View Full Version : AMD acusa a nVidia de jogo sujo com o GameWorks
Segundo a AMD, esta foi impedida de aceder ao código de jogo do Watch Dogs, que usa o Game Works da nVidia. Por causa disto a AMD ficou impossibilidade de optimizar as suas drivers de forma adequada para o jogo, resultando num desempenho abaixo do esperado. Pelos vistos temos aqui mais uma telenovela entre os dois grandes do mercado gráfico e ainda deve correr muita tinta e acusações antes de terminar.
http://techreport.com/news/26515/amd-lashes-out-at-nvidia-gameworks-program
Is Nvidia unfairly pushing developers not to optimize their games for AMD hardware? That's the allegation made this weekend in a story by Forbes contributor Jason Evangelho (http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2014/05/26/why-watch-dogs-is-bad-news-for-amd-users-and-potentially-the-entire-pc-gaming-ecosystem/). The story quotes Robert Hallock, technical communications lead for PC graphics at AMD. Hallock uses some pretty strong words to talk about GameWorks, Nvidia's programming toolkit and developer relations package:
Gameworks represents a clear and present threat to gamers by deliberately crippling performance on AMD products (40% of the market) to widen the margin in favor of NVIDIA products. . . . Participation in the Gameworks program often precludes the developer from accepting AMD suggestions that would improve performance directly in the game code—the most desirable form of optimization.
Hallock also alleges that "code obfuscation" stemming from GameWorks integration prevents AMD from adequately optimizing its drivers for some games. "[T]he characteristics of the game are hidden behind many layers of circuitous and non-obvious routines," he explains, adding that Nvidia has removed "all public Direct3D code samples from their site in favor of a 'contact us for licensing' page."
Ubisoft's Watch Dogs, which comes out today, is cited as a particularly stark example of unequal optimization. "It's evident that Watch Dogs is optimized for Nvidia hardware," Evangelho writes in his story, "but it's staggering just how un-optimized it is on AMD hardware." Evangelho also links an older article (http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/173511-nvidias-gameworks-program-usurps-power-from-developers-end-users-and-amd/2) by ExtremeTech. That article made a similar observation about Batman: Arkham Origins, and it similarly pinned the blame on GameWorks.
We've seen in our own testing how AMD graphics cards can underperform in some GameWorks-enabled games, including Batman: Arkham Origins (http://techreport.com/review/26279/amd-radeon-r9-295-x2-graphics-card-reviewed/8) and Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag (http://techreport.com/review/26279/amd-radeon-r9-295-x2-graphics-card-reviewed/6), so Evangelho likely isn't wrong there. For whatever reason, some GameWorks titles do seem to run poorly on Radeons.
Curiously, however, Evangelho's story includes no statement from Nvidia—nor does it indicate that Nvidia was asked to comment. The story also makes some odd claims. It asserts, for example, that AMD's Mantle API "doesn't require" AMD graphics hardware to function and "will work equally well on Nvidia cards." (AMD told me at GDC that, with DirectX 12 now on the horizon, we're "probably not going to see" Mantle on Nvidia hardware.) Evangelho cites Mantle's purported vendor-agnosticism as evidence that AMD "clearly waves a banner of open-source development and ideals."
We've asked Nvidia to comment, and we're currently awaiting a response from the company. For what it's worth, though, a former Nvidia software engineer, John McDonald, sounded off (https://twitter.com/basisspace/statuses/471133525115011073) on Twitter yesterday about this story. He wrote:
It is extremely frustrating to see an article criticizing work you did at a former employer and not being able to comment that the person who you are quoting from was just completely full of unsubstantiated [expletive]. Thanks, Forbes. . . . [A]nd while I never did, and certainly do not now, speak for nvidia, let me say that in the six years I was in devtech I *never*, not a single time, asked a developer to deny title access to AMD or to remove things that were beneficial to AMD.
Mas segundo a nVidia, esta nunca impediu ninguém de aceder a jogos para optimizar as suas drivers. Ainda por cima, acusa a AMD de ter bloqueado o acesso a alguns jogos quando a nVidia precisava de optimiar as suas drivers.
http://techreport.com/news/26521/nvidia-responds-to-amd-gameworks-allegations
Earlier today, I spoke with Cem Cebenoyan, Director of Engineering for Developer Technology at Nvidia, who offered a rebuttal to a Forbes story (http://techreport.com/news/26515/amd-lashes-out-at-nvidia-gameworks-program) we covered yesterday. In that story, AMD's Robert Hallock alleged that Nvidia's GameWorks program prevents AMD from working with game developers on GPU optimizations.
According to Cebenoyan, Hallock's claims are baseless. "It's definitely not true. We've never done anything like that, where we preclude people from working with our competition or taking suggestions from our competition or getting access to builds," Cebenoyan told me. "I don't know the specifics, because it's not really our business as to who has access to our games developers partners' builds. That's up to them, right? But my assumption is . . . all the competitors have equal access in terms of getting builds."
http://techreport.com/r.x/2014q2/gameworks-feat.jpgBy builds, Cebenoyan meant pre-release game builds, which developers normally share with GPU manufacturers prior to launch. Nothing in the GameWorks licensing terms precludes that type of collaboration, Cebenoyan said. The terms do, however, forbid developers from sharing Nvidia's GameWorks middleware code—which, when that code is integrated into a game engine, may mean AMD doesn't get access to that portion of a game's source code.
As I understand it, these licensing terms are new. They've only been in place since March or so, coinciding with the release (http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2014/03/17/nvidia-gameworks-2014/) of GameWorks 2014. Prior to that, Nvidia's collaboration with developers on middleware was "ad hoc."
Cebenoyan conceded that AMD is "concerned" about not having the code for Nvidia's GameWorks modules. However, he seems to believe that shouldn't hinder AMD's optimization efforts. "Historically, in all the games we've worked with, we don't typically need the source code to a game to optimize for it," he told me. "We don't typically have the source code to most games. Our driver engineers typically—actually almost never have looked game source code. So that's not really the operating model."
I asked whether, prior to the establishment of the GameWorks licensing model, AMD would have had access to the code for games with Nvidia middleware. "No, I don't think so," Cebenoyan replied. "In general, most game developers don't really give people source code, anyway."
Addressing AMD's specific complaint about code samples disappearing from Nvidia's website, Cebenoyan pointed out that the samples are still there. "Someone just failed in navigating the website," he said. The samples can be downloaded here (https://developer.nvidia.com/gameworks-samples-overview), and Nvidia doesn't intend to remove them; indeed, the company says it wants to add more of them.
Of course, those samples shouldn't be confused with Nvidia's proprietary GameWorks modules, which aren't available to the public. (According to Cebenoyan, GameWorks modules are bona-fide middleware. "There's all kinds of things—software engineering type things—that go into building something that's a real piece of middleware that is not what you worry about when you just have a sample," he said.)
So, if GameWorks isn't the problem, then why do certain Nvidia-backed titles (such as Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, Arkham Asylum, and Watch Dogs) perform so comparatively poorly on AMD hardware? Nvidia's PR team butted in there, hinting that AMD's developer relations efforts are thinly spread. Considering AMD's ongoing financial hurdles (http://techreport.com/news/26338/amd-posts-another-loss-but-beats-wall-street-forecast), that's not outside the realm of possibility.
