Crysis 2 Tessellation Article

[notty22]

Crysis 2 Is The Best DirectX 11 Implementation Yet

Unlike many first-generation DirectX 11 titles, which were superficial by nature, Crysis 2 offers a major benefit to running the current-gen API versus what came before. If you know what to look for, many improvements are easy to see. But even folks with DirectX 9- and 10-class hardware are treated to a graphics updates and a high-resolution texture pack that increases visual fidelity.
A lot of work was put into these releases, and Crytek deserves acknowledgement for creating the best example of DirectX 11 in action that we’ve seen to date. Based on the impressive amount of work that went into the Ultra Upgrade, we won’t be surprised if this remains the status quo for some time to come.

AMD users can choose to lower tessellation with their 'slider' in driver.
I'm waiting for someone to post a review of a DX11 game that AMD helped develop that got gamers excited.
Instead its always posturing on some negative angle, Civ5 and now Crysis2.

 

[-Slacker-]

Thats how I interpret some of the posts here.

Ooooh ... "interpret". I see.


Anyway, I'm going to check crydev to see if there's any mod in the making that's supposed o fix this.


edit: sigh. Nothing yet.

 

[badb0y]

Crysis 2 Is The Best DirectX 11 Implementation Yet


AMD users can choose to lower tessellation with their 'slider' in driver.
I'm waiting for someone to post a review of a DX11 game that AMD helped develop that got gamers excited.
Instead its always posturing on some negative angle, Civ5 and now Crysis2.

Are you serious? BF3 is a GE title and the buzz around that is astronomical.

 

[96Firebird]

Ooooh ... "interpret". I see.

Yes, this is typically what happens after you read something. You interpret what it means to you.

Are you new at this?

 

[-Slacker-]

Yes, this is typically what happens after you read something. You interpret what it means to you.

Are you new at this?

Now tessellation is BAD!

Yeah, you might want to work on your interpretation skills a bit. You can start by making less straw man arguments.

 

[96Firebird]

Interpreting is not a skill. You cannot "work on it". You take something in, your brain interprets it, and then you form an opinion. Opinions are unique to the person. Its a fairly simple concept.

And I will consider looking into the straw man idea, it sounds intriguing.

 

[notty22]

We can debate BF3 when the game actually launches.
What about other GE games, like F1 2010 ? That game also took at least a 30% hit in fps, with the dx11 add-on, it launched dx9 and similar to Crysis2 was patched.
http://sites.amd.com/us/game/games/Pages/f1-2010.aspx

 

[AtenRa]

It should already be culled at the map level so the renderer never touches it. There should be no ocean data at those points in the map data to begin with.

I was trying to show that technically if you have the wireframe and the developer apply tessellation in that mesh the card will not cull it(in that instance the water mesh) unless the developer completely remove it from there, the Z-buffer will only cull the rest of the pipe-line.

It seems that you don’t understand that putting an object or model or the sea mesh in the map, the graphic card will always draw the wireframe (it will calculate each vertex) because the Z-Buffer (Z-Culling) WILL NOT cull it.

The Z-Buffer will only cull the rest of the rendering pipeline, so at the end, the card will draw all the wireframes (even if they are behind other objects) but the Z-Buffer will cull the shaders, rasters and textures.

Have a look at the video below and observe that all objects wireframes are drawn even if they are behind other objects. It is easy to observe it when inside a room and you can see the wireframes of objects outside of the room.

So the water mesh is being drawn and tessellated but that’s it, the Z-Buffer will not apply any texture or shader etc. Now we can argue about the CryEngine 3 and why it has to draw the entire water mesh instead of only a little pool, but that has to do with the game engine and not with NV or why it was tessellated.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYL07c74Jr4

 

[AtenRa]

I actually do 3D modeling and wouldn't base a cards performance solely on the ability to render wireframe meshes.

Well, it seems that AMDs cards performance is related with calculating vertices and drawing wireframes when tessellating in Crysis 2 with the DX-11 patch.

 

[Outrage]

We can debate BF3 when the game actually launches.
What about other GE games, like F1 2010 ? That game also took at least a 30% hit in fps, with the dx11 add-on, it launched dx9 and similar to Crysis2 was patched.
http://sites.amd.com/us/game/games/Pages/f1-2010.aspx

So you have any ideas about what the developers could have done to make the game run better? That game aint even tessellated. you know, that thing this topic is about......

