[PC] Tomb Raider 2013

[Ike Turner]

Very old commercial, that one (still has the February release date). And yes, it's a commercial. Any "interview" that starts with the company logo is not an interview. They're telling us exactly what we want to hear, nothing more. And I didn't hear any questions being asked.

Back on topic, since this is a Tomb Raider thread and not a Bioshock thread, early reports say that TressFX has a noticeable hit on performance, and doesn't actually work as well as it looks in their stills (particularly with physics). Pretty, but not realistic, and not optimized in any way. Most of the players I've seen are turning it off.

The "noticeable hit on performance" only happens on NVidia GPUs right now and from the videos I've seen it looks pretty good (miles ahead of the "regular hair" version anyway).

 

[Sigfried1977]

The regular hair at least looks appropriately dirty and sort of works with the look of the rest of the game. The Tress FX hair looks nice and shiny, but still completely fake (and it defies the laws of gravity just as badly) and also sticks out like a sore thumb. I think it has half-assed tech demo written all over it. Tesselation, at least from a purely visual point of view, doesn't seem like it's doing anything either. (but since it doesn't really affect performance in any way I just leave it tuned on)

It's still a gorgeous game.

 

[Wynix]

I don't see how you can come to the conclusion it's not optimized in any way.

Look here: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=48952794#post48952794


He goes from 59fps average to 42 fps, that is an enormous hit in framerate for some bad hair physics.

I don't know if it's unoptimized but it's way too costly for such a minor feature.

 

[Rodéric]

so 6.86ms for TressFx on a 7870 2GB @ 1175/1375mhz in Tomb Raider.
That's a bit much.

 

[Malo]

Well I wouldn't expect a few fps performance drop for that amazing detail and physics on the hair. It's a feature that hasn't really been done in real world games yet and a look forward to the future (hopefully).

 

[Billy Idol]

Well I wouldn't expect a few fps performance drop for that amazing detail and physics on the hair. It's a feature that hasn't really been done in real world games yet and a look forward to the future (hopefully).

What about the hair physics in this Alice game. Only weak memories, but it seems to me that it looked comparable?!!

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Tesselation reportedly makes difference in rocky places and Lara's.. shoulders.

I don't get all the hate for TressFX. Of course it wouldn't be perfect but it's definitely a landmark on game graphics. From what I see, it's definitely a generational leap over the hair on Alice: Madness Returns (which I actually played in 2012).
Maybe some people are just mad at the fact that their $500 nVidia graphics card can't play the feature as well as a $250 AMD one.


What I would like to know is if we could get the physics simulation part of TressFX being done on a separate GPU, which is something PhysX can do.
If TressFX can be done on any DirectCompute 5.0 compliant GPU, it means it can also be done on the iGPUs in Llano, Trinity and Ivybridge. Either the simulation GPU must be the render GPU is another story.

 

[swaaye]

What was the deal with the hair in 3dmark03? It was a little strange but more interesting than the cement hair that's typical but nobody tried to do anything else.

 

[Wynix]

Tesselation reportedly makes difference in rocky places and Lara's.. shoulders.

I don't get all the hate for TressFX. Of course it wouldn't be perfect but it's definitely a landmark on game graphics. From what I see, it's definitely a generational leap over the hair on Alice: Madness Returns (which I actually played in 2012).
Maybe some people are just mad at the fact that their $500 nVidia graphics card can't play the feature as well as a $250 AMD one.


What I would like to know is if we could get the physics simulation part of TressFX being done on a separate GPU, which is something PhysX can do.
If TressFX can be done on any DirectCompute 5.0 compliant GPU, it means it can also be done on the iGPUs in Llano, Trinity and Ivybridge. Either the simulation GPU must be the render GPU is another story.

Did you miss my post? a guy using a 7870 overclocked to 1175mhz core goes from 59fps average with it off to 42fps average with it on, the hair physics feature is way too expensive.

I like that AMD are trying to push new features, but this needs alot more work before it can be viable.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Did you miss my post? a guy using a 7870 overclocked to 1175mhz core goes from 59fps average with it off to 42fps average with it on, the hair physics feature is way too expensive.

I like that AMD are trying to push new features, but this needs alot more work before it can be viable.

I didn't miss your post. 42FPS is great and seemingly better than what a GTX680 can do, proving my post.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Well, I have to say, after seeing that animated GIF that someone posted on GAF (http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=49008804&postcount=4296 ), I'm sold.

This is by far the second most impressive graphical enhancement I've seen in the past 5 years (tessellated geometry still tops this for me).

As I said somewhere else, I wasn't even thinking of buying this game. But after seeing TressFX in motion, I'm going to buy this as soon as I have some free time to actually play a game. Hell, I might buy it before then just to load up the game and see it in action on my machine.

Absolutely amazing. Just like tessellated geometry, it's going to be incredibly hard for me to play ANY other game from now on as the hair is going to bug me even more than it did before.

Now, we just need graphics cards to improve in power considerably more so they can use TressFX or it's successor for all NPCs as well. If it was on all the NPCs as well, this would have tied tessellated geometry for the most impressive visual graphical effect of the past 5+ years for me.

Regards,
SB

 

[Davros]

For those who have tr, is the hair thing lara only? is it used on other characters, how about thinks like rope, vines or even animal fur if those are in game ?

