NVIDIA Under Attack Again for GameWorks in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

[Derangel]

yah, my only point was that it's possible

 

this whole debacle really isn't nvidia's fault, that lies with project cars for alienating some of their userbase

maybe dx12 will help, who knows

 

I'm not holding my breath. DX11 was supposed to be amazing as well. I'd love if DX12 made things better and we saw some real advancement with game technology, especially AI and physics.

[Sky Daddy]

I'm not holding my breath. DX11 was supposed to be amazing as well. I'd love if DX12 made things better and we saw some real advancement with game technology, especially AI and physics.

with much lower cpu overhead, a lot more will be possible.

 

It will still be up to devs to make use of that power though.

[patrickjp93]

Fighting market segmentation with more market segmentation is one of the worst thing AMD could possibly ever do. And it goes completely against everything open that AMD has done.

AMD can't survive on open, and frankly they should just buy a CUDA license like Intel did. It comes out to pennies per GPU sold in cost, and it would alleviate the performance difference while making AMD's FirePro cards more attractive for supercomputing.

[bogus]

Is that labeled onto BP or Nvidia from what you're implying? Or both, because I can see both, but more so BP.

On both, the level of how fucked up it is will scale with good sense I belive. Or at least I want to belive that people will have such sensibility.

To me, and my reality, probably with influence from my professional background, it's fucked up to lie to your clients. People work hard to give you money for your products. Just don't lie to do them... ommit some truths if you want, you don't need to be glass transparent... but to lie is fucked up. Trust me, I've done shit for some known brands that I'm not proud of, but that's a weight that is mine to bear.

Now if you scale it to a oil spill level of fucked up, yeah, it's fucked up.

 

The consequences of both also scale. One got bad PR, and a lawsuit that will probably end up in nothing. The other got bad PR, several lawsuits, and some millions in environmental damages.

 

It's all relative. 

[MrRavens]

that was a joke gomenasai means sorry

Oh lol

[mr moose]

It never ceases to amaze me how easily people forget this is a consumer driven market.  It is non-essential luxury items,  AMD, Nvidia, Cyrix and Intel can no more control the direction of games than you let them.   

[IAMSWIFT1]

why the fuck is Nvidia under attack for this? just because AMD is too lazy to make fancy hair posible on their GPUs?

No The Game Is On Nvidias Gameworks, Which Obviously Wont Work With AMD Cards

[patrickjp93]

No The Game Is On Nvidias Gameworks, Which Obviously Wont Work With AMD Cards

Because AMD refuses to buy a CUDA license despite it being pennies per GPU sold. Intel bought it to ensure its iGPU wasn't useless for PhysX stuff and that its Xeon Phi would sell for HPC use in a CUDA ecosystem. It would be wise for AMD to buy a license.

[elfensky]

Here's a little quip from a reddit post snip-

 

In regards to Project Cars:

 

Holy damn, that was an interesting read. I've always thought PhysX was only used to add more (particle) detail, like animated debris and stuff... I never knew it was that more complicated, same for GameWorks. Thanks for the interesting read.

In case of PjC I do get the outrage, seeing as you cannot disable it.

In regards to Witcher 3, however, can't you simply disable the hair effect in the settings? Or is the entire game also build on GameWorks?

[patrickjp93]

Holy damn, that was an interesting read. I've always thought PhysX was only used to add more (particle) detail, like animated debris and stuff... I never knew it was that more complicated, same for GameWorks. Thanks for the interesting read.

It's a huge library of actual physics functions. Of the games I've disassembled and decompiled, there's been about 88,000 lines, and that's not accounting for revisions and the fact I'm probably missing a lot of functions.

[NAP51DMustang]

AMD tried with Gaming Evolved and things like TressFX but here is the problem - AMD basically has to throw away their tech so people will use it. Why? Cause no one gives a shit about using AMD specific features as much as they do Nvidia specific ones. Why? 

When you sign a Gameworks contract, you literally get a FedEx shipment of Nvidia engineers who will HELP YOU THROUGH DEVELOPMENT on a level that AMD just can't match. Game developers are basically rank amateurs when it comes to programming, I believe it was an Nvidia engineer who straight up said they have to fix so many problems in the drivers since game development is such a joke. 

So as a studio, who needs help and wants an optimized game, who ar you going to pick? The company that has 1/4th the marketshare and doesn't seem to care about helping? Or the company running 3/4 the market and who will send out assistance if you need it? 

People on this forum have little idea how the real world works. It takes two to tango. You want to crucify Nvidia for having Gameworks? Go ahead. But you sure as fuck better crucify the developer for accepting that deal as well. 

I think the big issue here isn't the contracts with a graphics hardware company but the seeming (obviously can't say for sure one way or another) nature of the Gameworks contract as anytime it is present it never appears that AMD is given the real opportunity to actually try and make it work with their hardware with a few exceptions here and there.

[LePawel]

So a company with 75% market share is showing a middle finger to the industry, but because 75% of customers are on their side - "the majority doesn't mind". 

I love physx implementations, they look and work awesome, but I guess it's time for khronos to team up again and develop their own open library, possibly again on top of AMD's tech (tressFX) and tell nvidia to fuck off. I own a 570, so an upgrade is overdue, question is if Nvidia is worth the investment as a company.

