2003 support PS1.4.

And Microsoft including a nvidia advertisement in RallySport Challenge and Asheron's Call 2. They are both fantastic on the 9700 and I'm sure ATI would have advertised in these games, given the chance.

More and more it is looking like nvidia is not playing fair!!! and ATI is working harder to make a solution that not only competes but wins.

exactly thats what ive been saying nvidia is NOT!!!!!!!!! the way its "meant" to be played, the Radeon 9800 pro plays EVERYTHING better then any nvidia card can :?

 

[blake_mooney]

http://spong.com/index.asp?art=4697
Half-life2 exclusively for NV cards ?! OMG....

thats wrong its exclusively for radeon cards go to ATI's website it says it right on it

 

[Gerry]

thats wrong its exclusively for radeon cards go to ATI's website it says it right on it

It says no such thing.

 

[beyondhelp]

Yes it does right here...
http://www.ati.com/

And I quote...

"Half Life 2 The most immersive gaming experience possible is a reality Optimized for Radeon 9800 series >Learn more..."

Click Link... First Paragraph...

"It is the most anticipated new game launch of this millennium, and Valve, the developer of the new Half-Life® 2 game, has chosen ATI’s RADEON™ 9800 to demonstrate all of its bells and whistles. Half-Life® 2 is optimized to run on the hardware of ATI’s newest Direct X 9.0 graphics RADEON™ 9800 series of cards. Combined with the latest Pentium driven PC, the most immersive gaming experience possible is a reality."

But note that it does not say anything about exclusivity... It could be Marketing spin to look that way though, huh?

 

[Gerry]

???

That's what I meant by "It says no such thing". It mentions nothing about exclusivity. I don't even think it even hints at it to be honest. It's simply saying that the game will be optimised for Radeon cards which probably just points to a reasonable amount of cooperation between the developers and ATI to ensure everything works well out of the box. Which is a good thing.

 

[beyondhelp]

Sorry I was a bit obtuse there... I did finish with ...
"It could be Marketing spin to look that way though, huh?"

The first Refrence to Nvidia is the result of this news item at Spong...

"Insiders suggest exclusivity deal.

The scientist returns
We can reveal that Valve is currently looking at making its massively anticipated FPS sequel Half-Life 2 exclusive to nVidia graphics cards, in what will be the first deal of its kind in the PC gaming sector.
This massive story comes from insiders at nVidia, who are boasting that this will be the first of many such deals for exclusive content, bespoke to its cards.
We have been aware for some time that both ATi and nVidia have been courting the publishers and developers of AAA PC games, trying to gain card-exclusivity.
“You will see a massive change in the structure of the PC games industry in the next few months, with the first batch of announcements hitting at E3,â€￾ one insider told us. “Instead of being referred to as PC gaming, you will become an nVidia or ATi gamer, as distinct as Sony and Nintendo.â€￾
This concept has been circulating for some time, with gossip about graphics cards overshadowing next-gen console talk at the recent Game Developer’s Conference.
Remember where you read this first, and expect confirmation at this May’s E3. "


The Rebuttal Post about ATI is misinterpreted facts.... ATI Marketing spin that sounds very similar to the above claim, but is not. Perhaps wishful thinking on the Posters part? And a very good example of how easily someone can be misled by carefully worded Marketing hype. Actually, all the Nvidia news item is is speculation. "Valve is currently looking at making its massively anticipated FPS sequel Half-Life 2 exclusive to nVidia graphics cards" doesn't sound like a done deal to me either.

Sorry I didn't use any silly emoticons to get my point across the first time that I was being somewhat facetious.

 

[YeuEmMaiMai]

there used to be a time when games were coded for specific hardware games such as descent had patches for S3, Rendition and Voodo. Same goes for TombRaider.

OGL had been around since the NT 3.X days and MS got a very good idea (as OGL does nothing to address input device or soundcard compatability) to create a standard called Direct X.


Now MS should make it a REQUIREMENT that in order for all drivers to be certified, they have to follow the DX standard to the letter and discourage company specific extensions.

company specific API are bad for users that do not have hardware capable of running them.

GLIDE
S3 Metal (UT kicked butt with that API)
CG

We already have 2 APIs that are very capable in the graphics department

D3D and OGL

what are companies going to do when longhorn gets here and all windows have to be a DX surface?

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

What are they going to do about "The way its meant to be played" program. They are paying ISV's to optimize for NV hardware and exclusively locking out ATI.

More and more it is looking like nvidia is not playing fair!!! and ATI is working harder to make a solution that not only competes but wins.

Thats simply not true, NVidia do NOT force ISV to use there stuff, obviously they (like all IHV's) do the whole cross marketing thing (logo etc) but thats nothing new. They have better deals if its an exclusive logo deal but so what? Everybody does it.

They want us to make it run well on there hardware but they don't penalise you if it also runs well on the other hardware. ISV are to blame for not supporting all cards equally. In fact I've had both ATI and nVidia dev rels help fix bugs with each OTHERS code paths at times (i.e. nvidia suggested what might be causing a crash on ATI and ATI told me about a bug in nvidia ps.1.1 version and how to work around it).