Cebenoyan then chimed in, "We spend a lot of energy on those titles. We really look at them carefully and try to make the experience as good as possible for Nvidia customers. Maybe in the process of doing that, that makes it so that it's noticeably better than on AMD. I don't know. But it's not a functional way to work with developers where you suggest things to them that hurt a significant portion of their user base. That's just not gonna fly with any competent developer. So that's not something that we ever do."
Somewhat contradictorily, Cebenoyan went on to tell me that, in "at least" two instances, AMD's own developer relations efforts impeded Nvidia's work with game developers. "We know of real examples where we have actually explicitly been forbidden from seeing builds—forget source code, even just binary builds—of games that include high-end effects," Cebenoyan said. "The full game with all of the effects, the important PC ultra quality settings, [was] hidden from us until say a few weeks before launch, something like that. These were things that were contractually obligated."
Cebenoyan wouldn't name names, but his description sounded an awful lot like the allegations Nvidia made (http://techreport.com/news/24463/nvidia-acknowledges-tomb-raider-performance-issues) after Tomb Raider came out last year. Cebenoyan doesn't think the developers set out to disenfranchise Nvidia users willingly. Rather, he blames a hidden clause in their contract with AMD.
For what it's worth, AMD has denied that its Gaming Evolved program involves such clauses. The program "undertakes no efforts to prevent our competition from optimizing for games before their release," the company stated (http://techreport.com/news/24976/refuted-bf4-other-frostbite-3-games-to-be-optimized-exclusively-for-amd) last June.
So, yeah. We're looking at some very similar allegations from both Nvidia and AMD—and, in both cases, emphatic denials of wrongdoing.
Without talking to developers, it's hard to know for sure exactly what all those licensing agreements and contracts stipulate, either explicitly or implicitly. That said, it's possible that there's some truth to what both companies are saying. The world of PC gaming hardware is a highly competitive one, and bending the rules of fair play even slightly can pay some very real dividends.
Boas!
Isto não é novidade para ninguém...
São conhecidas as movimentações á lá INTEL da Nvidia, usando tecnologia proprietária, fechando acessos a códigos fonte, etc...
Acredito que tal como a AMD diz, não lhe foi fornecido qualquer acesso ao código do jogo, pelo que se o mesmo usar configurações diferentes do set Standard do DirectX, a AMD não tem forma de saber o que foi feito!
A Nvidia é um mau player no mercado, que tal como a Intel, usa e abusa da sua posição para prejudicar o consumidor (e apenas e só para agradar os seus accionistas).
No entanto verdade seja dita, o jogo não é nada de especial e a AMD tem do seu lado muito melhores players que a NVIDIA... O mantle será a prova disso em breve...
Cumprimentos,
LPC
Boas,
O que a AMD tem de seu lado é as consolas serem AMD, isso sim é algo a seu favor e a favor dos ports das consolas para PC... vamos a ver ports Intel e aquilo é uma banhada total diga-se de passagem.
Boas,
O que a AMD tem de seu lado é as consolas serem AMD, isso sim é algo a seu favor e a favor dos ports das consolas para PC... vamos a ver ports Intel e aquilo é uma banhada total diga-se de passagem.
Boas!
Ports Intel?
A AMD ganhou a corrida ás consolas, de forma limpa, a Nvidia na sua eterna arrogância, disse que o mercado de consolas não lhes rendia para fazer os Gpus...
Todos sabemos que é bullshit, já que a NVIDIA não tem APU´s nem tem a licença para fabricar a tecnologia X86 necessária para correr de forma rápida as aplicações baseada nessa arquitectura.
No fundo isto é uma forma agressiva de tentar prejudicar a AMD...
O que eles se esquecem é que quem é AMD um dia pode ser Nvidia e o oposto é igual... Ao prejudicarem os consumidores apenas se queimam a eles próprios...
Ou pensam que lançar Titans Z a 3000 dólares os vai salvar...
Por estas e por outras é que eu por uma questão de consciência não usaria produtos dessa empresa... A mesma mostra bem o que se interessa pelos consumidores...
Cumprimentos,
LPC
A Nvidia é bem capaz de fazer este tipo de coisas, tal como a Intel. A AMD não as faz porque não está numa posição que lhes permita esse tipo de atitudes, mas caso qualquer dia venha a poder, não duvidem que o fará também. São tudo empresas, todas elas capitalistas. Não pensem que a AMD é a boazinha, é tudo farinha do mesmo saco.
Por acaso a AMD fez isso recentemente com o Tomb Raider. A nVidia demorou quase um mês após o lançamento do jogo a ter drivers optimizadas.
O problema é que com estas aldrabices, tanto da AMD, como da nVidia, como da Intel, quem se lixa sempre são os consumidores pois independentemente de que marca tenham, a certa altura vão ter um desempenho inferior do que o normal.
Grid é um verdadeiro exemplo para Intel, a diferença para cpu AMD era bem notória.
Enviado do meu C1505 através de Tapatalk
Guerra entre Nvidia e AMD sobe de tom e baíxa de nivél (http://www.eurogamer.pt/articles/2014-06-26-guerra-entre-nvidia-e-amd-sobe-de-tom)
A guerra entre os fabricantes de GPUs Nvidia e AMD está a subir de tom e a baixar de nível. Tudo começou quando no ano passado Robert Hallock da AMD lançou acusações relativas ao Gameworks, que afirmou "representar uma clara ameaça para os gamers, ao deliberadamente baixar a performance em produtos AMD (40 porcento no mercado), para aumentar a margem em favor dos produtos Nvidia.
A parceria Nvidia Gameworks envolve uma grande quantidade de jogos, que teoricamente são optimizados para as gráficas da Nvidia. Mas agora foi a AMD a anunciar uma lista de de parcerias de desenvolvimento que inclui títulos como Battlefield: Hardline, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Civilization: Beyond Earth e Star Citizen.
A Nvidia respondeu dizendo que "seria impossível manter a lista actual de parcerias", tendo em conta o enorme alcance do programa.
Em conversa com o Kotaku, um representante da Nvidia afirmou que - "Se a AMD gastasse o mesmo tempo a actualizar as suas drivers e a fazer investimentos em gaming, que o tempo que passam a falar sobre nós, então, talvez os seus clientes não tivessem que aturar experiências de jogo abaixo do normal, nos títulos de topo de hoje."
http://images.eurogamer.net/2013/articles/1/6/8/9/1/3/7/140378299776.jpg/EG11/resize/600x-1/quality/80/format/jpg
isto já parece uma birra de putos da primária mas pronto ... LOL
Essa afirmação da nVidia ou está mal traduzida ou é um bocado parola... investimento em gaming tem sido coisa que não tem faltado à AMD. Mantle só por si já foi responsável por mudar o paradigma das API, especialmente o DX12. Não é por acaso que um terço das editoras na actual beta do Mantle se envolveram para terem uma espécie de "preview" do que vai ser o DX12 mais tarde. Até a Intel já pediu à AMD para dar uma vista de olhos. Se a AMD não "gastou tempo" e "investimento" no Mantle, tal como a nVidia diz, então parabéns à AMD porque acabou de fazer um milagre sem mexer uma palha nem gastar um pataco (y, right...). Depois há Freesync, embora com muito menos investimento necessário, adoptado pela VESA no DisplayPort 1.3a, etc...
