Ark DX12 patch delayed indefintely (update Jan 2017- now Vulkan in the works)

[Humbug]

As most of you are aware Ark Survival Evolved is an early access survival game which uses the Unreal Engine 4. In it's current state it is wildly unoptimized and buggy but it has still managed to garner a large player base.

 

It was also well on track to becoming the first DX12 game. The DX12 patch was scheduled to be released more than a month ago on August 28th Friday. The dev mysteriously refused to release the patch on the last day citing unspecified driver issues, and then they went quiet.

 

After six weeks we finally have a word from the devs. But it's bad news. It looks like they are no longer aggressively pursuing this...

 

Quote

After we found out it was heavily dependent on drivers and the hardware vendors progress we slowed ours a bit. Its still being worked on, but we have no plans on releasing it until it at least runs betters than the DX11 version. And that is a hard thing to generate an ETA for.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/346110/discussions/0/481115363854241094/#c481115363854292469

 

Quote

Studio Wildcard has confirmed that the DX12 patch for ARK: Survival Evolved has been delayed indefinitely. As the dev team claimed, in its current state the DX12 renderer performs worse than the DX11 one, and the team won’t release any DX12 patch until this API performs better – at least in ARK: Survival Evolved – than its DX11 path.

 

ARK: Survival Evolved is an Unreal Engine 4 powered game, and some people suggest that the current implementation of DX12 in Epic’s engine is, somehow, still experimental.

On the other hand, rumours suggest that this underwhelming DX12 performance is witnessed on NVIDIA’s hardware and since ARK: Survival Evolved is a “The Way It’s Meant To Be Played Title” (after all, NVIDIA worked closely with Studio Wildcard to implement some NVIDIA GameWorks effects, the team is not releasing a DX12 until NVIDIA has sorted things out.

Now while we understand this decision to delay this DX12 patch, it would be great to gain access to it and see how it performs on AMD’s graphics cards, and whether the performance on those cards is worse than the game’s DX11 version. But that’s never going to happen.

http://www.dsogaming.com/news/ark-survival-evolved-dx12-renderer-delayed-performs-worse-than-dx11/

 

It's unfortunate because this is an early access game which runs badly even by early access standards. In every other aspect of the game the devs have had no problem in hiding under the umbrella of 'early access' and the player base plays it in the expectation that things will get better in the future. They could have easily released the patch and allowed people to toggle between DX11 and DX12 depending on how their hardware performs. That way they also get a lot of feedback from alpha testers. The Fable Legends benchmark suggests that Unreal Engine 4 DX12 build is in decent shape.

 

Leaving aside conspiracy theories there are other possible reasons for the delay. In light of their comments about not getting improved performance it's worth noting what Star Citizen creator Chris Robers had to say about the new gen APIs. A simple port doesn't really give you an advantage. You have to do a lot of work and rethink much of the underlying game engine to work more in parallel and then only on top of that do you implement DX12 / Vulkan to see the real benefits of it. Recommended watch below. He mentions UE4 as well.

https://youtu.be/XD9_L5o4mhQ?t=1m32s

 

Update- 3/1/2017

When responding to a tweet about linux gaming the devs have said they will roll out their Vulkan renderer this year. The game is already playable on Linux. Logically this means that the vulkan renderer is coming to windows as well. Whether work is still continuing on the DX12 renderer I am not sure. They have to decide if there is any value addition considering that DX12 means more work and will cover only a subset of the vulkan users, with Vulkan the benefits also get rolled out to win7, win8, win10 and Linux builds. Also I wonder how much work they are doing on vulkan / DX12 renderer themselves and how much is from epic on the unreal engine which they license. I understand that they have forked the engine anyway but not sure to what extent.

 

Good news for Mac players too.. Meanwhile sadly after all this time the game is still in early access. But it is a roaring success.

[Misanthrope]

It's probably because as inexperienced devs, they thought the same as many end users and believed the hype. Here's the truth: Performance gains will be minimal at best for DX12 initially, since it will basically means a lot of relearning and recoding to take advantage of potential DX12 gains that will remain mostly potential for months or even years.

