Tomb Rider AOD with Cg

[Joe DeFuria]

High level shading languages in general are not perceived by developers using them to provide any performance advantages.

Right. Compilers (which is what Russ and I are talking about wrt to "stinking"), are charged with deriving the performance.

High level shading languages are generally perceived as a time-saving "feature" that allows developers to flex their creative skills without spending as much time as assembly.

Again, no disagreement.

 

[Doomtrooper]

Why use a CG vs. HLSL when CG obviousally is inferior in almost every way, it may help developers with time(HLSL manages good performance on all IHVs), so if a developer chose CG over HLSL they certainly are not looking out for their customers best interest by using CG, as already a majority of their customers could have had better performance, simply because they didn't support the industry standard HLSL for DirectX.

 

[Myrmecophagavir]

OK, I found out why the FPS were limited to 60. It is because "frame rate compensation" is ebabled by default. When you tun it off frame rates go beyond 60. My apologies to the original poster for any innuendo I reckon it is an option similar to the frame rate limiter in Vice City to eliminate or alleviate visual artifacts.

Err... "v-sync" as they say then?

 

[DaWizeGuy]

OK, I found out why the FPS were limited to 60. It is because "frame rate compensation" is ebabled by default. When you tun it off frame rates go beyond 60. My apologies to the original poster for any innuendo I reckon it is an option similar to the frame rate limiter in Vice City to eliminate or alleviate visual artifacts.

Err... "v-sync" as they say then?

No, vsysnc and "frame rate compensation" are two different things. Vsync synchronize monitor refresh rate and frame rate. Frame rate compensation on the other hand limits the maximum frame rate to 60 FPS. The two options can be used in conjunction to eliminate screen tearing. I believe Angel of Darkness is optimized for NTSC TV reproduction which runs a 60 Hz since the PS and PC share the same basic code. Thus higher frame rates might cause visual artifacts.

 

[Myrmecophagavir]

No, vsysnc and "frame rate compensation" are two different things. Vsync synchronize monitor refresh rate and frame rate. Frame rate compensation on the other hand limits the maximum frame rate to 60 FPS. The two options can be used in conjunction to eliminate screen tearing. I believe Angel of Darkness is optimized for NTSC TV reproduction which runs a 60 Hz since the PS and PC share the same basic code. Thus higher frame rates might cause visual artifacts.

Why would a frame rate higher than 60 Hz cause artifacts? Tearing can occur at any image generation frame rate, regardless of the (finite) refresh rate of the display device. V-sync alone stops this, you don't need any other process to eliminate tearing. V-sync also limits the maximum frame rate to eg. 60 Hz.

 

[DaWizeGuy]

No, vsysnc and "frame rate compensation" are two different things. Vsync synchronize monitor refresh rate and frame rate. Frame rate compensation on the other hand limits the maximum frame rate to 60 FPS. The two options can be used in conjunction to eliminate screen tearing. I believe Angel of Darkness is optimized for NTSC TV reproduction which runs a 60 Hz since the PS and PC share the same basic code. Thus higher frame rates might cause visual artifacts.

Why would a frame rate higher than 60 Hz cause artifacts? Tearing can occur at any image generation frame rate, regardless of the (finite) refresh rate of the display device. V-sync alone stops this, you don't need any other process to eliminate tearing. V-sync also limits the maximum frame rate to eg. 60 Hz.

A high frame rate can cause graphics corruption if the game engine is internally optimized for a fixed frame rate. This usually manifests itself in the form of missing textures and pop ups because the game engine cannot keep up with monitor refresh. It happens for many users in GTA Vice City and GTA3 for PC if you turn off the frame limiter. You can probably fix the problem by setting a refresh rate of 60 Hz and enabling Vsync, but this is not comfortable to look at for longer periods of time.

 

[Ante P]

Ticked off framerate compensation
now I get up to 80-90 fps, but on the other hand the fps sinks way lower in certain areas than it ever did with framerate compensation enabled

what gives

 

[Reverend]

In our readme of benchmarking this game, it is stated :

In the “General†tab of the GCP, there is a “Framerate Compensation†option. This option is ignored when the –benchmark command line is used. For normal gameplay, if this is set to “Active†(with either “Fast†or “Smooth†options), it dynamically changes the ratio of draw loops to game loops. Graphical effects are never tweaked to maintain speed in case that is the general presumption.

If I'm not mistaken, this is not too unlike the Unreal engine's "minimum framerate" feature.

 

[Phantom69]

In our readme of benchmarking this game, it is stated :

In the “General†tab of the GCP, there is a “Framerate Compensation†option. This option is ignored when the –benchmark command line is used. For normal gameplay, if this is set to “Active†(with either “Fast†or “Smooth†options), it dynamically changes the ratio of draw loops to game loops. Graphical effects are never tweaked to maintain speed in case that is the general presumption.

If I'm not mistaken, this is not too unlike the Unreal engine's "minimum framerate" feature.

On the contary, I believe the Unreal engine reduced graphical effects to maintain a minimum frame rate, whereas the readme for TR:AOD explicitly states that graphical effects are not tweaked. TR:AOD appears to just reduce the number of screen updates per game 'tick'.

Unreal - Minimum frame rate (boosted by reducing graphical effects)
TR: AOD - Maximum frame rate (reduced by decreasing screen updates)

HTH

P69