Ultra High Mode in UT 2003

ATI should not pay nvidia a dime and consider legal action if at all possible.
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There's no legal grounds there at all.

If I pay for somebody to do something, and its in the contract that I'll own the rights afterward. I'LL OWN THE RIGHTS. Period. I can do with it what I want. I can give it away free to who I want, I can prevent whomever I want from using it. I can charge whomever, whatever I want. (Assuming I don't run afoul of anti-descrimination laws).

Whether you like it or not.

But once again, you guys seem to be creating uproar and ferver over a theorized, unproven, denied by a representative issue.
 
RussSchultz said:
ATI should not pay nvidia a dime and consider legal action if at all possible.
Click to expand...

There's no legal grounds there at all.

If I pay for somebody to do something, and its in the contract that I'll own the rights afterward. I'LL OWN THE RIGHTS. Period. I can do with it what I want. I can give it away free to who I want, I can prevent whomever I want from using it. I can charge whomever, whatever I want. (Assuming I don't run afoul of anti-descrimination laws).

Whether you like it or not.

But once again, you guys seem to be creating uproar and ferver over a theorized, unproven, denied by a representative issue.
Click to expand...

I pretty much know that Russ hence "if at all possible". IMHO it is a pretty dirty trick. Of course we can only speculate about all of this for now anyhow. IMO I think there will be a backlash if this happens whether you like it or not. Just what it would be or how effective it would be is some other matter.
 
Hahaha Dave.

We aren't even talking about UT2003 anymore, but instead a hypothetical situation. :)

And IMO, an IHV releasing intentionally crippled software to power their products would definately fall into anti-trust in my book.

Forming a partnership with another company makes no difference as the third party simply becomes a consultant to the original parent financeer.

But.. I have no issue with this hypothetical situation, as long as it is defined as such. The only important issue is such a device isnt used as a marketing tool to specifically slander/debase the capabilities of another IHV fictionally. Obviously, if hardware A is truly superior to hardware B, there is no argument.. but if A and B are equal (or opposite superiority), tricky usage of third parties to fictionally depict the opposite would be dirty tactics, to say the least... and to extort funds to remove the fictional lead illustrated would be anti-trust IMO.
 
I just see two statements from Epic in contradiction and simply cannot objectively choose which one is correct as it's impossible to determine at this juncture.... BUT..
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Usually, i (and i think most people here at these forums) tend to put more faith in what the engineers say vs the PR people. In this case, one of the programmers (Vogel) vs the PR guy, Mark Rein.

Why is it that you don't do this in this specific case ?
 
Sharkfood said:
Hahaha Dave.

We aren't even talking about UT2003 anymore, but instead a hypothetical situation. :)

And IMO, an IHV releasing intentionally crippled software to power their products would definately fall into anti-trust in my book.

Forming a partnership with another company makes no difference as the third party simply becomes a consultant to the original parent financeer.

But.. I have no issue with this hypothetical situation, as long as it is defined as such. The only important issue is such a device isnt used as a marketing tool to specifically slander/debase the capabilities of another IHV fictionally. Obviously, if hardware A is truly superior to hardware B, there is no argument.. but if A and B are equal (or opposite superiority), tricky usage of third parties to fictionally depict the opposite would be dirty tactics, to say the least... and to extort funds to remove the fictional lead illustrated would be anti-trust IMO.
Click to expand...

Sharkfood sums up what I am saying here I think. The legalities are sketchy though. But the argument about the hardware being capable or not hits the nail on the head so to speak. AFAIK the whole thread is based on speculation and hypothetical conjecture so it leaves the door wide open to all sorts of possibilities. Including wild suggestions of one IHV paying another $$$ to gain support for the "ultra high mode" or for that matter a lawsuit. I mean it is all speculation Sharkfood unless someone says otherwise.
 
Ludicrous Speed, Col. Sanders........ :eek: Don't we have better things to do than argue over what might possibly be? OH! Wait a second, that's what forums are all about! Silly me! :rolleyes:
 
Why is it that you don't do this in this specific case ?
Click to expand...