[Guest]

I still am thinking about buying but am worried my fx 6300 and 280 can't keep up

[FakezZ]

They generated the hype they wanted by saying that it will be one of the first DX12 games and then they went bye bye. Fucking knew it.

[Benji_w]

I still am thinking about buying but am worried my fx 6300 and 280 can't keep up

 

Overclock your system to get the best from it, FX cpu's are fine at gaming when you actually try to get the best out of the system, I overclocked my friends FX6300, I only had a few mins (it was late and he wanted to go home) and the improvement was great.

[Sauron]

In it's current state it is wildly unoptimized and buggy

 

Then I suppose they want to get at least the dx11 version working in an acceptable way before they think about another api...

[Notional]

No surprise what so ever. It's a GameWorks game and we know NVidia sucks at async compute, and have little gains from DX12 compared to DX11. So of course they are not going to persue this. Maybe they are waiting for NVidia to release their async compute drivers, that may or may not work at all.

[Anult]

No surprise what so ever. It's a GameWorks game and we know NVidia sucks at async compute, and have little gains from DX12 compared to DX11. So of course they are not going to persue this. Maybe they are waiting for NVidia to release their async compute drivers, that may or may not work at all.

 

And you have proof of this?

 

Maybe you should wait until information as to why this DX12 patch was delayed before jumping to conclusions while trying to shoehorn in brand bias.

[ivan134]

[Humbug]

Then I suppose they want to get at least the dx11 version working in an acceptable way before they think about another api...

Yes this approach is perfectly acceptable but then they should not have hyped it right up until the scheduled patch release day saying 20% performance boost, even Toms Hardware ran a story about it saying first DX12 game etc.

Also I believe a lot of optimization work would be independent of the graphics API.

 

Anyway I wish them luck in future cause they have a big player base. Hope they get the game running smoothly sooner rather than later using whatever API.

[Sauron]

Yes this approach is perfectly acceptable but then they should not have hyped it right up until release day saying 20% performance boost, even Toms Hardware ran a story about it saying first DX12 game etc.

Also I believe a lot of optimization work would be independent of the graphics API.

 

Welcome to early access. Nobody should be surprised of stuff like this anymore. It's easy to promise the world, delivering it in real time is not as easy.

[Notional]

And you have proof of this?

 

Maybe you should wait until information as to why this DX12 patch was delayed before jumping to conclusions while trying to shoehorn in brand bias.

 

Which part? From benchmarks we've seen NVidia going from negative performance to miniscule performance increase going from DX11 to DX12. That is a fact so far. Now the dev said themselves, they see no reason to spend a lot of resources on this, unless there is a big performance increase. That we know there is on AMD, especially using async compute, which NVidia don't support (yet or so they claim).

Now this being an Nvidia sponsored GameWorks title, there is no chance in hell, they are going to make AMD specific performance upgrades if they make AMD perform better and/or Nvidia performing worse.

 

Just look at what we know about DX11/12 on AMD and NVidia, then look at how GameWorks titles works on AMD and NVidia. Should not come as a surprise at all.

[carolkarine]

Let's not forget that until about eight hours before the DX12 patch was scheduled, it was on track. Hell, there's a tweet about it coming "later today" iirc. I'll go find it, and then that needs to be put in the OP.

It's completely clear that it was delayed for a reason beyond what they're claiming.

Edit: here's the tweet:

https://mobile.twitter.com/survivetheark/status/636981533295964161

We should note that this happened right after the ashes benchmarks went live ~Aug 17th.

[GoodBytes]

It's probably because as inexperienced devs, they thought the same as many end users and believed the hype. Here's the truth: Performance gains will be minimal at best for DX12 initially, since it will basically means a lot of relearning and recoding to take advantage of potential DX12 gains that will remain mostly potential for months or even years.

That is very true. Many people sees DirectX like some sort of software, but itself. The same story with Vulcan when it will come out.

That is why it takes years before we see fully implement new DirectX or OpenGL games. And the more low level you are, the more complicated it becomes, and the more you need to know about the GPU/CPU architecture, requiring more research, testing, and well, hire knowledgeable people, and all that takes time.

