Holy antialiasing Batman!

Just in time:

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=791

The article is about the current state of NVIDIA; the portion that applies to this discussion is as follows:

This was pretty much my stance from day 1 of this discussion. ATI didn't put forth the effort to get an AA engine built for the Unreal Engine, thus ATI users get hosed. Unlike some peoples initial claims that AA had been "disabled" for ATI users...

Misleading pcper article, not the best way to defend that incident Injecting some common sense and disclosing some lies by that author.

Nonsense. Working relationships with devs are NOT what these issues are about, its about extending TWIMTB Payed from working with devs to support certain features (which is totally fine), to deliberately harming opponent (and players). Call me when AMD forced devs to remove something like DX10.1 if they didnt had it themselves, or to disable AA to harm performance and quality for gamers with opponents cards, or to disable features if other manufacturers card is detected. NONE of that has happened yet AFAIK, therefore Ryan Shrout claim is baseless.

Now he is lying, and not because AA "didnt exist in the game engine", but because "it didnt exist before that" and "NVIDIA essentially built the AA engine explicitly for Eidos". Both bogus claims. AA was implemented and run fine on ATI cards on xbox360 (Nvidia had zero to do with it) and run just fine when ATI block was removed on PC port as well. Therefore AMD didnt even had to "implement" something that wasnt there, all Rocksteady had to do is to enable the feature already in place.

I dont believe for a second AMD refused to cooperate with devs, it makes no sense whatsoever. Either it didnt happened, or was done in a wrong way. I.e. if mail says something like this "Nvidia helped us with PhysX, why dont you do the same? CUDA is cool, implement on your cards", then I wouldnt be surprised if AMD declined

I did, and why do you think they used initial version of engine and havent modified it? You would say Nvidia did? They did a good job on ATI cards on xbox360 I.e. it doesnt matter what initial engine they used, as long as they adapted it for their game, and AA works on ATI cards on both console and PC (if you remove block). But probably its an illusion, some eyefinity mirage, because it shouldnt work, because Unreal3 engine doesnt have it.

Does anybody actually believe that Eidos would have released this game with no AA if Nvidia hadn't decided to 'lend a hand'?

The whole argument about each company helping out is a nonsense also. Hell why not get ATI to do all the graphics, never mind the AA. Anyone else see how ridiculous that argument is?

Are we supposed to believe that ATI (and Nvidia) are gonna send people around to each company to help with every game that is ever made? What did Eidos do to deserve preferential treatment anyway - especially from ATI? Would they have splashed the ATI logo ingame? Or does that take a bit more than just 'helping out'?

If ATI had gone with this on Batman, what is to stop every other TWIMTBP title's devs from making the same demands of them? Why not if they can get ATI to do the AA in their game for them why would they bother doing it? That would be great, getting Nvidia's TWIMTBP cash and ATI to do the AA (at first, I'm sure more can be added later) in their games.

That is just how ludicrous this is.

I agree with you but a lot of the discontent seems to arise from the fact that they were not catered for in their absence, using their competitors money.

TWIMTBP is like a bribe. Fix your game for our GPUs and we'll give you dosh, plain and simple.

No way the Nvidia logo is being displayed fullscreen without money changing hands.

Yes I read it all!

I'm sticking to it too. Aint no way nvidia are getting TWIMTBP full screen without money changing hands. Real money, not work = money.

SS, c'mon, even logic should tell you that that TWIMTBP ad costs money.

It doesn't change hands for the 'development program', however it definitely changes hands for the free PR from nV and the paid for Ads.

It's like saying no money changes hands for a senator when they go on junkets to Barbados paid for by a lobbyist. No, no money ever changes hands.

I'd care about this if I thought ANY of the parties were telling the truth and weren't spinning this; and also if it were a good game.

I also like the defered rendering argument, doesn't seem to pose a problem to someone like Humus; but hey, I'm sure the tight timeline with the nV guy 'going on vacation' made it difficult to optimize something without Big Brrother there to 'help', I guess they just didn't care enough to release it as such.

Hmm, I will listen to your opinion grape as you do know how things work but for some reason people have a problem with the concept that money comes in many forms and the cost of the services that nvidia supplies are probably worth more than a flash screen that most gamers probably never even look at.

Red or white?

Or should it be green?

haha.

Exactly, money can change hands in many forms (dev support, free HW, PR, etc), and in some cases IMO in cash as well. For example ATI made several quite open leaks how they payed millions for some games bundles (I remember at least several occasions), while Nvidia is much more rich and aggressive. Also I dont remember ATI strong-arming devs like Nvidia does, and not because of morality, simply there is different level of money involved IMO. In what way - we dont know, but I'm positive its much more than ATI ever did.

And then what about the 100 games no supporting it?

Throwing out arbitrary numbers to make a point is not helpful imo.

There is about 50 games out and like 35 games coming out that use the UT3 engine. Not all of them have AA and not all of them are on the PC

Really it brings down your vastly exaggerated numbers.

