The Power of ID?

[jasonjlee]

Haven't been reading for a few days and it looks like the fanboyism was getting out of control. Nice to see the mods stamp down.

To my point however...

Theres a quote going around from John Carmark stating that the baseline for Doom3 was Geforce? (I read that quote 20 times, and now I can't seem to find it!)

Now, it's obvious that ID have to target the mainstream to shift large numbers of games, but what will Doom3 move like on a geforce sdr?

What kind of processor and memory would this machine with bundled geforce1 graphics card have had?

I would guess is such systems will not run doom3 that well, unless everything is set to minimum.

My main questions however are these...

How many people are planning their next upgrade around doom3 time?

Whilst the majority of pc's sold tend to have pretty bad graphics bundled (office machines). But do the majority of pc's that are playing games in peoples homes?

I guess my point is, if Carmack had targeted Dx8 fully compliant minimum, would it have pushed the industry on faster?

J

 

[BoardBonobo]

The way I look at is although most discussions centre around the available technology and how different development teams might implement it we tend to ignore the fact that dev teams are always competing with one another to produce the best and fastest engine out there. If one house thunders in with an all singing all dancing engine then, in the spirit of friendly competition , all the other teams are going to rush ahead and try and beat that.

So if ID chose to implement an engine around the full Dx8 spec and it looked and performed better than anyone elses then that would spur other teams on.

I personally don't think it's worth upgrading just for the sake of one game, but if a whole stack came out that looked amazing and played as well as they looked then I would be very tempted.

 

[Randell]

I understood he started work on Doom3 before Dx8 was out. Also DX8 means pixel/vertex shaders yes? JC codes in OpenGL and currently there are no PS standards, yes? (someone correct me if I'm wrong). So what could he do but assume TnL cards (starting with the Geforce SDR) woudl be the baseline by the time it was finished. I still know people with Tnt2's and V3's but I expect they would have upgraded anyway by the time Doom3 is out.

Also, I thought JC said aiming for 30fps on a gf3 (assume 10x7 rez and 1gig CPU I suppose). So I expect a Geforce SDR would struggle unless rez/detail were quite low.

 

[jasonjlee]

Well, I'm not necessarily gonna buy the fastest card at that time, just a new card. Thats if I can hold out that long, but I've been a very good boy when it comes to graphics cards...

My dev machine still runs a g400 with 2 19" monitors as I don't do any 3d graphics programming yet...

J

 

[pascal]

I think the minimum target is a GF1 DDR.
IIRC the GF1 SDR will play it but at 320x240.
GF3/1GHzCPU will probably be playable.

I am personally waiting for next year DX9 mainstream cards.
This is an incrediblly bad time to upgrade because: serial ATA is coming, USB 2.0 is coming, DX9 is coming, hammer is coming, etc..., etc..., etc... many things in a small 9-12months window.


To answer the question faster yes. How much faster is unkown.

I see some Doom3 effects:
-Some people want to play it with speed/quality
-Websites will start to use it as The benchmark.
-Most people will not play it, but when they see what a newer card/computer is capable they will realize their hardware is becoming "old".

See the two pools below from VoodooExtreme:

07/21/2002
Your next video card upgrade will be?
Waiting on Doom3 (2584)
25%
Radeon 9700 (2422)
23%
NV30 board (2115)
20%
GeForce 4 TI4200 (1020)
10%
GeForce 4 TI4600 (818)
8%
None of these (712)
7%
GeForce 4 TI4400 (444)
4%
Matrox Parhelia (124)
1%
3DLabs P10 (121)
1%
Total Votes: 10360

Which game impressed you the most from E3 based on the coverage of the event?
05/26/2002

Doom 3 (5828)
55%
Neverwinter Nights (937)
9%
Star Wars Galaxies (784)
7%
Deus Ex 2 (597)
6%
Unreal 2 (549)
5%
Other (522)
5%
Legend of Zelda (483)
5%
Metroid Prime (433)
4%
Clancy's Splinter Cell (220)
2%
Panzer Dragoon:Orta (206)
2%
Shinobi (80)
1%

Total Votes: 10639

It is not just because Doom3.
-It is because of games based on the Doom3 engine that will follow (Quake 4, JK III ? edited: imagine the light saber with the Doom3 lights 8) , etc...).
-Because it is a sign that things are changing.
-Some braging rights.

We could call it The iD effect

 

[jasonjlee]

Randell,

All good points. I don't know much about opengl standards.
Were there not custom extensions around?

Pascal... I actually saw a board yesterday that had serial ata

http://www.abit.com.tw/abitweb/webj...PRODUCT_TYPE=MotherBoard&pMODEL_NAME=IT7-MAX2

Haven't checked if/when its out, but its nice to see it listed.

Interesting point about waiting to upgrade...

I guess doom3 will have a big effect anyway, cause if whats been posted here about framerates on geforce1/2/3 ISH cards is true, then people will upgrade to faster cards just to get the framerate up. The fact they will be dx9 cards will just help everyone out.

