Friday update and discussions 2011-03-18

[recoilfx]

Originally Posted by Heliocon

Its a lie, it is not able to take advantage of the latest tech OR EVEN CURRENT TECH. Why? Because DX11 has been available for coming up to two years now and its not ingame (and devs would of known about it/be able to get info before the general public). Now I am not saying that they wont add it in (which they said they are going to do), but if you run it dx9 thats very dated, dx10 is also getting long in the tooth.

Point is on release the game's engine will be antiquated upon release, it may look good, but its foolish to call (and a lie) to say it will be able to harness all the tools for years to come since it cant even use hardware and software from coming up to two years ago!

While I agree that Maddox may have made some wrong choices regarding graphics development (IE, cloud & water should have been concentrated more vs the diminishing returns on certain nitpicking details), but given that they are such a small team with finite resources and given niche market share of DX11(http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey), not shooting for DX11 is understandable and wise. Even Crysis 2 is DX10 upon release!

It's wrong to assume that the engine will be antiquated upon release because it doesn't support DX11 - it's only a rendering path. You don't need to replace the whole engine (FM, DM, atmosphere modeling & resources management, blah blah blah) just to get DX11.

[The Kraken]

Originally Posted by recoilfx

While I agree that Maddox may have made some wrong choices regarding graphics development (IE, cloud & water should have been concentrated more vs the diminishing returns on certain nitpicking details), but given that they are such a small team with finite resources and given niche market share of DX11(http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey), not shooting for DX11 is understandable and wise. Even Crysis 2 is DX10 upon release!

Actually it's only DX9 And it's not just Crysis 2 - just ask Dragon Age 2 players about the horrible DX11 implementation, or take a look at Shogun 2 which will also deliver DX11 only after release through a patch ("2-4 weeks" ), and it's pretty clear that no developer is willing to invest too much in what is still a niche technology. Even if they're developing PC exclusive titles.

Looks like Oleg is in good company with concentrating on outdated technology

[Heliocon]

Originally Posted by The Kraken

Actually it's only DX9 And it's not just Crysis 2 - just ask Dragon Age 2 players about the horrible DX11 implementation, or take a look at Shogun 2 which will also deliver DX11 only after release through a patch ("2-4 weeks" ), and it's pretty clear that no developer is willing to invest too much in what is still a niche technology. Even if they're developing PC exclusive titles.

Looks like Oleg is in good company with concentrating on outdated technology

Yikes, where to start? Well DA2 dx11 is stuffed because its a console title and it was tacked onto the end, kinda like metro. Crysis 2 is the same, except that the original crysis looks better and that is years old.

As for Shogun, as I was very active in their forums pre release helping the tech admins, the dx11 was a really big push on their part to add, they commited a huge amount of their rescources to the dx11, so you statement about committing is very off. Now the reason they pulled it was because of optimization and performance issues because they added DX11 onto the ETW/NTW Warscape engine which was originally at release dx9 focused (and single threaded). In any case they have added dx11 which was a huge job and they had to re-write parts of the engine, thats why they screwed up horribly and there is no AA in the game for dx9 or dx10 because it intefers with the lighting / shadow effects. In 2 weeks when they patch in DX11 it will have MSAAx8 and DX10.1 will have MSAAx4.

So the statement is alittle offbase, and win7/dx11 is the new xp/dx9. There is a huge jump underway. Much of it was held back because consoles are only dx9.0 and since they have made a huge chunk of market share many games are multiplatform resulting in poor use of dx11. The only real exception is TW but like said they are using a modified version of Warscape which was released 2 years ago but was in production from like 2005/2006.

[Heliocon]

Originally Posted by recoilfx

While I agree that Maddox may have made some wrong choices regarding graphics development (IE, cloud & water should have been concentrated more vs the diminishing returns on certain nitpicking details), but given that they are such a small team with finite resources and given niche market share of DX11(http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey), not shooting for DX11 is understandable and wise. Even Crysis 2 is DX10 upon release!

It's wrong to assume that the engine will be antiquated upon release because it doesn't support DX11 - it's only a rendering path. You don't need to replace the whole engine (FM, DM, atmosphere modeling & resources management, blah blah blah) just to get DX11.

Well yes and no. The reason the clouds and water are behind is because the tech that would allow them to really push clouds and water graphics are dx10/dx11. Dx11 for direct compute (physics), and differed lighting along with other lighting and particle effects that are in dx10 (but much improved in dx11), which could greatly reduce the burden on rendering these elements.