 

[Billy Idol]

Played for about half an hour. Graphics on highest, except tesselation (seems to cause ctd on nvidia) and tressfx. Runs great so far, but on the other hand graphics are really good but not as impressive as Crysis 3. Gameplay is as expected...but somehow still surprising: 100% uncharted so far, although I can see that the light rpg character adds something new, similar to far cry 3.

I must admit, that I was never a tomb raider fan, and I still just don't like Lara as a character...and her constant high pitched screaming does not help at the moment. So far, I have mixed feelings (only 30min in!!!)...I get the constant seen that, been there feeling as it is uncharted meets far cry 3.

On the other hand, I can see lot's of potential for a good game and I am curious about how the game evolves...

 

[Otto Dafe]

For those who have tr, is the hair thing lara only? is it used on other characters, how about thinks like rope, vines or even animal fur if those are in game ?

Actually

Spoiler

part of the back story of the island is that all of the inhabitants share Robert Falcon Scott as a common ancestor, and are therefore congenitally bald. I thought it was weird and unnecessary information until I noticed TressFX in the graphics options, then it all made sense.

 

[Wynix]

I didn't miss your post. 42FPS is great and seemingly better than what a GTX680 can do, proving my post.

42fps is great? from a gpu pushing 3Tflops and the game is not even close to the best looking PC game?

Let me put this another way; you are fine with the game losing almost 30% of its frames to push a half decent cosmetic feature that is only on 1 character and no one else?

 

[Jedi2016]

The problem with Tress isn't that it's "cool" or whatever, it just doesn't really fit within the world. The first video posted that showed the hair in motion had Lara walking through the water, herself drenched to the bone, covered in mud and blood, with absolutely Revlon-perfect hair waving in the breeze, straight out of a TV commercial. Cool physics or not, that breaks immersion and just looks wrong.

I'm playing the game in 3D anyway.. that alone is a 50% performance hit, so I need all the fps I can get. At Ultra settings with Tress and Tess off (what are they, sisters?), I can get about 30fps on the benchmark in 3D, so I'm still looking for more stuff to trim back. Hopefully with some nice optimized drivers I can turn some of that stuff back on and keep the frames high.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

42fps is great?

For a third person action game, it is. As long as it doesn't dip below 30FPS for too long.
At least for me it would be.

Let me put this another way; you are fine with the game losing almost 30% of its frames to push a half decent cosmetic feature that is only on 1 character and no one else?

I don't think it's half decent, I think it's one of the most relevant landmarks on game graphics since DX11 tesselation and the hair on videogame characters has been the elephant in the room for quite a while.

And at least for me it's worth the 30% performance drop. Even more if we're talking about keeping the game above 40FPS.

This is just my opinion and I expect it to be respected, as much as I respect yours.

The problem with Tress isn't that it's "cool" or whatever, it just doesn't really fit within the world. The first video posted that showed the hair in motion had Lara walking through the water, herself drenched to the bone, covered in mud and blood, with absolutely Revlon-perfect hair waving in the breeze, straight out of a TV commercial. Cool physics or not, that breaks immersion and just looks wrong.

You mean, just like every single scene with dirt/mud in a Hollywood movie?
I don't see people getting too worked up with that.

 

[Broken Hope]

Why is stuff like this still happening?

The new Tomb Raider reboot was released last night, and has so far been praised as a good game that brings back that nostalgia of the old Tomb Raider games. However, in our testing today, we have become aware of performance issues on NVIDIA GPUs while playing this game. We reached out to NVIDIA for answers and some information for you if you are experiencing slower than expected performance, it is not just you. We asked NVIDIA what the best driver for the game is right now, and NVIDIA's response is as follows:

Hi Brent. You can try using the latest beta driver however, please note that we are aware of major performance and stability issues with GeForce GPUs running Tomb Raider with maximum settings. Unfortunately, NVIDIA didn't receive final code until this past weekend which substantially decreased stability, image quality and performance over a build we were previously provided. We are working closely with Crystal Dynamics to address and resolve all game issues as quickly as possible. In the meantime, we would like to apologize to GeForce users that are not able to have a great experience playing Tomb Raider, as they have come to expect with all of their favorite PC games.

We then followed up asking about an ETA for the new driver, and got this response:

Hi Brent, this isn't solely a driver issue. The developer needs to make some changes on their end to fix their issues on GeForce GPUs. This will require code changes to the game.

I know it's happened to AMD before, it's happened to Nvidia now. Why aren't devs giving them final versions of code?

 

[jimbo75]

Let me put this another way; you are fine with the game losing almost 30% of its frames to push a half decent cosmetic feature that is only on 1 character and no one else?

Yes. If it was something that was easy to do we'd have seen it in games before now. If your 7870 is managing 40fps+ then a 7970 GHz can't be far from the magic 60fps.

More importantly, the next gen cards have an easier time and gamers have a reason to upgrade. What did you expect? I just don't get some people - without this it would be what, another console port that you can whine about your graphics card going underutilised? It's the same with the Crysis 3 and cpu "bottleneck" for people with 5 year old cpu's.

These are next gen titles that you can't expect to run flawlessly on current gen midrange (or lower) hardware.

 

[jimbo75]

Even more important is that driver optimisations will lead to better performance for both sets of users as we can be sure Tomb Raider will be one of the most benchmarked titles this year. It should be very interesting to see if Nvidia can turn it around on AMD like they have been able to do on other titles.