And btw, o facto da AMD ter mais jogos a caminho com Mantle não quer dizer muito nesta "batalha", os jogos continuam a ter DX e Mantle ao mesmo tempo, simplesmente correrá melhor na opção Mantle (especialmente hardware mais fraco). E se tiverem TressFX, então a nVidia não ter problemas com isso porque já tem maneira de o optimizar nas nVidia.
O problema da nVidia é que faz investimentos com objectivo de evelado "€xploit", enquanto a AMD os faz mais com objectivo principal de avançar a indústria e de forma aberta. E quando a coisa não corre tão bem para nVidia (G-Sync, Shield,...), digamos que não ficam tão bem na fotografia, especialmente considerando o marketing e royalties que esperam obter... A situação do Gameworks e seus ".dll", embora vá prevalecer, revela um caminho menos bom para a indústria, mas revela também o que a nVidia tem que fazer para se fazer notar (em termos de tech, porque em termos de market share está em melhor posição) num mercado actual que se está a modificar.
A resposta da nVidia:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aG2kIUerD4c
Jorge-Vieira
28-07-15, 15:01
Exclusive : Both Nvidia And AMD Sides of The GameWorks Story – Addressing Misconceptions And Getting To The Bottom Of The Issue Part 1
For this story we engaged with Nvidia and AMD to hear both sides of the GameWorks debate and get to the bottom of the issue. And I’m quite pleased to say that both parties were very receptive. There’s been a lot of confusion, a lot of hearsay, misconceptions and mischaracterizations around several aspects of this vital issue that we mean to address head-on today. And with the help of both Nvidia and AMD we’re hoping that we will come out with a clear understanding of both perspectives at either end of the discussion table and perhaps even find common ground from which potential solutions can spawn.
http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/nvidia-geforce-gtx-960-nvidia-gameworks.png (http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/nvidia-geforce-gtx-960-nvidia-gameworks.png)
We should start by explaining what GameWorks is and the motivations that had sparked its creation.
What GameWorks Is And Why It ExistsGameWorks is a developer program set-up by Nvidia to provide game developers with a collection of graphics libraries and tools aimed at improving the visual quality of games. It includes technologies such as PhysX – Nvidia’s proprietary physics engine – as well as VisualFX which encompasses a number of Nvidia optimized rendering techniques and in-game visual effects. These include things like shadows, anti-aliasing, depth of field, global illumination, hair simulation, ambient occlusion, lighting and other effects.
Below you will find the VisualFX solutions as listed on Nvidia’s website (https://developer.nvidia.com/content/introducing-nvidia-gameworks).
VisualFX (https://developer.nvidia.com/gameworks-visualfx-overview) provides solutions for rendering and effects including:
HBAO+ (https://developer.nvidia.com/shadowworks) Enhanced Horizon Based Ambient Occlusion
TXAA (https://developer.nvidia.com/postworks) Temporal Anti-aliasing
Soft Shadows (https://developer.nvidia.com/shadowworks) Improves on PCSS to reach new levels of quality and performance, with the ability to render cascaded shadow maps
Depth of Field (https://developer.nvidia.com/postworks) Combination of diffusion based DOF and a fixed cost constant size bokeh effect
FaceWorks (https://developer.nvidia.com/faceworks) Library for implementing high-quality skin and eye shading
WaveWorks (https://developer.nvidia.com/waveworks) Cinematic-quality ocean simulation for interactive applications
HairWorks (https://developer.nvidia.com/hairworks) Enabling simulation and rendering of fur, hair and anything with fibers
GI Works (https://developer.nvidia.com/gi-works) Adding Global Illumination greatly improves the realism of the rendered image
Turbulence (https://developer.nvidia.com/apex-turbulence) High definition smoke and fog with physical interaction as well as supernatural effects
Nvidia told us about several motivations which formed the primary driving force behind the development of the GameWorks program. For starters the program would allow the company to both widen its scope of reach and speed up the adoption rate of its technologies. The company had grown frustrated from how slowly things moved and it had to accelerate the turnover of its investment in this field. Faster and wider adoption means that more games can leverage more of Nvidia’s tech. This in turn translates to the creation of more games where the company can positively influence both the performance and the visuals to offer users of its latest GeForce products a better experience. But perhaps more importantly it gives the company a competitive advantage by which it can justify its investment.
We’re told that the rate of adoption was lacking because games had grown more complex and so had the visual effects and rendering techniques in these games. By offering developers the convenience of an easy to integrate dynamically linked library – essentially a middleware solution – that’s already optimized for Nvidia’s hardware, it can cut back tremendously on the development time and allow game developers to dedicate their resources to focus on other areas in their games.
The fact that Nvidia maintains tight quality control measures over its GameWorks libraries means that it can guarantee the level of quality and performance of each feature once it’s in the game. It also means that the company can more quickly and readily update and iterate on each library to introduce better visuals and superior performance characteristics on a regular basis. This in turn gives Nvidia a more authoritative (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/authoritative) say in how the feature runs and looks in the game, after all it is its intellectual property.
This approach of providing game developers with ready-made effects in the form of DLLs as a middleware solution differs from the traditional approach that Nvidia has taken before GameWorks’ inception. And also differs from the approach that its competitors, namely Intel and AMD, continue to follow. The traditional approach involves supplying game developers with the source code of the feature so it can be implemented directly into the game rather than through a middle layer. The developers would have complete freedom over how the feature is implemented, they can look at the source code and make changes to it as they see fit. In this case the game developer would maintain the ultimate say in how their game looks, runs and more importantly how it’s optimized.
With the GameWorks program developers can gain access to source code through a licensing deal with Nvidia. However this means that developers are not allowed to share this code with anyone else without a license, this obviously includes Nvidia’s competitors like AMD and Intel.
However we’re told that game developers are still allowed to optimize GameWorks features for competitors’ hardware without showing it to them and as long as it does not negatively impact the performance of Nvidia hardware.
This is inherently different from the industry standard approach discussed earlier, where the developer not the hardware vendor – in this case NVIDIA – gets to decide who can and cannot see the code and what they can do to it. It brings us back to the earlier point about how GameWorks enables Nvidia to have a more authoritative say in the game’s performance.
I also have to point out an important distinction here between a regular GameWorks-developer partnership and a source license. By default Nvidia provides GameWorks features in binary only builds without source code (http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Editorial/NVIDIA-and-AMD-Fight-over-NVIDIA-GameWorks-Program-Devil-Details/NVIDIAs-Response). The license to gain access to source code is not automatically given to Nvidia GameWorks partners and certainly not for free. If the developer wants access to the source code they have to specifically request a source license and are required to pay a fee. Unfortunately, Nvidia has not shared with us or any other publication what this fee is.