[RagnarokDel]

why the fuck is Nvidia under attack for this? just because AMD is too lazy to make fancy hair posible on their GPUs?

it's not that they're too lazy, it's that they straight up cant.

[IAMSWIFT1]

Because AMD refuses to buy a CUDA license despite it being pennies per GPU sold. Intel bought it to ensure its iGPU wasn't useless for PhysX stuff and that its Xeon Phi would sell for HPC use in a CUDA ecosystem. It would be wise for AMD to buy a license.

I Agree That They Should,But They Can Do What They Want To

[Guest Kloaked]

In regards to Project Cars:

 

Holy damn, that was an interesting read. I've always thought PhysX was only used to add more (particle) detail, like animated debris and stuff... I never knew it was that more complicated, same for GameWorks. Thanks for the interesting read.

In case of PjC I do get the outrage, seeing as you cannot disable it.

In regards to Witcher 3, however, can't you simply disable the hair effect in the settings? Or is the entire game also build on GameWorks?

 

Yes, there is a toggle for it. Least there should be like every Nvidia exclusive effect.

[Khvarrioiren]

I'm actually surprised that boxed copies of TW3 PC versions don't have Gameworks plastered on it. Well, because partial framework usage, most likely.

[Echodamus]

Honestly I don't get why people get so butthurt about this. If it bothers you that you can't get certain features or settings then just buy NVidia the next time you're due for an upgrade. What is so hard about that? Also, not everything is open source, and just because people want it to be doesn't mean that it should be/will be. Is it so bad that a company wants compensation for their hard work? 

[ACatWithThumbs]

No The Game Is On Nvidias Gameworks, Which Obviously Wont Work With AMD Cards

So? There is an option that says Hairworks On/Off.

You're not supposed to run it in the first place on an AMD GPU just as Mantle is not supposed to run on Nvidia.

This is like saying : " I can't run the Mantle option in Battlefield 4 on my Nvidia GPU the game performs way better on AMD they sabotaged Nvidia ..."

This whole debate makes no sense and it's just ridiculous at this point.

 

[SXCS23]

Feature that was developed by NVidia for NVidia cards doesn't work on AMD cards and people are upset? That's similar to someone with an Xbox complaining that a PlayStation friend can't join their Xbox Live party chat.

It's labeled NVidia for a reason. If you have AMD, don't activate the NVidia features and then complain that you can't run it well.​

[Victorious Secret]

nVidia rep, on reddit, said: https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/366iqs/nvidia_gameworks_project_cars_and_why_we_should/crc3ro1

so, I wanted to test it for myself,

yes, I know .. the system is not top-notch ; highest settings, 1080p, Vsync OFF, MSAA

• CPU: Intel Q9550 @2.8Ghz
• RAM: 8GB DDR2 800Mhz
• Video Card: Gigabyte GTX970 G1 @factory defaults
• drivers: GeForce 347.88 / PhysX 09.14.0702
• OS: Windows 7 x64

Maybe now you all can stop crying about PhsyX and the tyranny of Gameworks? Nah, that's too easy.

[Briggsy]

Maybe now you all can stop crying about PhsyX and the tyranny of Gameworks? Nah, that's too easy.

 

an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. better to make a stink now than to be told later that no one complained.

[Guest Kloaked]

Feature that was developed by NVidia for NVidia cards doesn't work on AMD cards and people are upset? That's similar to someone with an Xbox complaining that a PlayStation friend can't join their Xbox Live party chat.

It's labeled NVidia for a reason. If you have AMD, don't activate the NVidia features and then complain that you can't run it well.​

 

People want to take it to extremes all of a sudden since they can't form a proper and coherent argument: because Nvidia is doing what they're doing, we're apparently one step away from actual exclusive titles to the graphics vendors.

 

In their minds, Witcher 4 (or whatever CDPR makes next) is going to not even boot if a Radeon card is present in the system.

[Misanthrope]

Hey for all we know even Nvidia users should wait until the game is out: If project cars are anything to go by even Kepler card owners are shit fucking out of luck: on that game a 960 beats a 780 because fuck Kepler that's why.

 

So can anyone defend the fact that Nvidia thinks it's ok for high end users to just drop their card for a newer generation? How they're basically saying you're better off with the crippled middle range cards at 2gb vram?

[zappian]

an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. better to make a stink now than to be told later that no one complained.

 

My only fear is that this crap becomes so imbedded in games that in the future you wont be able to even play Gamework games with an AMD GPU.

People might think I am wearing the biggest tin foil hat possible but there is a lot of bad practises in gaming no one would ever envision 10-20 years ago and are in full force today.

[Briggsy]

My only fear is that this crap becomes so imbedded in games that in the future you wont be able to even play Gamework games with an AMD GPU.

People might think I am wearing the biggest tin foil hat possible but there is a lot of bad practises in gaming no one would ever envision 10-20 years ago and are in full force today.

 

That's true. change very rarely happens all at once, but piece by piece. If you have a loaf of bread and someone steals it, you notice. but if someone cuts a thin slice away, over and over, you eventually realize your loaf of bread is half gone but it's too late. The one saving grace for AMD is that they do have the consoles, Xbone/PS4/Nintendo NX under their belts, which does give them leverage. If a game were to run fine on these consoles, but crash and burn on PC with an AMD graphic card, you know something is going on. luckily that hasn't happened, and I doubt it would unless AMD went out of business.