Those with midrange cards will disagree.
As long as we have the option to use them to our liking, I don't see why there needs to be an end, per se. I'm glad there are filtering options. It's nice being able to force 32QSAA in older games like Jedi Academy, which don't have that option natively.
Let's also not forget Nvidia also has an Ambient Occlusion option in their drivers as well. AO wasn't intended for every game, now was it? But it's nice to have it there (even though I really don't like AO and don't use it). So they should include a tessellation slider. It would be beneficial to their mid range cards - to those who want to run with extra eye candy but can't run with the eye candy forced by a game.
I'm all for adding or enhancing image quality -- not taking it away by going behind the developers back for performance.
Is it "going behind the developers back" when you force 8x AA on a game that doesn't support AA? Or 16x Anisotropic filtering on a game with only trilinear filtering?
Okay, i read the whole thread and most of it is a dead repeat over and over saying nvidia sabotaged amd or whatever. but-
it doesnt make any sense!!
there is a great performance hit on my 460. So nvidia sabotaged their own mid range cards too? There are some who say that this is also the case because nvidia wants to make only their higher dollar cards look attractive??? What?? that makes no sense. By the performance hit my 460 takes, does this not make the 6990 more attractive in the same logic? This is pretty crazy. I can see that the high powered cards do much better but is this not to be expected. for me the 6990 would actually be an improvement. i dont really get it?
Many post nvidia tessellated objects not seen to make amd look bad but it also hurts my cards performance. I just want to see proof of this other than a bunch of talk. It doesnt add up in any way! This patch effects the majority of nvidia card owners to, its probably not something you would want to install or use if your card cant handle it. That is PC gaming and this industry continues to move forward.
It is dumb for me to think that its all a ploy to make me buy a new GPU. Its actually the force behind the push in gaming from pong to today. Say what you will but i am glad that we have pushed games into the realism we see today. I am also excited every time i am "forced" to upgrade to a new more powerful and capable card.
So is the patch enough to justify my upgrading? heck no! i will be okay for awhile longer.... but the time is coming soon, that day my card wont be powerful enough to satisfy my desire. Until then i will "sacrifice" here and there on certain titles more than others. This is the way PC gaming works. Eventually i will gladly upgrade to a more apt card based on a balance and trade off of price/performance. Even after my upgrade i still might have to live without all the eye candy hardcore galore in some of the most complex games. This is PC gaming.
If you want a standard across the board performance that you'll be ignorant to the sacrifice then a console is probably a better platform for you. but even then you will be constrained to the console of your choice. To solve this, many console owners buy the competing system so as not to have to sacrifice any game or feature. Many own the ps3, xbox360, and even the wii. These kids dont have anything to cry about, they found a solution and quit wasting energy throwing fits. If it is so bothering you could also apply this simple logic of the multi-console owners and adapt it to in the more adult PC world. You could easily buy into the competing teams flagships and have all the features of both camps without any sacrifice what-so-ever. But then you would have tons more energy to waste on something constructive, like playing hardcore games with hardcore gfx and multiple features.
As i read this entire thread i was thinking, wow! PC gaming has always been like this but whats happened to the enthusiast? Its childish to make such claims based on nothing but smoke. There has to be hundreds like me who see the bickering and wonder what has happen to PC gaming and the pride that the industry used to hold. Now its more like bullies on the playground who make up lies just to stir a fight.
Even in DirectX 9 with the highest quality is tough on mid-range cards in Crysis 2 at 1680 x 1050 as well. I know, let's go behind the developers back and improve that performance as well.
I'm all for adding or enhancing image quality -- not taking it away by going behind the developers back for performance.
Then there is some level of card that will benefit, because Nvidia offers a card at every incremental performance step. You knew perfectly well what I was referring to with "mid range", so please don't play with semantics. It doesn't really help your argument.
Adding or taking away, they're still "going behind the developer's back." Regardless, as long as there is an option to use or not use it, there is no harm in including one. Nvidia offers various levels of texture filtering qualities, Trilinear optimizations (which I haven't yet figured out how to turn off; it's always "on" and greyed out), and Anisoptric optimizations. These "hurt" IQ as well. But they're options, mainly. There's no harm in them. Same goes for having a tessellation slider. It opens up a balance of higher performance and higher IQ for more users.