And this is where things get quite complicated and a few points of contention arise; both from AMD’s perspective and some game developers’ perspective. The first of which is that this puts some limits on the developers’ control over their game. Because it’s not their own code, rather it is Nvidia’s code that they’ve merely licensed. So they have to follow the guidelines set forth by the licensor. And this creates a different dynamic where some decisions – that would traditionally be made by the developer – would now be delegated to Nvidia instead.
“It’s not CD Projekt Red’s decision to allow the Nvidia tech to work on AMD GPUs – that is Nvidia’s decision and most commonly-used features from us are platform-agnostic. It’s the same for CPU-based PhysX and Clothworks as well.” Eurogamer.com (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2015-does-nvidia-hairworks-really-sabotage-amd-performance)
Clearly the implications of this beg a serious discussion and there were many questions that we wanted to ask both NVIDIA and AMD, so we talked to both. Let’s start with NVIDIA first. I’ve personally spent over an hour on the phone with NVIDIA’s head of PR for GameWorks, Brian Burke. He eagerly wanted to get on the phone to kick off this discussion and an hour long international call is nothing to sniff at. I’ve made sure to make mention of this because it just goes to show how important this debate truly is and how much it means to NVIDIA, so hats off to Brian for reaching out to us!
We discussed NVIDIA’s GameWorks developer program at length as well as some specifics with regards to its implementation in some games like The Witcher 3. But because the discussion had gone on for such a long time I followed up with Brian to distill it down to one digestible interview.
Interview with NVIDIA’s Brian Burke
What’s the difference between Nvidia’s The Way It’s Meant To Be Played sponsorship program and the GameWorks developer program ?
TWIMTBP is our promise of a great gaming experience. GameWorks helps us achieve that promise. GameWorks encompasses all of the game-related technologies we’ve invented over the years, the graphics technologies and the tools to implement them that help game developers build better games. It is backed by over 300 visual effects engineers who develop libraries, developer tools, and samples, and who work closely with developers to help enhance their games.
In other words TWIMTBP is a marketing program through which game developers can partner with Nvidia to co-market their game. While GameWorks is a developer program through which NVIDIA can work with game developers to integrate its GameWorks IP – library of optimized visual effects – into the developers’ IP in this case video games.
Nvidia has managed to work with developers for years to implement technologies invented by Nvidia, for example HBAO and TXAA in Crysis 3, why does Nvidia see a need for the GameWorks program now ?
We created GameWorks to advance gaming at a faster pace. To make games better, faster. Everyone at NVIDIA believes that great gaming hardware needs great gaming content. So we invest an enormous amount of our resources in making games better.
We used to just give out code samples for effects, and we still do. But as effects became increasingly more complex, just giving away code samples was not effective. It took too long to get the effects in to games and created work for developers. So we turned our library of special effects into a middleware solution. Productizing them into middleware is a more production-oriented approach to game effects. It makes integration easier and allows effects to be adopted by more developers more quickly, accelerating the pace of innovation in games.
This is what we had mentioned earlier with regards to games’ visual effects growing more complex and NVIDIA’s motiviation to speed up the rate of adoption of its IP.
Are game developers precluded from optimizing source code provided by Nvidia through the GameWorks program for non Nvidia hardware ?
No. Our agreements with developers don’t prevent them from working with any other IHVs to optimize their game or any GameWorks features. GameWorks is a middleware, and like any other middleware we offer developers a source licensing. We provide source code, under license, to developers who request it. Licensees just can’t redistribute our source code to anyone who does not have a license.
If a developer requests source code for an Nvidia GameWorks feature, under license, and is then provided with source code, is that developer then free to edit that code as they see fit to optimize it for IHVs other than Nvidia ? assuming they don’t redistribute it.
Yes. As long as it does not lower performance on NVIDIA GPUs
This is an important point to touch on. NVIDIA does not enforce any limitation, contractual or otherwise, on game developers’ ability to work with AMD to optimize their games. However because game developers’ are dealing with NVIDIA’s intellectual property it does exercise control over all GameWorks features and will always have the final say with regards to what can and cannot be done with any of the code it owns.
Can you talk about some of the new GameWorks effects that Nvidia has in the pipeline and will be bringing out ?
We can’t discuss unannounced stuff.
Does partaking in the GameWorks program preclude a game developer from working with AMD to implement an alternative to a specific GameWorks visual effect like HairWorks for example?
No. We don’t prohibit them from adding technologies from other IHVs to their games.
Are game developers, who partner with Nvidia to co-market their game, contractually obligated to use GameWorks code in their game ?
We want to market with games that offer the best gaming experience. Typically that means games with our tech inside. It’s not required.
Again we wanted to make sure there was no ambiguity with regards to any sort of limitation that a GameWorks partnership would entail. The GameWorks program itself does not inherently preclude game developers from working with AMD to implement AMD specific technologies.
A GameWorks partnership isn’t equivalent to an exclusive The Way Its Meant To Be Played co-marketing partnership for example. Where it is naturally expected that Nvidia technologies would exclusively be incorporated into the game. Or on the other end of the scale an exclusive AMD Gaming Evolved partnership, where tech from AMD would exclusively be incorporated into the game. GameWorks itself is an enablement tool, it could be used in a game that’s subject to an exclusive Nvidia co-marketing deal or equally end up in a game that is not.
What other methods besides editing source code can an IHV like yourself or your competitor use to optimize the performance of a specific in-game visual effect ?
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It is not impossible to optimize without source code. We don’t get source code for every game. But we still do a great job ensuring games run great on our platform as long as we have reasonable access to builds. Many developers don’t provide source code for their games to third parties, so we optimize games based on binary builds. We invest tens of millions of dollars annually in creating these technologies and it’s our intellectual property. We won’t share our IP with our competitors and I think that’s reasonable.
There are a couple of vitally important points that invite discussion here. The first is that Nvidia fully recognizes the importance of source code access and optimizing through source code. This is why the company, as discussed earlier, provides developers with the option of acquiring a source license to see and adjust source code. This is because Nvidia understands that there’s a lot that can be achieved through working directly with the source code itself. And undoubtedly improving and refining source code is often what yields the best results and leads to the most impactful performance improvements. Which is why it remains as one of the most desirable methods for optimizing performance in games and in fact it can sometimes be the only solution to the problem.
A great example of how important source code truly is would be the Tomb Raider reboot which launched last year. The game performed poorly on Nvidia hardware at launch, particularly so with TressFX Hair enabled which is AMD’s hair rendering and simulation technology similar to Nvidia’s more recent HairWorks feature.
The company laid the blame on not getting access to the final build of the game until very very close to launch. Which funnily enough is exactly the same issue AMD had with a number of GameWorks titles as well. Nvidia even issued a statement (http://www.pcgamer.com/tomb-raiders-geforce-performance-issues-being-looked-at-by-nvidia-and-crystal-dynamics/) at the time saying that the performance issues cannot be completely resolved through a driver update and game code changes on the developer’s end would have to be made.
<header> Andrew Burnes (http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/articles/nvidia-geforce-314-14-beta-drivers-released#comment-820105287)</header>
Please be advised that these issues cannot be completely resolved by an NVIDIA driver. The developer will need to make code changes on their end to fix the issues on GeForce GPUs as well. As a result, we recommend you do not play Tomb Raider until all of the above issues have been resolved.