DX11 is not a niche market, there was a huge thread/argument about this last year and I made a prediction back then about market share and cards, which was that by 2011 win7 64bit would be the primary OS and that dx11 card market share would skyrocket at the end of 2010 and for the first half of 2011. Months after and even now, steam 100% backs this up and at the current rate in 6 months dx11 may even be the majority (by % increase last month out of the 15 cards that had the strongest % growth in market share, 14 of them were DX11 and represent probably around roughly 8%+ growth for dx11 card market share last month alone).

DX11 isnt only a rendering path, it has alot more to it which makes it far better then dx10, alot of that is it is made to work in sync with multicore cpus/multi threaded apps. It has a new shader model which gives alot of new features (shader model 5, dx9 = shader model 2).

Also crysis is consolised to hell and back, thats why it has no dx11 on release, in its video settings there are 3 options, gamer - advanced - hardcore and there are litrally no descriptions of even what each setting has in it... The tutorial uses console gamepad button instructions etc etc. Also the engine looks worse then the original crysis did.

[kaisey]

Originally Posted by Heliocon

Well yes and no. The reason the clouds and water are behind is because the tech that would allow them to really push clouds and water graphics are dx10/dx11. Dx11 for direct compute (physics), and differed lighting along with other lighting and particle effects that are in dx10 (but much improved in dx11), which could greatly reduce the burden on rendering these elements.

DX11 is not a niche market, there was a huge thread/argument about this last year and I made a prediction back then about market share and cards, which was that by 2011 win7 64bit would be the primary OS and that dx11 card market share would skyrocket at the end of 2010 and for the first half of 2011. Months after and even now, steam 100% backs this up and at the current rate in 6 months dx11 may even be the majority (by % increase last month out of the 15 cards that had the strongest % growth in market share, 14 of them were DX11 and represent probably around roughly 8%+ growth for dx11 card market share last month alone).

DX11 isnt only a rendering path, it has alot more to it which makes it far better then dx10, alot of that is it is made to work in sync with multicore cpus/multi threaded apps. It has a new shader model which gives alot of new features (shader model 5, dx9 = shader model 2).

Also crysis is consolised to hell and back, thats why it has no dx11 on release, in its video settings there are 3 options, gamer - advanced - hardcore and there are litrally no descriptions of even what each setting has in it... The tutorial uses console gamepad button instructions etc etc. Also the engine looks worse then the original crysis did.

Helecon, are you and Tree related?????????????

[Heliocon]

Originally Posted by kaisey

Helecon, are you and Tree related?????????????

Cant be, my nose is not that big.

[recoilfx]

Originally Posted by Heliocon

Well yes and no. The reason the clouds and water are behind is because the tech that would allow them to really push clouds and water graphics are dx10/dx11. Dx11 for direct compute (physics), and differed lighting along with other lighting and particle effects that are in dx10 (but much improved in dx11), which could greatly reduce the burden on rendering these elements.

DX11 is not a niche market, there was a huge thread/argument about this last year and I made a prediction back then about market share and cards, which was that by 2011 win7 64bit would be the primary OS and that dx11 card market share would skyrocket at the end of 2010 and for the first half of 2011. Months after and even now, steam 100% backs this up and at the current rate in 6 months dx11 may even be the majority (by % increase last month out of the 15 cards that had the strongest % growth in market share, 14 of them were DX11 and represent probably around roughly 8%+ growth for dx11 card market share last month alone).

DX11 isnt only a rendering path, it has a lot more to it which makes it far better then dx10, alot of that is it is made to work in sync with multicore cpus/multi threaded apps. It has a new shader model which gives alot of new features (shader model 5, dx9 = shader model 2).

Also crysis is consolised to hell and back, thats why it has no dx11 on release, in its video settings there are 3 options, gamer - advanced - hardcore and there are literally no descriptions of even what each setting has in it... The tutorial uses console gamepad button instructions etc etc. Also the engine looks worse then the original crysis did.

We are in the first half of 2011, the game is releasing in 2 weeks, with DX11 market share still <6%. So if Maddox really pushed for DX11, they are sacrificing their time for that 6% instead of the remaining 94%. This is the same exact reason why Crysis 2 got scaled back, they got burned for pushing too hard on the first one. I'd have to disagree with you on Crysis 2 looking worse than the first one, but let's at least agree to disagree on that one.

Also, how will DX11 sky rocket? The rate of change is more or less linear, from 0-5%. If anything, history indicates most changes are linear, not exponential according to the steam graphs.

Sandy Bridge is not DX11, Llano won't be out till end of this year, Ivy bridge next year - all the mainstream DX11 parts will need time for uptake too.