[Briggsy]

I've been playing ARK for a few weeks now and am totally addicted. very well designed game and great UI, soundtrack, art style and hilarious dino animations. 

 

The game has come along with optimization and there are a suprising number of players on old hardware, some even playing on APU's. I'm now able to play with high and ultra settings, shadows on medium and distant ambient occlusion turned off, and hold 45-80 FPS @1080p lol... they still have some ways to go for optimization. The multiplayer experience comes with margaret thatchers (if you play then you get the joke), 5 second lag spikes every 2 minutes, rubber banding, glitches, game streamers who log in with their audience and try to cause havoc (usually backfires), and the occasional game crash.

 

However, it is a gameworks title, and as such the developers are probably silenced under some kind of NDA pertaining to Nvidia software IP. If gameworks isn't playing nice with DX12 and UE4, then it means that Nvidia has to fix their gameworks code, or AMD and Nvidia are forced to find driver solutions around the conflict. Sounds like it really will be indefinite, which is sad. The game is horribly draw call saturated in DX11.

[carolkarine]

I've been playing ARK for a few weeks now and am totally addicted. very well designed game and great UI, soundtrack, art style and hilarious dino animations.

That being said, the game has come a ways with optimization and there are a suprising number of players on old hardware, some even playing on APU's. I'm now able to play with high or ultra settings, shadows on medium and distant ambient occlusion turned off, and hold 45-80 FPS @1080p lol... they still have some ways to go for optimization. The multiplayer experience comes with margaret thatchers (if you play then you get the joke), 5 second lag spikes every 2 minutes, rubber banding, glitches, game streamers who log in with their audience and try to cause havoc (usually backfires), and the occasional game crash.

However, it is a gameworks title, and as such the developers are probably silenced under some kind of NDA pertaining to Nvidia software IP. If gameworks isn't playing nice with DX12 and UE4, then it means that Nvidia has to fix their gameworks code, or AMD and Nvidia are forced to find driver solutions around the conflict. Sounds like it really will be indefinite, which is sad. The game is horribly draw call saturated in DX11.

Great UI? You're full of it. That's a laggy unintuitive mess.

[dalekphalm]

Which part? From benchmarks we've seen NVidia going from negative performance to miniscule performance increase going from DX11 to DX12. That is a fact so far. Now the dev said themselves, they see no reason to spend a lot of resources on this, unless there is a big performance increase. That we know there is on AMD, especially using async compute, which NVidia don't support (yet or so they claim).

Now this being an Nvidia sponsored GameWorks title, there is no chance in hell, they are going to make AMD specific performance upgrades if they make AMD perform better and/or Nvidia performing worse.

 

Just look at what we know about DX11/12 on AMD and NVidia, then look at how GameWorks titles works on AMD and NVidia. Should not come as a surprise at all.

I agree. While the devs might not purposely sabotage AMD performance, given their extremely close working relationship with NVIDIA, and the large amount of money/time/resources/labour (take your pick) that NVIDIA has dumped into ARK, there's no way they are going to make NVIDIA look "bad".

[Briggsy]

Great UI? You're full of it. That's a laggy unintuitive mess.

 

not laggy at all for me.

[syoumans54]

No surprise what so ever. It's a GameWorks game and we know NVidia sucks at async compute, and have little gains from DX12 compared to DX11. So of course they are not going to persue this. Maybe they are waiting for NVidia to release their async compute drivers, that may or may not work at all.

Hey Notional,

I remember when you were claiming facts on how the Fury X was going to crush everything just based on the specs that were released and because it was water-cooled. Maybe, you should wait until things are finalized before you start sprouting off dribble of "Facts" that you know nothing about? Just an idea, but I don't expect you to change anytime soon. Some people are just fine with being wrong all the time. Fact is we have no finalized versions of DX12 games, and won't for a little bit. We need a solid batch of games before we can spout claims of what is going to perform the best.

[CatCloud]

Wildly unoptemized?

Lol I don't think whoever wrote the article have played the game, it runs about as well as Witcher 3 for me

Although the latest patch did effect performance a little.