1. A beast called the tessellator has been added which enables games developers to create smoother, less blocky and more organic looking objects in games. This is the change youll probably be most aware of. And itll show up when you look at the silhouettes of hills and mountains or the profiles of characters in games. Where artists previously had to trade off quality for performance, now artists will have the freedom to create naturalistic scenery. Weve gotten used to seeing strangely blocky ears and noses on our opponents. But the new generation of games should allow those opponents to scare the heck out of us instead. The tessellator represents a natural next step in gaming hardware (in fact the Xbox 360 graphics chip that AMD designed already has a tessellator, and AMD graphics hardware has featured tessellator technology starting with the ATI RadeonTM HD 2000 series right up to the latest ATI RadeonTM HD 4000 series cards today).
^ this personal assessment may be relevant to you in terms of privately deciding whether or not you wish to further pursue engaging the member in further debate, but it is not acceptable for you to publicly admonish them based on your assessment of their personal characteristics.I have a hard time taken your arguments seriously when a simple CP operation is enough to make you falter.
Let's look once more at AMD's thoughts on tesselation...PRE-Fermi:
http://blogs.amd.com/play/2009/06/02/why-we-should-get-excited-about-directx-11/
Except if you run AMD hardware...then "freedom" is taken away form the artist.
A major part of tesselation is that it is dynamic.
AMD undid this option.
Because Fermi slapped AMD in teselation.
It ain't rocket science...
Then there is some level of card that will benefit, because Nvidia offers a card at every incremental performance step. You knew perfectly well what I was referring to with "mid range", so please don't play with semantics. It doesn't really help your argument.
Adding or taking away, they're still "going behind the developer's back." Regardless, as long as there is an option to use or not use it, there is no harm in including one. Nvidia offers various levels of texture filtering qualities, Trilinear optimizations (which I haven't yet figured out how to turn off; it's always "on" and greyed out), and Anisoptric optimizations. These "hurt" IQ as well. But they're options, mainly. There's no harm in them. Same goes for having a tessellation slider. It opens up a balance of higher performance and higher IQ for more users.
I doubt you are serious with taking a stance that running AMD hardware takes away an artists freedom, so it doesn't deserve to be addressed.
However, we found out that the current hardware is still not fast enough to tessellate an entire world and there are fundamental issues with tessellation and displacement mapping that hardware vendors did not anticipate. These include visual glitches with decals, character foot IK and geometry intersections. Such issues were addressed by the Art department with a balanced usage of deferred decals and parallax occlusion mapping.
For the latest CryENGINE 3 iteration, we have re-introduced Parallax Occlusion Mapping (POM) in order to add macro details that are not efficiently possible with hardware Tessellation.
Not really, because you're going behind the developers back to take away image quality for performance. It's not okay to me. I don't expect higher quality, Ultra settings to shine on mid-range cards -- DirectX 9 or 11. The developers aimed for 35 FPS with a GTX 480 with Ultra, DirectX 11, 1080p.
Thankfully, there is choice and the two companies do offer differentiation.
So GTX 480 or gtfo? Are you saying midrange should just stick to medium settings instead of using high settings w/optimizations? I don't think medium settings is exactly what the developer wanted people to experience either, at least high settings w/optimizations gets you closer then medium settings w/no optimizations.
You need to stop saying that. One company having one more optimization available isn't a wildly different approach like you're pretending for whatever reason. It's just one more option to increase performance among the many they both already have. Smooth gameplay is as important a metric of the gaming experience as image quality is, especially when these driver options are often undetectable from an IQ perspective.
I have a hard time taken your arguments seriously when a simple CP operation is enough to make you falter.
Let's look once more at AMD's thoughts on tesselation...PRE-Fermi:
http://blogs.amd.com/play/2009/06/02...ut-directx-11/
Except if you run AMD hardware...then "freedom" is taken away form the artist.
A major part of tesselation is that it is dynamic.
AMD undid this option.
Because Fermi slapped AMD in teselation.
It ain't rocket science...
