The Great PS4 Missing AF Mystery *spawn

[Shifty Geezer]

If it's in AMD's hardware, I expect AMD to have licensed it. Devs aren't implementing AF in shaders but it's happening in hardware in the texture units, so it's down to AMD to license any solutions.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Has anybody considered the prospect that AF is actually IP encumbered. I say this because searching to see if thats the case led to this post,

https://www.opengl.org/discussion_boards/showthread.php/184261-Anisotropic-Filtering



There seems to be a number of patents related to AF, which are owned by a number of different parties including Microsoft.

Can it be a case where Sony uses some alternative solution thats not as performance friendly? Or is not simply plug & play and requires some effort to incorporate.

So what's the thinking here? Sony wasn't willing to float paying for AF in their GNM API/PS4 SDK and devs have to pay to add that extension themselves? That seems ... insane.

 

[Scott_Arm]

If it's in AMD's hardware, I expect AMD to have licensed it. Devs aren't implementing AF in shaders but it's happening in hardware in the texture units, so it's down to AMD to license any solutions.

That makes a lot more sense, having the hardware license it, and the extension just exposes the feature on hardware that has licensed it. Paying a royalty to include it in an API on hardware that's fully capable doesn't make sense.

 

[AlNom]

So what's the thinking here? Sony wasn't willing to float paying for AF in their GNM API/PS4 SDK and devs have to pay to add that extension themselves? That seems ... insane.

It clearly cost them too much during PS3 days.

CLEAR as 1xAF