 

[3DVagabond]

What I find funny or sad depending on how one looks at it. The people whining about too much tessellation wont give a rats about too much when AMD catches upto Nvidia on tessellation performance. Possibly with their next gen cards that are going with a scaleable tesselator

Not true. It's sad because people who have nVidia cards like it because it hurts another brand worse.

Something to keep in mind. Crytek didn't release Crysis 2 with DX11, and this caused an uproar within the PC gaming community. I'm betting they didn't care which items were tessellated, or how well they were tessellated, or the performance hit it took on today's hardware. They just wanted to get the DX11 patch out ASAP, and did a half-assed job.

This is the problem. It's a half-assed job. This does less than nothing to help PC gaming, because it disproportionately hurts performance for little or no gain. As has been said hundreds of times on these boards, "Nothing will change until consoles do". They are not going to actually make 2 games, one for PC and one for consoles. They are going to do as little as possible to get the game on both platforms and sell it. The Dx11 patch is a marketing gimmick for Crytek and nVidia.

 

[Carfax83]

Why do you call it a conspiracy as if businesses don't do underhand things to adversely affect their competition. The point is (as you appear to have completely missed it) that Nvidia hardware suffers less of a performance hit from all this completely unnecessary tessellation than does amd hardware thus artificially benefitting Nvidia and attendant benchmarks disproportionately. It's not that difficult to understand for someone over eight years old without resorting to calling whistleblowers conspiracy theorists. Believe it or not some companies and even governments say things in public and do the opposite in private. I guess you call that a conspiracy theory.

My point is (as you appear to have completely missed it), is that we have a bunch of people debating Crytek's implementation of tessellation in Crysis 2, that have very little if any knowledge of the technical aspects involved, yet are already thoroughly convinced that there is foul play.

For all you and the others know, there could be a perfectly valid reason behind all of this.

 

[Silverforce11]

Crysis 2 Is The Best DirectX 11 Implementation Yet


AMD users can choose to lower tessellation with their 'slider' in driver.
I'm waiting for someone to post a review of a DX11 game that AMD helped develop that got gamers excited.
Instead its always posturing on some negative angle, Civ5 and now Crysis2.

Shogun 2, DA2 and now DeusEx HR. Better than Crysis 2 by far in gameplay and longevity.. and AMD didn't fund the devs to degrade performance with poor dx11 implementation, but optimized the games to run well on all hardware. Trend. See it?

Edit: Im going to place a bet that when BF3 is out, and being an AMD title, it will perform well on both vendor hardware. If it was a NV title, we would have insane levels of tessellation on flat surface objects, individual bullets which are so small its un-noticable but whatever, and have an entire tessellated ocean underneath paris, just in case the game bugs out and you fall through the "world" you ought to enjoy dx11 if you land in that underground ocean.

 

[Red Hawk]

To play devil's advocate, one could say that since AMD's hardware is weaker than Nvidia's then of course games optimized to run well on AMD hardware will run well on Nvidia hardware. As Nvidia's hardware is faster, the reverse -- Nvidia optimized games running well on AMD hardware -- would not be true. [/devil'sadvocate]

 

[AnandThenMan]

To play devil's advocate, one could say that since AMD's hardware is weaker than Nvidia's then of course games optimized to run well on AMD hardware will run well on Nvidia hardware. As Nvidia's hardware is faster, the reverse, Nvidia optimized games running well on AMD hardware, would not be true. [/devil'sadvocate]

Very poor logic, when you consider the performance differences. An AMD sponsored game may run 10% slower on Nvidia hardware, NV sponsored, anywhere from somewhat slower to completely tanking in performance, and sometimes DX compliant code is device ID locked out under the guise of "quality control" and other BS.

I think some of you either have trouble connecting the dots, or intentionally don't want to admit that Nvidia goes out of their way to make sure that their competitors hardware runs like crap running the sponsored code.

 

[SirPauly]

I think that nVidia goes out of their way to offer more for their customers. Some may demonize them for this but that's the way I see it. It's a competitive market.

 

[Madcatatlas]

I think some of you either have trouble connecting the dots, or intentionally don't want to admit that Nvidia goes out of their way to make sure that their competitors hardware runs like crap running the sponsored code.