 

[Randell]

Randell,

All good points. I don't know much about opengl standards.
Were there not custom extensions around

there are custom extensions around and there may even be standard extensions now. Someone other than me can answer correctly

 

[LittlePenny]

He couldn't use DX 8, since there were not any cards available at the time he started the engine that had this tech. Second, he does not use DX, or ASM, so I doubt he would jump on the new tech bandwagon till someone exposes OGL C++ functionality.

Thats my guess.

 

[KimB]

What's exciting is that his next engine will, apparently, use the NV30 as the baseline. That could be very, very exciting

Anyway, it will be exceedingly interesting to compare the upcoming Unreal engine to the DOOM3 engine early next year, as both engines were meant to target the original GeForce as the baseline.

 

[Fuz]

(Quake 4, JK III ? edited: imagine the light saber with the Doom3 lights , etc...)

Wow, I just discovered what an orgasm feels like.

 

[Randell]

What's exciting is that his next engine will, apparently, use the NV30 as the baseline. That could be very, very exciting

Anyway, it will be exceedingly interesting to compare the upcoming Unreal engine to the DOOM3 engine early next year, as both engines were meant to target the original GeForce as the baseline.

god I'll be approaching 40 before I see that come to fruition.

 

[Ailuros]

Don't worry Randell, you'll never be too old for gaming. Watch the child within

 

[John Reynolds]

Don't worry Randell, you'll never be too old for gaming. Watch the child within

Yea, but you will get too old to continue kicking the crap out of friends who're 10 years younger.

 

[Ailuros]

Only if your reflexes slow down. Don't underestimate the value of experience.

To keep it short: speak for yourself LOL

 

[Randell]

Don't worry Randell, you'll never be too old for gaming. Watch the child within

Yea, but you will get too old to continue kicking the crap out of friends who're 10 years younger.

10 years younger, I wish. Half my clan mates are 15 years younger At least some are near my age. There was a time when superior hardware was a reasonable crutch, but now everyone has broadband and a Gf3

My wife still doesnt understand the gaming gene But my son has it in spades

 

[jb]

Anyway, it will be exceedingly interesting to compare the upcoming Unreal engine to the DOOM3 engine early next year, as both engines were meant to target the original GeForce as the baseline.

The new UT engine offers some twist which ATM I don't think the ID engine supports as well (again I have lots of details on the UT engine but not much on the Doom3). For example the integration of the Karma Physics engine should offer a ton of things you can do. I know you have all seen the rag doll effects but Karma can and is applied to many other things. How about lights. When you shot a light the model and the light it self will move according to your force/direction of impact. You can set up Karma up to move other objects as well (fans, doors, ect). Also they have Karma on vehicle code. You have friction from the wheels, proper velocity, ect Image a mod where you hook up a player behind a buggy and drive them over a rocky road where the player is trying to grab pickups on the way. Or you can use Karma to throw his body into a goal. Or you can use it for human bowling Although Karma alone is not earth shaking it does open up a wealth of possibilities for us mod makers...oh the evil twisted things I could do...mwaahhaaaahhaaa The UT engine also will support even bigger open areas. Q3 engine was always poor on this. And the gang over at Epic have improved on the handling of large out door areas. The UT engine now supports world spaces that are x4 bigger than the current engine. The also have improved on the movie/demo making aspects of the new UT engine. The tools have improved and that makes it for an even easier process for the mod teams. Tim said that the DOOM 3 will probably have better effects for IQ (like bump mapping for one example) but he has already started working on the next one......


Once again I think DOOM3 will have some amazing IQ and be very fun. But I think that UT2003 has the chance to be more popular with the public just for all of the options it opens up.

 

[Colourless]

Um, it was revealed at around E3 time that id has been making their own 'super' advanced physics engine in house that will have all those sophisticated intra and inter object interactions.

 

[Nagorak]

Is this question a joke? You badly overestimate id's importance and "power". If they had targetted too high of a minimum it would have been a good way of putting themselves out of business. No one would license their engine and their in-house game sales would be crap because so little hardware would support it.

 

[jasonjlee]

Nagorak

Um, no it wasn't a joke..

You badly overestimate id's importance and "power".

I don't know that I do, but that is exactly what the question is for... To get other people's opinion on it.

Hang on, lets look at the stats from the poll.. Most people who voted voted yes.. Look at the other polls reproduced here regarding doom3 from Pascal.

For example, anyone care to tell me what card was used to demo doom3 recently... Did anyone report that? Oh yeah, I think they did. I'm pretty sure that it caused quite a stur. Funny they bothered really. I mean its just ID.

J

 

[Dio]

If they had targetted too high of a minimum it would have been a good way of putting themselves out of business. No one would license their engine and their in-house game sales would be crap because so little hardware would support it.

Putting ID out of business, in one game? Boy, that would need a lot of cash spent on it. ID, and JC personally, are pretty financially stable entities...