Also, I have not heard of a single game released/being released that's heavily based on DirectCompute. The development started 5 years ago, reality will not have allowed this to happen.

What's important is that the engine is built to be scalable - that's what future proofing is, and if that's the case, I'd agree with Maddox' assessment that this is THE next-gen engine. DirectCompute, tessalation, shaders can be added when the return of investment seems solid.

Having DX11 currently on CloD will not make it better - from the released screenshots and videos, this game suffers from polish and optimization. Having one more item on the list will further deteriorate the quality of this game.

Unfortunately we have to accept the realities of our flight sim niche market. We don't have 300 men team working on a single game. Beggars can't be choosers.

[Heliocon]

Originally Posted by recoilfx

We are in the first half of 2011, the game is releasing in 2 weeks, with DX11 market share still <6%. So if Maddox really pushed for DX11, they are sacrificing their time for that 6% instead of the remaining 94%. This is the same exact reason why Crysis 2 got scaled back, they got burned for pushing too hard on the first one. I'd have to disagree with you on Crysis 2 looking worse than the first one, but let's at least agree to disagree on that one.

Also, how will DX11 sky rocket? The rate of change is more or less linear, from 0-5%. If anything, history indicates most changes are linear, not exponential according to the steam graphs.

Sandy Bridge is not DX11, Llano won't be out till end of this year, Ivy bridge next year - all the mainstream DX11 parts will need time for uptake too.

Also, I have not heard of a single game released/being released that's heavily based on DirectCompute. The development started 5 years ago, reality will not have allowed this to happen.

What's important is that the engine is built to be scalable - that's what future proofing is, and if that's the case, I'd agree with Maddox' assessment that this is THE next-gen engine. DirectCompute, tessalation, shaders can be added when the return of investment seems solid.

Having DX11 currently on CloD will not make it better - from the released screenshots and videos, this game suffers from polish and optimization. Having one more item on the list will further deteriorate the quality of this game.

Unfortunately we have to accept the realities of our flight sim niche market. We don't have 300 men team working on a single game. Beggars can't be choosers.

Just for the record here about your post:
1. Your numbers I guess you pulled out of your backside, which makes it super funny when you say dx11<6% because you have absolutely no idea do you? Feb data, highest % share of market graphics card used is ATi Radeon 5770, with a 7.22% market share and a +0.5% share increase from Jan->Feb which meanes this one single card alone is higher then your claim for total dx11 cards. Following is 5850 with 4.48% share and then 460GTX with 4.6% share. So that means those three cards alone make up about 16%-17% of the market share... = FAIL
http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/directx/

2. I dont care if you diagree or not, crysis 2 engine is worse than crysis 1 in the majority of areas. It doesnt matter what your opinion is, go youtube the comparisons. You can wish away the fact that they reduced the draw distances, or changed and removed lighting features in the game.

3. I love how oyu bring sandybridge in here, you do realise thats a CPU not a GPU? Really... thats sad, your making yourself look very silly. In fact, dont ever post about computer hardware again for your own sake because not only are you confused about what is and is not related to DX11, but you dont even seem to know what Direct X is...
Also incase you have completely fooled/confused yourself and you are thinking about the onboard gpus for SB cpus, they hold less then a 1% market share and will not gain any share in desktops. No one wants a onboard gpu for gaming, the target market is laptops and low end pcs. But no components are DX11 other then GPUs, so = fail

4. A game being heavily based on directcompute? Really.... after 4 fails without a win do you get to call in a failstrike? o.0
Do you even know what direct compute is? How would you base a game off it? Maybe its because you can base a game on direct compute and that is never what it was designed for?

5. Yes they can be added, I never said they cant. When they are added and integrated and running well then it will be a cutting edge next gen engine. But currently at release it is not, and thats the reality of the situation as you put it.

This forum seems to love cognitive dissonance: This game will have the best graphics ever in pc history, it is pushing the envelope and is SO good no ones computer can max it out!- Stop whinning, there a 20 person dev team, how can you expect them to implement new cutting edge tech and features when they have a shoestring budget???

-Also its rather stupid to just look at the graphs like you did then make silly statements, because if you looked carefully/critically you would of noticed that its on a scale from May 2009 - May 2010 for gpus and 2008-2010 for cpus.
-Also the DX11 features I mentioned make the devs work easier not harder, thats part of the reason dx11 is good.

[David Hayward]

Heliocon, if CoD isn't going to be the best WW2 flight sim out there, what is? I want the best.

[LukeFF]

So, what was this thread about?