Tomb raider was the first game to utilize AMD’s TressFX Hair – or any type of physical hair simulation technology – and Nvidia GPUs really struggled to run this DX11 Direct Compute based visual effect initially. This was not out of the ordinary as the compute heavy effect is expected to naturally run better on AMD GPUs which enjoy an inherit advantage in compute performance over equivalent Nvidia hardware, while Nvidia GPUs are inherently stronger in geometry. This is unsurprising as both AMD and Nvidia play to their respective hardware’s strengths with the graphics effects that they develop. We clearly see this with AMD’s compute based TressFX and with Nvidia’s tessellation based HairWorks.
That said GeForce GPUs were brought to parity with their respective Radeon equivalents in TressFX performance despite their compute deficit, no matter which team your graphics card was from running TressFX would have an identical performance impact (http://www.pcgameshardware.de/AMD-Radeon-Grafikkarte-255597/Tests/Tomb-Raider-PC-Grafikkarten-Benchmarks-1058878/galerie/2051093/). And it was achieved through a game patch with the necessary code changes to TressFX. Which goes to show how integral code is to the optimization process and the hurdles that it enables hardware vendors to overcome.
What also played a pivotal part in all of this is that AMD makes the source code for TressFX Hair – all of its developed visual effects – open (http://developer.amd.com/tools-and-sdks/graphics-development/amd-radeon-sdk/archive/) and publicly available (http://developer.amd.com/tools-and-sdks/graphics-development/amd-radeon-sdk/) for anyone to download, see and use.
http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/AMD-Developer-Website.jpg (http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/AMD-Developer-Website.jpg)AMD Developer Website (http://developer.amd.com/tools-and-sdks/graphics-development/amd-radeon-sdk/)
No license is required to use and incorporate any of these AMD developed effects in-games. Which can’t be said for any of the GameWorks features.
http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Locked-GameWorks.png (http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Locked-GameWorks.png)Nvidia Developer Website (https://developer.nvidia.com/gameworksdownload#?tx=$gameworks,visualfx), GameWorks Section
This open nature enables Nvidia to gain access to AMD code before it goes into any game via what’s publicly available and again once the code is in games because there’s no licensing involved, so the developers are free to share AMD’s code with Nvidia. And because these features are not packaged as a middleware solution they are integrated directly into games, so developers have full access to the source code to work with it and adjust it as they see fit.
With the Witcher 3 and HairWorks we saw nearly the exact same Tomb Raider scenario repeat itself with the roles reversed but with no similar success story in bringing the performance on both sides to parity. As mentioned earlier Nvidia played to its hardware’s strength with the tessellation based HairWorks feature so it was naturally expected that this effect would run better on Nvidia hardware. However what happened was very different from what we saw with TressFX.
A 13% performance advantage (http://wccftech.com/witcher-3-initial-benchmarks/) for Nvidia hardware in tessellation was turned to a 2X and 3X performance advantage running HairWorks. The game developers were not able to optimize the code for AMD nor was AMD able to even look at the code that’s running on its hardware.
“Many of you have asked us if AMD Radeon GPUs would be able to run NVIDIA’s HairWorks technology – the answer is yes! However, unsatisfactory performance may be experienced as the code of this feature cannot be optimized for AMD products. Radeon users are encouraged to disable NVIDIA HairWorks if the performance is below expectations.” CD Projekt Red’s Marcin Momot (http://forums.cdprojektred.com/threads/35278-Nvidia-HairWorks/page5?p=1658427#post1658427)
“It’s not CD Projekt Red’s decision to allow the Nvidia tech to work on AMD GPUs – that is Nvidia’s decision and most commonly-used features from us are platform-agnostic. It’s the same for CPU-based PhysX and Clothworks as well.” Eurogamer.com (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2015-does-nvidia-hairworks-really-sabotage-amd-performance)
So unlike TressFX where the feature performs the same on Nvidia and AMD hardware (http://www.pcgameshardware.de/AMD-Radeon-Grafikkarte-255597/Tests/Tomb-Raider-PC-Grafikkarten-Benchmarks-1058878/galerie/2051093/), HairWorks penalizes AMD hardware with double and up to triple the performance cost. In a statement issued to PCPer.com (http://www.pcper.com/news/Graphics-Cards/NVIDIA-Under-Attack-Again-GameWorks-Witcher-3-Wild-Hunt), Brian Burke stated that this was because of AMD’s tessellation performance. As we’ve noted earlier in the story it’s been historically well known that geometry performance has been one of Nvidia’s GPU architectures’ strong suits. Conversely AMD’s GPU architectures enjoy a similar lead in compute performance.
So we initially believed that what Brian had told PCPer was the intuitive thing to say. But seeing as how performance parity was achieved on the compute heavy TressFX despite Nvidia’s inherit disadvantage at compute we were puzzled. A performance penalty running HairWorks that’s two to three times as worse on the AMD side vs the Nvidia side stroke us as bizarre despite the inherent tessellation advantage in Nvidia’s favor and our initial impression meant that we wanted to investigate further.
We started off by looking at two evenly priced graphics cards, we landed on the $200 price point with Nvidia’s GTX 960 and AMD’s R9 285. We should point out that since then AMD replaced the R9 285 with the faster R9 380 but for all intents and purposes they’re architecturally identical. We looked at Metro Last Light with tessellation set to max as well as the very tessellation intensive Unigine Heaven 4.0 test with tessellation also set to max and finally we looked at a pure tessellation synthetic benchmark which was Tessmark. We tested both cards at the extreme setting, factor x32, which is what we have found to be the default setting for HairWorks in the Witcher 3.
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In our investigation we found that across a sample of Tessellation heavy games and benchmarks that the AMD Radeon R9 285 was either ahead of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 or at most 13% behind. Seeing as how Tessellation x32 is what’s used for HairWorks we were anticipating a similar 13% delta between the R9 285 and GTX 960.
But what we have found with HairWorks is that the performance cost on the R9 285 is double that of the Nvidia GPUs and it’s nearly three times for the R9 290X. If AMD’s tessellation performance was the real reason behind this huge penalty running HairWorks as Nvidia claims, then we would would’ve seen it reflected in our other tessellation tests but that’s clearly not what we’re seeing.
A 13% delta between the R9 285 and GTX 960 turns into a whopping 206% delta, in both instances running tessellation x32. The main difference is that in the first instance both cards were running a standard piece of code that both companies can optimize while in the second instance the R9 285 is running code developed by Nvidia that AMD cannot even see.There’s such an absolutely massive delta created by HairWorks that it cannot simply be explained by the innate differences in tessellation performance between AMD’s and Nvidia’s GPU architectures. There’s absolutely no doubt that the AMD hardware itself can run HairWorks far better than what we see today. And it’s so inconceivably bizarre that Nvidia would develop the code, conceal it from AMD and then blame their architecture for performing poorly when running it.
One of the discussion points that Brian and I talked about which did not make its way to the interview was about the balance of trading performance for added visual quality, and how much performance was being lost for some GameWorks features such as HairWorks.