My thoughts aswell. And not only does this hinder AMD hardware, it also slows down Nvidia hardware, which im using right now.


Sirpauly, some customers, like myself, want an even playfield, with companies doing the right thing to promote the entire pc gaming sector, not splintering it by adding proprietary mumbo jumbo.

Some people belive in far play, others dont.

 

[SirPauly]

What is fair, is to receive data and use this data to fairly come to a conclusion. What I see, at times, are arm chair judges and executioners convicting and executing based on conspiracy and conjecture, sadly.

 

[Jacky60]

What I find funny or sad depending on how one looks at it. The people whining about too much tessellation wont give a rats about too much when AMD catches upto Nvidia on tessellation performance. Possibly with their next gen cards that are going with a scaleable tesselator

No one is complaining about too much tessellation you're clearly missing the point. I'll will explain it to you. Crytek/Nvidia have tessellated
objects/flat surfaces that DO NOT look any better when tessellated and even tessellated an entire swirling ocean that the gamer cannot even see. Furthermore they have NOT tessellated objects such as the skyscrapers which a gamer would be able to see and appreciate. In a nutshell they have clearly gone to some time and effort to hobble the competition while the same effort could have made the game look far better for everyone while still giving Nvidia cards the edge due to its cards better compute ability. Many people in this thread are refusing to see what is stark staringly obvious due to blind brand loyalty, I wish them luck but capitalism needs competition and underhand practices like this are detrimental to the industry as a whole.

 

[Silverforce11]

No one is complaining about too much tessellation you're clearly missing the point. I'll will explain it to you. Crytek/Nvidia have tessellated
objects/flat surfaces that DO NOT look any better when tessellated and even tessellated an entire swirling ocean that the gamer cannot even see. Furthermore they have NOT tessellated objects such as the skyscrapers which a gamer would be able to see and appreciate. In a nutshell they have clearly gone to some time and effort to hobble the competition while the same effort could have made the game look far better for everyone while still giving Nvidia cards the edge due to its cards better compute ability.

I think this point was said very early on and missed by the rabid NV fans. Still being missed.

 

[Pantalaimon]

What is fair, is to receive data and use this data to fairly come to a conclusion. What I see, at times, are arm chair judges and executioners convicting and executing based on conspiracy and conjecture, sadly.

I have received the data. From the hidden (at first) focus group debacle (with the most obnoxious poster this forum has ever seen, and who's till part of this focus group, although thankfully he's perma banned here) to the PhysX lockout when NVIDIA's card is not the primary card. From the Batman AA vendor lockout to bumbgate denial and blame shifting, to the middle finger NVIDIA gave the users when they compensated the users with a crappy laptop model.

Those are not conjecture. All those data points says that NVIDIA has a habit of behaving unethically to competitors and its customers, and has lost me as a customer.

 

[amenx]

Those are not conjecture. All those data points says that NVIDIA has a habit of behaving unethically to competitors and its customers, and has lost me as a customer.

Since ethics is a big part of your rationale for choosing hardware, I presume you have an AMD rather than Intel CPU as well?

 

[Pantalaimon]

Since ethics is a big part of your rationale for choosing hardware, I presume you have an AMD rather than Intel CPU as well?

Yes, I am using an AMD CPU.

 

[SirPauly]

I have received the data. From the hidden (at first) focus group debacle (with the most obnoxious poster this forum has ever seen, and who's till part of this focus group, although thankfully he's perma banned here) to the PhysX lockout when NVIDIA's card is not the primary card. From the Batman AA vendor lockout to bumbgate denial and blame shifting, to the middle finger NVIDIA gave the users when they compensated the users with a crappy laptop model.

Those are not conjecture. All those data points says that NVIDIA has a habit of behaving unethically to competitors and its customers, and has lost me as a customer.

I would disagree with you. I can argue that nVidia works with the most innovative partners in the world. nVidia isn't perfect and can name mine that bothered me the most: The 3d mark fiasco on rails. Are you familiar with this? It was way over the top! But from this they learned not to go behind the developers back, no matter how subtle, even if it costs them frame-rate.

If that is all you see when it comes to nVidia; what can you do? Thankfully, there is choice for ya and found the company that best fits your emotions.

 

[SirPauly]

I think this point was said very early on and missed by the rabid NV fans. Still being missed.

I mentioned it, calmly.