Dev Rels are good people, marketing is completey seperate. All dev rels will help solve any graphics issue with there cards, they will suggest and in some cases implement improvements to the rendering pipeline etc. Obviously (last gen) ATI helped with 1.4 shader mostly and NVidia helped with 1.1/1.3 shaders but in no way will they 'break' or cripple each other. They are willing to often write quite large and non-specific code paths if they think it will improve the overall look of a game, even adding things like bump-maps etc to art work.

And I was lead on "The way its meant to be played" logo game so I really should know!

Finally, an educated opinion on the subject.

 

[Gerry]

Sorry I was a bit obtuse there... I did finish with ...
"It could be Marketing spin to look that way though, huh?"

The first Refrence to Nvidia is the result of this news item at Spong...

Fair enough!

The Spong article (which was from a few months ago I think) sounded like a load of bull when I first read it. Nothing that's happened since makes me think it has any legitimacy.

 

[MrGaribaldi]

Now MS should make it a REQUIREMENT that in order for all drivers to be certified, they have to follow the DX standard to the letter and discourage company specific extensions.

There are a couple of problems with this...

First, Nvidia doesn't seem to care too much about releasing WHQL certified drivers...
Just take a look at their driver download page and see how many of the drivers are available for download are WHQL... The previous WHQL drivers are from november....

Second, if MS is to test if they follow DX to the letter, it's going to be way more timeconsuming than it currently is... And that would mean increased costs, which MS probably won't foot...
This might be ok for Nvidia and ATI, but I doubt it would be good news for Matrox, S3, (insert small IHV's name here)...
Which again might lead to (even) less competition in the graphics scene than it currently is...

Thirdly, define what "following the DX standard to the letter" means...
If it's recreating the exact same scene as the raster, how will anyone be able to comply when FSAA or AF is enabled? From what I've read here (and elsewhere) the chances for a card to get the exact same result (as the raster) when using FSAA is extremly slim (but I could be mistaken!)

And what about VPU's that isn't targetted at gamers? Should the same rule apply to them? If yes, why?
Imagine the problem for an accounting company when they suddenly can't get "proper" drivers for the videocards, since it doesn't support DX...
Not that DX has any impact on how well the card can render Excel and Word...

If not, then how do you differntiate?
What's to stop NVidia from releasing a WHQL certified driver for their Quadro line, which incidently works just as well (if not better) on the FX line?

.02$

 

[YeuEmMaiMai]

first off following DX standards mean you do not create extension that work only on your hardware.

The great thing about having a standard is that DX/OGL provides a consistant interface and it is UP TO THE HARDWARE vendor to ensure that their product meets the requirements.....

Please tell me what is the point of having a standard if everyone can just bypass it at will?

seems like those people in favor of nVidia really do not care if supposid DX titles do not work on the rest of the hardware....well it gonna suck if nVidia becomes the only player in town as then everyone is going to be screwed over.

 

[MrGaribaldi]

first off following DX standards mean you do not create extension that work only on your hardware.

Sounds better than what I outlined over, as long as you let cards which doesn't support DX fully (Parhelia springs to mind) to get their drivesr WHQL'ed...
And I'm assuming you mean that the company are still free to do what they want with OGL...

The great thing about having a standard is that DX/OGL provides a consistant interface and it is UP TO THE HARDWARE vendor to ensure that their product meets the requirements.....

Please tell me what is the point of having a standard if everyone can just bypass it at will?

I agree that IHV's should do their best to make sure that they fulfill the requirements of the standard(s), but I don't see why that should mean they can't do things that isn't in the standard...

Take TruForm from ATI as an example... HL had good graphics without it, but it got better when enabled...
Noone really lost out, since most (if not all) cards could run the game, though Radeon 8500 owners looked a bit better...

The problem, imo, starts when an IHV tries to buy/intimidate/force/whatever a developer/publisher into using nonstandard code as the standard in the game...
All the trouble with NWN and ATI cards springs to mind...
ATI had just as capable hardware (if not more) as Nvidia, yet for some reason the shiny water would only work on Nvidia's cards... And they said it was impossible to do it on ATI's hardware...
Then after a long time, they suddenly changed positions, and fixed it...
This I have a problem with...

But imagine if a developer creates a standard path following DX to the letter, but then implementing a new path, with some more optimizations for a specific (line of) card(s), as that card has access to features no other card has (yet)...

I don't see any problem with that...
It might actually help push 3d graphics forward, as other IHV's might license/use the same technique in their cards, and it'll be part of the next standard...

But both the producer and IHV should allways make sure that their card/drivers or game/app will be able to follow the standard to the letter, without slowdowns/lack of features (as long as those features are reproducable by using the standard)...

seems like those people in favor of nVidia really do not care if supposid DX titles do not work on the rest of the hardware....well it gonna suck if nVidia becomes the only player in town as then everyone is going to be screwed over.

Wow! This is the first time in my life anyone has called me pro-nvidia... Cool! 8)
I gotta bookmark this post to make sure I won't loose it!

The closest thing I've ever come to owning an nvidia card is an nforce2 mobo, and that isn't even mine... And that is probably the closest I'll come until they clean up their act (which seems like a long time off judging by current events)....