I argued that due to how intensive HairWorks is at tessellation factor x32 ( the standard setting for the feature ) many gamers, including ones using NVIDIA hardware, may choose to disable it completely in favor of improving the overall performance of the game. And that those gamers would have probably appreciated the choice of toggling between different tessellation factors just as they would normally toggle between different gradients of any other effect such as shadows or anti aliasing. Rather they are forced to accept x32, which is very intensive, or nothing at all.
Having a slider for HairWorks that augments the tessellation factor would give gamers the freedom to adjust the feature and find the right balance between visual fidelity and performance that best suits their personal preferences.
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It’s abundantly clear that the company fears, many would argue falsely, that it may lose the competitive advantage that it has created with GameWorks by making the code accessible to its competitors. But by doing so it unfortunately took what has always been a traditional competitive play that leverages the hardware’s strong suit and turn it into something artificial.
There is no doubt that there is great value to be had from all the great technologies that the GameWorks program encompasses and clearly there are some genuine advantages – and disadvantages – to offering a middleware solution to game developers. Being a for profit organization NVIDIA obviously has to bank on its investments and make no mistake GameWorks is an investment. NVIDIA is taking a very aggressive approach to monetizing it, an approach that many gamers have and will certainly continue to hold objections to.
GameWorks is a double edged sword, not just for game developers but for NVIDIA as well. Because through promoting the use of its middleware in games NVIDIA has a responsibility to ensure everyone – not just owners of its latest and fastest products – is able to have a good experience and enjoy the game the way the developers intended for it to be enjoyed. This is essential for the company to maintain a healthy image in the gaming community and more importantly in the eyes of game developers who will be contemplating the idea of using NVIDIA technologies. If GameWorks proves to be a detriment to this goal then there’s clearly a problem that needs to be addressed.
Believe it or not we have only scratched the surface in part 1 of this story, so if you’ve enjoyed it stick around as we have much more to discuss.
Noticia:
http://wccftech.com/exclusive-nvidias-amds-perspectives-gameworks-bottom-issue/#ixzz3hCMSiZqW
GameWorks is a double edged sword, not just for game developers but for NVIDIA as well. Because through promoting the use of its middleware in games NVIDIA has a responsibility to ensure everyone – not just owners of its latest and fastest products – is able to have a good experience and enjoy the game the way the developers intended for it to be enjoyed.
Da parte da nVidia cagam para isso, e a razão para isso é simplesmente os valores da quota de mercado VS AMD. O Gameworks/Hairworks como algo fechado tem o intuito de não permitir a flexibilização da quantidade de tesselation (q permitiria adaptar-se mais às AMD), dar má imagem à concorrência, e aproveitar o facto dos noobs não ligarem puto a esse tipo de detalhes. Logo, quando é altura de comprar, não só eles levam a nVidia por mau julgamento de Gameworks, como aconselham outros (especialmente amigos) da mesma forma errónea. Numa altura turbulenta das consolas e fortalecimento de PC Gaming, isto acaba por ser negativo para a própria plataforma.
E grande parte da responsabilidade é das editoras e produtoras, que simplesmente também não fazem esse trabalho de casa, não estudam as consequências de mercado/reputação, aceitam os negócio$ que envolvem o apoio da nVidia / inclusão Gameworks, e depois têm que levar em cima com as queixas de gamers por algo que não é propriamente da sua responsabilidade, mas sim da nVidia. Mas como departamentos de contabilidade/marketing e departamentos técnicos são coisas diferentes que muitas vezes não sincronizam, se lixe. Num cenário responsável, as editoras simplesmente recusariam aplicar o Gameworks sem que houvesse abertura de código, seja para eles próprios optimizarem, seja para ter ajuda da AMD para assegurar que o jogo corre decentemente no hardware de qualquer cliente que compre o jogo. E dessa forma, ou a nVidia metia essa bodega na gaveta ou abria as techs para mostrar que contribui alguma coisa para o mercado. Mas não, desta forma actual, fica com proveito, mas também a má fama, que contagia as próprias produtoras através das queixas dos que compram o jogo.
nVidia tem estado em modo super-agressivo devido à altura em baixo da AMD, e estão de tal forma deslumbrados que nem têm medido bem as consequências de vários fails que têm tido. Não só no desempenho Hairworks nas suas próprias gráficas (especialmente de geração atrás), como em termos de "apoio" a jogos como o Batman que foram completos flops e inclusivé oferecidos em bundle na compra das GTX.
O facto da AMD tardar a levantar-se acaba por não ajudar isto a ter as proporções e consequências devidas.
Jorge-Vieira
01-08-15, 17:07
AMD Dubs Nvidia’s GameWorks Program Tragic And Damaging, Fight Over The Developer Program Continues
The heated debate over Nvidia’s GameWorks developer program is still on full throttle. Yesterday AMD’s Richard Huddy went on the offensive in an interview with PCR (http://www.pcr-online.biz/news/read/amd-slams-tragic-nvidia-gameworks-it-even-typically-damages-the-performance-on-nvidia-hardware/036660). Huddy, AMD’s Chief Gaming Scientist, had more than a few things to say about the program from the competition.
http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/nvidia-geforce-gtx-960-nvidia-gameworks.jpg (http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/nvidia-geforce-gtx-960-nvidia-gameworks.jpg)
Four days ago we published an exclusive four thousand word report (http://wccftech.com/exclusive-nvidias-amds-perspectives-gameworks-bottom-issue/) about the situation with Nvidia’s GameWorks program and many of its intricacies that covers both the Nvidia and AMD sides of the story which you should definitely go read before you proceed.
Going back to the issue of the day, when asked about Nvidia’s GameWorks program Huddy had this to say :
“If it was just that, then people could say: I’ll take my choice and turn it off if I’m with AMD and leave it on if I’m with Nvidia. But I think it’s more negative than that – and I’ll point to two facts here,”
“Number one: Nvidia Gameworks typically damages the performance on Nvidia hardware as well, which is a bit tragic really. It certainly feels like it’s about reducing the performance, even on high-end graphics cards, so that people have to buy something new.
“That’s the consequence of it, whether it’s intended or not – and I guess I can’t read anyone’s minds so I can’t tell you what their intention is. But the consequence of it is it brings PCs to their knees when it’s unnecessary. And if you look at Crysis 2 in particular, you see that they’re tessellating water that’s not visible to millions of triangles every frame, and they’re tessellating blocks of concrete – essentially large rectangular objects – and generating millions of triangles per frame which are useless.”
Huddy is referring to the over-tessellation that was discovered by TechReport.com (http://techreport.com/review/21404/crysis-2-tessellation-too-much-of-a-good-thing/2) in Crysis 2 a few years ago. Where invisible bodies of water and blocks of concrete were needlessly subjected to huge amounts of tessellation that did not contribute to the visual quality of the game but negatively impacted performance.
Here’s what TechReport’s Scott Wasson had to say about it at the time.
http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Crysis-2-Tessellation.jpg
“That’s right. The tessellated water mesh remains in the scene, apparently ebbing and flowing beneath the land throughout, even though it’s not visible. The GPU is doing the work of creating the mesh, despite the fact that the water will be completely occluded by other objects in the final, rendered frame.
That’s true here, and we’ve found that it’s also the case in other outdoor areas of the game with a coastline nearby.