No, it's not personal bias (Evildeus), but because I havent plunked down the cash for full retail UT2003 as of yet to simply try and prove what Daniel has been saying.

Source A: "Ultra High" isn't obtainable in the current version. It will be patched to be allowed for the NV30.
Source B: It's there now, it's just going to be slow and/or wont work on 128MB vmem cards.

Various Rage3D owners of the game: We dont see any visible difference by hard-setting the INI between "higher" and "Ultra High" and performance doesn't change.

I can't verify the findings of those at Rage3D so I filter it as unproven. I'm also unsure if their findings are objective, without error or being correctly implemented. By face value, their findings would concur with Source A, and disproving Source B (regardless if you want to favor Mr. Rein over Mr. Vogel for whatever reason... it's irrelevent).

It's also impossible to get any form of reliable testing for Mr. Vogel's offerings as console/log doesnt seem to notate failed allocation nor fallbacks. It's quite possible that Ultra High does NOT work due to insufficient vmem and it's silently falling back (highly probable), but not guaranteed.

So we are right back to where I started- we need a 256MB card.. that or some form of feedback in the console/log that would identify failed allocation and/or fallback.
 
My personal opinion on the "hypothetical" argument:

Any hardware specific game patches are just fine with me (that is, hardware specific meaning feature specific... as in the patch supports a more advanced hardware functionality, and any card with said functionality will function with the patch).

If an IHV paid for a vendor specific patch, but only covered part of the development costs, and the developer recieved profits from the sale or distribution of this patch, then this is, IMO, bad.

If an IHV paid entirely for a vendor specific patch, then it would be within their rights (initially, in any case) to limit functionality of that patch to their hardware, regardless of whether another vendor's hardware is functionally identical. However, this leaves a very bad taste in my mouth. Ideas like monopoly practices and standards pop into my mind.
 
No, it's not personal bias (Evildeus), but because I havent plunked down the cash for full retail UT2003 as of yet to simply try and prove what Daniel has been saying.
Click to expand...

You don't need to prove this to believe more in a engineer vs a PR guys statement.

But i agree with in that you don't show any bias. But only if you always go by this line, that is, don't trust the engineers any more then the PR guys for all companies, not just when it has something to do with Nvidia = evil.
 
I think some developers would just as soon there be only one 3d card vendor. It would certainly make developing PC games cheaper. Epic saw nVidia's dominant position in the marketplace and thought a co-marketing agreement would be fine. I think they perhaps were surprised that ATI hit such a home run with the 9700 and the nv30 was late so that the best card to run UT 2003 at its release did not come from nVidia.
 
Since pixel shading was brought up, there may be a noticeable pixel shader effect with steam on some maps. Go to DM Compressed and get a rocket launcher or flak and shoot it through the steam coming out of the vents on the second floor. The steam billows out a lot man. Quite cool looking. Then the steam returns to its normal flow.

The billowing is probably not a scripted animation. That's like "real time" and it has freaked out some ppl who were looking all over UT2 to find pixel shaders in action. Well there's one example, probably the only one of that magnitude, but like one of those guys said, finally some pixel shaders at work giving the game a little bit of life. Don't know if normal steam flow uses pixel shading, just maybe when it billows after getting shot. Maybe someone will say it has nothng to do with pixel shaders. I'd like to know one way or the other.

philobot
 
philobot
record a lil' timedemo of that spot

then post it on the net somewhere (timedemo config)
someone can try it on there Radeon/Kyro/GF2/GF4MX etc and post the results back.
 
You got that right Randell,

Shark is as tough-as-nails on a new product than anyone I have ever witnessed. Tough on the GeForce3 -- 8500, 9700 but fair and offered many positives on all the products.

He doesn't get caught up on emotion and WOW!! I am simply going bonkers playing with the 9700 and my view is 100 percent biased and non-objective about this product, hehe.:)
 
misae if you mean record a demo I can't find a download or leak for it. I don't think demo recording comes with the game. But I'd be happy to dl someone's version of it. The best I could do is a screenshot for now if that's any good.

philobot
 
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