But Wildly? Ha! Maybe when it went live.

As for this delay, eh they should finish the dx 11 support first.

[carolkarine]

Hey Notional,

I remember when you were claiming facts on how the Fury X was going to crush everything just based on the specs that were released and because it was water-cooled. Maybe, you should wait until things are finalized before you start sprouting off dribble of "Facts" that you know nothing about? Just an idea, but I don't expect you to change anytime soon. Some people are just fine with being wrong all the time. Fact is we have no finalized versions of DX12 games, and won't for a little bit. We need a solid batch of games before we can spout claims of what is going to perform the best.

To be fair, we weren't really weren't expecting the RoP bottleneck.

[Bensemus]

To be fair, we weren't really weren't expecting the RoP bottleneck.

Thats why we should wait for final products. We never have all the information so its pointless to make claims on what we do have.

[Notional]

Hey Notional,

I remember when you were claiming facts on how the Fury X was going to crush everything just based on the specs that were released and because it was water-cooled. Maybe, you should wait until things are finalized before you start sprouting off dribble of "Facts" that you know nothing about? Just an idea, but I don't expect you to change anytime soon. Some people are just fine with being wrong all the time. Fact is we have no finalized versions of DX12 games, and won't for a little bit. We need a solid batch of games before we can spout claims of what is going to perform the best.

 

You have to look at the bigger picture. Based on for instance techpowerups reviews, we know the 980ti has a weighted average of 16% performance increase compared to the standard 980 (both reference) at launch. Same architecture, same everything, so completely comparable. Today, if you look at newer games, we suddenly see a performance difference of more than 20% between the two cards (Battlefront Beta e.g.). Ever wondered why that is?

 

We know the architecture of NVidia cards are weak, as we can measure it in flops compared to AMD. We also know that Maxwell is gimped when it comes to hardware schedulers, doing concurrent async compute (several large threads about this in here already).

 

We know NVidia's force is highly optimized drivers and specific game optimized drivers (they call these game ready drivers and they release for all big titles). We know this is the case, because 290's are beating 780ti's now, meaning that card is no longer a priority for driver updates.

 

What is happening is that AMD is beating NVidia on all pricepoints except the 980 ti koth card. Now remember how I said the performance difference between the 980 and 980 ti is expanding? It is obvious that NVidia is prioritizing the 980 ti to keep it a koth card. We can see it's at the expense of all other NVidia cards too, especially Kepler cards, being destroyed by their old counterparts.

 

We also know why AMD is gaining so much from DX12:

• Multithreaded drivers
• Lower CPU overhead, meaning more draw calls and less CPU bottlenecking on AMD
• Async compute, delivering huge performance increases on GCN architecture (and negative to non on NVidia)

So when ARK is about to launch a DX12 update the same day and then suddenly pull it as we see NVidia crashing and burning in Ashes, what do you think happens at the devs? Devs making an NVidia sponsored GameWorks game, that like all other GameWorks games, never introduces anything that benefits AMD, nor puts NVidia at a disadvantage?

 

You can call everything speculations if you want, but the picture is very clear. If you look at the facts and combines them with the overall picture we have of the gaming industry right now.

 

Now the Fury X might not win against an OC'd third party card right now. Neither could the 290x against the 780 ti. Now look at it. One year from now the 980 ti will be a joke. A very overpriced joke.

 

Let's hope NVidia won't screw over their consumers with weak hardware when Pascal arrives. I feel sorry for people over paying for NVidia cards and get shafted, as they buy into a closed proprietary vendor locked in scenario that will never benefit them. But by all means, call it all speculation if you want (or whatever word you want to use).

[syoumans54]

To be fair, we weren't really weren't expecting the RoP bottleneck.

That's what I'm trying to point out. There's no reason to draw any certain conclusion about anything until it's actually released. Everything could change as far as we know it. To make conclusions without all the information is asinine, and just a shot in the dark.

[BuckGup]

I still am thinking about buying but am worried my fx 6300 and 280 can't keep up

It will be fine. My friend has that and he runs it better then my i5 4670K and 2 GTX760s.