If i check only games that are out that run on windows i get roughly
30 games and most of them are crap games i never knew excised

So if i just take what mass effective, batman aa and +1 and then assume all of the shitty games i never head of also have native AA support that makes 1 out of every 10 games that use the UT3 engine (hell if some of them even count cuz they are more like UT2.5 with some extensions)

I get 1 out of every 10 games on windows running UT3 doesn't have native AA and i'm sure the ratio is much higher.

I used wikipedia as a source and a few other random places that list UT3 games got the jist of the numbers check which games were on windows and just divided by 3

So nice try making random shitty claims being ultra conservative with games that are out now it's 1 out of every 10 games that use UT3 engine because i doubt all of the shitty games i never heard of have any AA.

Hell if i take the good games and i'll just assume half i'm not counting tom Clancy 10 times over that brings it down to 1 out of every 5 games lack AA on the windows using UT3

Ok wait.

You know that...3 or 4 games using Unreal 3 don't have AA? Actually you mentioned all of 2 while guessing at the rest?

How about instead of just dividing by 3, find out if those games support AA or not?

Then we'll see if more do or not.

So far it's Batman and Mass Effect out of the entire list of Unreal 3 engine games and until you can prove otherwise then these games *are* in the minority.

sorry im at work dont have time to read the thread, but all I gotta say is dirty dirty dirty!

Nope.

Gamerk316 said...

In response to my point that it was very unlikely that Eidos would have shipped the game without AA.

Now, in order for his point (and now yours) to be valid, *you* have to provide evidence that the majority of the games created on Unreal 3 shipped without AA. He said 6 games or so? I only see 2 games being mentioned. What is it 6 or 2?

You seem to have figured out 30 pc games or thereabouts use Unreal 3. Do 15 of those games have AA and the other 15 don't? Or maybe its 25/30 that dont?

Or is it just Batman and Mass Effect, out of 30, 60, 100 Unreal 3 engine games?

No, the onus isn't on me to prove it. You are the ones saying it, therefore it's up to you to prove it otherwise the total number of unreal engine 3 games that don't have native AA are Batman and Mass Effect, for 2 out of 30+ games. That doesn't look good for Nvidia or Eidos does it?

It doesn't matter if they are mainstream or obscure izzy, all that matters is - are the other games devs using Unreal 3 adding AA to their games?

My point is, Gamerk316 used Mass Effect 'and another 5-6' as his reasoning for why.

"The Unreal Engine does not nativly support AA, and adding it takes time, effort, manpower, and most importantly, money."

Is it really so difficult that *most* games on unreal 3 don't have AA? That is what Gamerk316 is suggesting here. Using Mass Effect as the only other example doesn't really do much for the case if it's a total of 2 games without and 30 games with AA does it?

If 25 out of 30 unreal 3 engine games didn't support AA, then sure I'd be the first to state that chances are Batman wouldn't either. But it's not 25/30 is it? So far it's 2 out of 30, being generous and using *your* numbers izzy.

Rant? Did you even read the thread?

Gamerk316 suggests that most unreal 3 engine games come without AA. Don't you think that's a pretty important point in terms of the overall discussion?

If not, perhaps you should think a bit harder stranger?

Again i never mean to prove gamerk316 just disprove Harrisson who has some disillusion that games possibly can't ship without AA. That's it's so impossible that nvidia the evil empire must have had their hand in it.

Sigh no one seems to understand what i type

Of course games can ship without AA, they have done.

It *is* actually important to find out how many games using the unreal 3 engine do however. Gamerk316 insinuated (if not suggested) that most unreal 3 games do not have AA. If that is true then Nvidia and Eidos might have a strong case.

If it turns out that Mass Effect is the only game that didn't ship with AA? You already know what that is likely to mean, don't you.

We need to know if Eidos and Nvidia are using the Unreal engine as an excuse or if they actually have a decent point.

Look stranger - If some two-bit operation can create a game using Unreal Engine 3, and add AA to it on both competitors cards...then you can be fairly sure that a company the size of Eidos can.

That is why it is important to know just how difficult is it to implement AA in games with the Unreal engine.

When Gamerk316 cited Mass Effect, that sure looked like good evidence, however...so far it is Mass Effect, and *only* Mass Effect that hasn't had some kind of AA using the Unreal engine.

There probably are more, but I don't know that for a fact.

If it is Mass Effect, and *only* Mass Effect that doesn't include AA? Then that pretty much lays to rest the excuse that implementing AA in Batman is difficult, surely?

Bioshock was Unreal 2 wasnt it?

I have the game (yes lol i fell for the hype), let me reinstall it and I'll see.

Wow, the manual still smells new

Page 4 is interesting.

"An Important Note Regarding Graphics and Having the Best Possible Experience"

Bioshock uses some of the most advanced rendering techniques available today for special effects and to achieve real-time performance for a great game playing experience. The game was largely developed and tested on NVIDIA Geforce 6 series, 7 series and 8 series graphics cards and the intended experience can be more fully realized on NVIDIA Geforce 8 Series graphics hardware. On an NVIDIA Geforce 8600 or better you will be able to turn on all of the NVIDIA special effect features at higher resolutions in the game.

No ingame AA option (or mby thats just because I have an ATI ).

The game does have real time reflections however. Isn't that what causes the issues with AA in the unreal engines?