Not really, because you're going behind the developers back to take away image quality for performance. It's not okay to me. I don't expect higher quality, Ultra settings to shine on mid-range cards -- DirectX 9 or 11. The developers aimed for 35 FPS with a GTX 480 with Ultra, DirectX 11, 1080p.
It's interesting you so readily defend the developer's perspective, even going so far as to say quality vs. performance settings are "going behind their backs" when in this case in particular, the developer is the last one who should be dictating anything.Not really, because you're going behind the developers back to take away image quality for performance. It's not okay to me.
before you demand all our options get taken away.
Some responses here, such as Keys basically stating "you have the option to buy Nvidia if you feel you're missing out" really miss the point I think, and both his and your line of thinking is what I would expect from companies looking after their own, NOT from a consumer.
Some responses here, such as Keys basically stating "you have the option to buy Nvidia if you feel you're missing out" really miss the point I think, and both his and your line of thinking is what I would expect from companies looking after their own, NOT from a consumer.
Of course you are entitled to your opinion, as I am free to disagree with it. I was just also remarking on the irony of you holding the developers' vision and pursuit of quality as sacrosanct in a thread where they have provably done so while needlessly throwing away performance.Can't I have an opinion on this matter? To be clear: I'm all for abilities that improve IQ, features like enhancements for transparency for DirectX 10/11 - even FXAA or MLAA - things of this nature. I don't feel it is good to go behind the developers back and take image quality away -- there has to be a line -- obviously this line is subjective.
No, your statements regarding Nvidia's superior tessellation performance are all true. And frankly it's perfectly fine it's so, AMD hedged their bets on tessellation, and when push comes to shove Nvidia's cards simply outclass them--so in a sense, you saying we can always just buy an Nvidia card if we care is accurate.But that is the beauty of it. You DO have the choice. There is no problem. Right now, this minute, Nvidia is better at tesselation over AMD. So, if you want hardware with better tesselation performance, you get an Nvidia card. If you outright refuse to by Nvidia, then you are still ok because tesselation can be turned down or off.
Just to be clear, Mistwalker, I've already stated that I think the tesselation of an entire invisible ocean is a waste of resources no matter what. If it's never rendered, there isn't a reason to apply extra features. That being said, Nvidia still takes the lesser of the hit due to better tess performance.
It's surprising though that my response doesn't hold any pang of truth for you. If you want a feature, you usually buy a product that gives you that feature. If you already have a product that doesn't do so well with the feature, then the users frustration is understandable. Like a user wanting to run 3 screens with a single GPU NV card. Can't do it. But AMD users usually can with 5 series and up cards. Same standard applies to features such as tesselation, or even PhysX if interested.
Your stance that there is no problem just because we have the option to buy Nvidia hardware is where I say you miss the point. It's great when there's a value add offered by one company, but we shouldn't thank them for or be content with sloppy implementation.But that is the beauty of it. You DO have the choice. There is no problem.
To be clear, I'm not complaining about low performance on AMD hardware (I knew what I was getting when I bought mine, and high tessellation wasn't part of it), I'm complaining about a surprisingly lackluster job from Crytek of all developers. The fact that they worked closely with NV and still managed to do such a lackluster job is what fuels a lot of the conspiracy talk and finger pointing, but I don't think that's the important part anyway.I think though, that because one company offers more, the other should not cry foul. This goes for both sides of the fence BTW. Each company's products have strengths and weaknesses. Pick which one best suits you and be happy with it.
No, your statements regarding Nvidia's superior tessellation performance are all true. And frankly it's perfectly fine it's so, AMD hedged their bets on tessellation, and when push comes to shove Nvidia's cards simply outclass them--so in a sense, you saying we can always just buy an Nvidia card if we care is accurate.
The problem is, you are willing to stop there. This:
Your stance that there is no problem just because we have the option to buy Nvidia hardware is where I say you miss the point. It's great when there's a value add offered by one company, but we shouldn't thank them for or be content with sloppy implementation.
The problem here is the tessellation as implemented by Crytek was demonstrably shoddy coding that hurts performance far more than necessary on both architectures. The fact that Nvidia cards suffer less is no reason not to point at the developer and call them out on it, any less than calling out a lazy console port. Telling people that buying Nvidia hardware is the solution is not pro-NV anti-AMD, it's pro-NV anti-consumer.