Obviously, that’s quite a bit needless of GPU geometry processing load. We’d have expected the game engine to include a simple optimization that would set a boundary for the water at or near the coastline, so the GPU isn’t doing this tessellation work unnecessarily.”
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(http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Crysis-2-Tessellation.jpg)
“Yes, folks, this is some truly inspiring geometric detail, well beyond what one might expect to see in an object that could easily be constructed from a few hundred polygons. This model may well be the most complex representation of a concrete traffic barrier ever used in any video game, movie, or any other computer graphics-related enterprise.The question is: Why?
Why did Crytek decide to tessellate the heck out of this object that has no apparent need for it?
Yes, there are some rounded corners that require a little bit of polygon detail, but recall that the DX9 version of the same object without any tessellation at all appears to have the exact same contours. The only difference is those little metal “handles” along the top surface. Yet the flat interior surfaces of this concrete slab, which could be represented with just a handful of large triangles, are instead subdivided into thousands of tiny polygons.”
The TechReport offered this in their conclusion “One potential answer is developer laziness or lack of time. We already know the history here, with the delay of the DX11 upgrade and the half-baked nature of the initial PC release of this game. We’ve heard whispers that pressure from the game’s publisher, EA, forced Crytek to release this game before the PC version was truly ready. If true, we could easily see the time and budget left to add PC-exclusive DX11 features after the fact being rather limited.
There is another possible explanation. Let’s connect the dots on that one. As you may know, the two major GPU vendors tend to identify the most promising upcoming PC games and partner up with the publishers and developers of those games in various ways, including offering engineering support and striking co-marketing agreements. As a very high-profile title, Crysis 2 has gotten lots of support from Nvidia in various forms. In and of itself, such support is generally a good thing for PC gaming. In fact, we doubt the DX11 patch for this game would even exist without Nvidia’s urging. We know for a fact that folks at Nvidia were disappointed about how the initial Crysis 2 release played out, just as many PC gamers were. The trouble comes when, as sometimes happens, the game developer and GPU maker conspire to add a little special sauce to a game in a way that doesn’t benefit the larger PC gaming community. There is precedent for this sort of thing in the DX11 era. Both the Unigine Heaven demo (http://techreport.com/articles.x/18682/10) and Tom Clancy’s HAWX 2 (http://techreport.com/articles.x/19934/8) cranked up the polygon counts in questionable ways that seemed to inflate the geometry processing load without providing a proportionate increase in visual quality.”
Back to the PCR interview with Huddy,
“Now, bringing down AMD’s performance is pretty dodgy, but when they bring down their own consumers’ performance, then it makes you wonder what they’re up to. Their QA must be appalling if it’s a mistake, and if it’s not a mistake, it makes you wonder what their motivation must be. So I think it’s very unhelpful for the business.”
Here Huddy is likely referring to Nvidia’s HairWorks effect, as most other GameWorks features aren’t actually too demanding to run. Nvidia’s HBAO+ ambient occlusion feature for example, while slower on AMD, only costs a frame or two of performance. HairWorks on the other hand – as we’ve detailed in our previously mentioned exclusive report – is significantly slower on AMD than on Nvidia (http://wccftech.com/exclusive-nvidias-amds-perspectives-gameworks-bottom-issue/). We found no obvious reason for this disparity other than the closed nature of the HairWorks code making it inaccessible to AMD and thus quite difficult to optimize.
“If you look at the way the performance metrics come out, it’s damaging to both Nvidia’s consumers and ours, though I guess they choose it because it’s most damaging to ours. That’s my guess.”
With regards to the performance on Nvidia GPUs, we’ve seen a pattern emerge with a couple of GameWorks enabled games now like The Witcher 3 and Project Cars where older Nvidia GPUs – GTX 700 series and older – would show uncharacteristically poor performance (http://wccftech.com/witcher-3-initial-benchmarks/). Although I should point out that in these cases the performance of the GameWorks features themselves isn’t much worse on the older graphics cards than the newer ones, but the games as a whole perform significantly worse on the older cards. So it’s not a case of GameWorks features performing poorly on older Nvidia products, but a case of some GameWorks enabled games performing poorly in general on older Nvidia graphics cards.
“[Nvidia] don’t seem to care what the impact of GameWorks has on games either. If you look through the Metacritic scores of the games that Nvidia works with, they’re often quite damaged by the Gameworks inclusion, or at least the games themselves don’t score as well as you’d hope.”
“So I think it’s unhealthy for PC gaming. And I wish they would go back to the way everyone else develops their SDKs – give it a source code, let the games developer work with it as they see fit, and let us take the industry as a whole forward. That would be a better place to play.”
I’m going to end this with a quote from my four thousand word report about GameWorks (http://wccftech.com/exclusive-nvidias-amds-perspectives-gameworks-bottom-issue/) because I think it sums up the debate fairly well.
There is no doubt that there is great value to be had from all the great technologies that the GameWorks program encompasses and clearly there are some genuine advantages – and disadvantages – to offering a middleware solution to game developers. Being a for profit organization NVIDIA obviously has to bank on its investments and make no mistake GameWorks is an investment. NVIDIA is taking a very aggressive approach to monetizing it, an approach that many gamers have and will certainly continue to hold objections to.
GameWorks is a double edged sword, not just for game developers but for NVIDIA as well. Because through promoting the use of its middleware in games NVIDIA has a responsibility to ensure everyone – not just owners of its latest and fastest products – is able to have a good experience and enjoy the game the way the developers intended for it to be enjoyed. This is essential for the company to maintain a healthy image in the gaming community and more importantly in the eyes of game developers who will be contemplating the idea of using NVIDIA technologies. If GameWorks proves to be a detriment to this goal then there’s clearly a problem that needs to be addressed.
Noticia:
http://wccftech.com/fight-nvidias-gameworks-continues-amd-call-program-tragic/#ixzz3haG9PmO0
Jorge-Vieira
13-08-15, 13:54
What is GameWorks ?
The Witcher 3, Grand Theft Auto V, World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor, FarCry 4 …. All these great new games have one thing in common - NVIDIA GameWorks. GameWorks is our effort to push the limits of gaming. The result (https://developer.nvidia.com/gameworks-action) - a more interactive and cinematic game experience. Our goal - to enable a next-gen gaming experience for games you can buy now. We introduced GameWorks at the end of 2013. Since then we have been providing lots of new tools, tech and improved gaming experience. It’s an effort that’s come full circle. Not only are we getting inquiries from game developers who want to make their games more like movies – we are hearing from people in the movie industry, too. NVIDIA GameWorks offers a wealth of tech and tools for anyone creating great real-time visuals.
But GameWorks is more than a collection of technologies. We have dedicated over 300 engineers to research and development of new technologies. They are more than just top notch computer scientists. They also work with game developers to integrate all this cool tech.
Let’s break down some of our key GameWorks technologies.
<big>PhysX (https://developer.nvidia.com/gameworks-physx-overview)</big> – PhysX is a scalable multi-platform game physics solution supporting a wide range of devices, from smartphones to high-end multicore CPUs and GPUs. PhysX is already integrated into some of the most popular game engines such as UE4, Unity, RedEngine, Autodesk’s Stingray and many others. PhysX also enables simulation-driven effects like Clothing, Destruction and Particles. At the 2015 Game Developer Conference, we released the source code (https://developer.nvidia.com/physx-source-github) for the PhysX SDK as well as for PhysX Clothing and Destruction to help game developers easily create an immersive game environment. We also provide tools and tutorials (https://developer.nvidia.com/apex-physx-tutorials) to ensure game developers can easily integrate these additional features into their games.
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PhysX SDK (https://developer.nvidia.com/physx-sdk) – This is one of the most popular physics engines available. While the PhysX SDK is designed primarily for game developers, it is also used by researchers, educators, and simulation application developers who need real time performance and robust behavior. Features include discrete/continuous collision detection, raycasting, rigid body dynamic solvers, vehicle/character controllers, ....
https://developer.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/akamai/gamedev/images/physx-sdk.jpg
PhysX Clothing (https://developer.nvidia.com/apex-clothing) – PhysX Clothing lets artists quickly generate characters with dynamic clothing to create an ultra realistic interactive gaming experience. We started with clothing simulations in Mafia II (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8D2Kql392c), QQ Dance (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25FBgDS2hYM) and the Nurien Tech Demo (https://www.youtube.com/embed/oOK1L0Uo8KM). Since then, Clothing has been integrated into additional games including Batman: Arkham City (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0GnVSyYDjQ), Bioshock Infinite (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFJ0JTaMxUg), Daylight (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIKLadk1znQ), King of Wushu (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wLhkvDwGo0),The Witcher 3 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md4Hmgtl8q0) and many more games.
https://developer.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/akamai/gamedev/images/clothing.jpg
PhysX Destruction (https://developer.nvidia.com/apex-destruction) – PhysX Destruction enables artists to quickly generate pervasive destruction, which significantly enhances the gaming experience. The turnaround time for adding full or partial destruction to an object is a fraction of the time it once took, due to the fully artist-focused PhysX Destruction tool. PhysX Destruction provides support for full and partial destruction.
https://developer.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/akamai/gamedev/images/destruction.jpg
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<big>VisualFX (https://developer.nvidia.com/gameworks-visualfx-overview)</big> – The focus here is on realistic effects to provide a more dynamic gaming experience. To ensure that game developers can quickly use them, most features have been integrated into a special UE4 branch, and we are working on integrating the remaining ones.
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VXGI (https://developer.nvidia.com/vxgi) – This is all about global illumination, which has been a hard problem to solve in real-time. We are using an algorithm known as Voxel Cone Tracing. Global illumination computes all lighting in the scene, including secondary reflections of light of diffuse and specular surfaces. Adding global illumination to the scene greatly improves the realism of the rendered images. We integrated an early version into a special UE4 branch and have received great feedback.
https://developer.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/akamai/gameworks/images/GW_VXGI.jpg
HairWorks (https://developer.nvidia.com/hairworks) – Fur and hair aren’t minor details; when it doesn’t look right, you notice it. From the very beginning, our focus with HairWorks was to ensure a great artist pipeline. We spend a lot of time creating the right feature set and easy to use tools. The result - HairWorks has been used in Call of Duty: Ghost, FarCry 4, Monster Hunter Online Benchmark, King of Wushu, and The Witcher 3.
https://developer.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/akamai/gameworks/images/HairWorks11/HairWorks_Fur3.jpg
Turf Effects (https://developer.nvidia.com/turfeffects) – Our grass technology creates a fully geometrical representation. The rendering supports natural shading with correct shadows from the individual blades of grass as well as self-shadows. The simulation supports interaction with highly complex shapes, which permits new gameplay features. We’re building this relatively new technology into our special UE4 branch to put it into the hands of more developers.
https://developer.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/akamai/gamedev/images/TurfEffects.jpg
WaveWorks (https://developer.nvidia.com/waveworks) – This technology delivers cinematic-quality ocean simulation for waterborne action. Look for it in upcoming games, including War Thunder. We’ve also gotten inquiries from maritime simulation companies, who want to use our software to improve the realism of their products.
https://developer.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/akamai/gamedev/images/waveworks.jpg
FlameWorks (https://developer.nvidia.com/flameworks) – This is just what it sounds like - a system for generating realistic fire, smoke and explosion effects. It combines a state-of-the-art grid-based fluid simulator with an efficient volume rendering engine. The library can also be used for energy-based spell effects using volumetric rendering. We’ve had several inquiries from the film industry for this technology.
https://developer.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/akamai/gamedev/images/flameworks.jpg
Advanced Soft Shadows (PCSS) (https://developer.nvidia.com/shadowworks) – Go outside and look around and you’ll notice that the further a shadow is from the object that it is casting the shadow on, the softer the shadow is. Advanced soft shadows mirror this phenomenon to create more natural looking shadows in games such as Assassin’s Creed 4 Black Flag, Far Cry 4 and GTA V.
https://developer.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/akamai/gameworks/images/grand-theft-auto-v-pc-soft-shadows-001-nvidia-pcss-640px.jpg
HBAO+ (ambient occlusion) (https://developer.nvidia.com/shadowworks) – Nvidia has invested many hours optimizing the algorithms used to make the way scenes are lit more realistic. HBAO+improves upon existing Ambient Occlusion techniques to add richer, more detailed, more realistic shadows around objects that occlude rays of light. HBAO+ has been used in many games, from Call of Duty: Ghosts, TitanFall, Assassin’s Creed Unity to The Witcher 3. We integrated HBAO+ into a special branch of UE4 and are also providing a Unity plug-in.
https://developer.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/akamai/gamedev/images/postworks.jpg
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<big>NVIDIA Developer Tools (https://developer.nvidia.com/gameworks-tools-overview)</big> -- This collection of applications spanning desktop and mobile tools enables developers to build, debug and profile class leading and cutting-edge software which utilizes the latest visual computing hardware from NVIDIA.
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NVIDIA Nsight Visual Studio Edition (https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-nsight-visual-studio-edition) – Nsight brings GPU Computing into Microsoft Visual Studio and allows developers to debug, profile and trace heterogeneous compute and graphics applications using CUDA C/C++, OpenCL, DirectCompute, Direct3D, and OpenGL.
https://developer.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/akamai/tools/images/ParallelNsight_SSledAnalysis_thumb.png
NVIDIA AndroidWorks (https://developer.nvidia.com/AndroidWorks) – AndroidWorks installs all software tools required to develop for Android and reduces the complex process of configuring an Android development system down to a single click. Based on our Tegra Android Developer Pack (TADP), AndroidWorks is a professional grade solution designed to provide the best development platform for all Android devices - not only Tegra powered devices.
https://developer.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/250-250/akamai/tools/images/AndroidWorksSideGraphic.png
NVIDIA Nsight Tegra, Visual Studio Edition (https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-nsight-tegra) – Nsight Tegra brings the raw development power and efficiency of Microsoft Visual Studio to Android, giving you the right tools for the job. Flexible project management, accelerated compilation and integrated debugging, no need to massage makefiles and shell scripts, no voodoo magic or arcane incantations required.
https://developer.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/akamai/tools/images/nsight-tegra-ue4-no-device-info2.png
Tegra Graphics Debugger (https://developer.nvidia.com/tegra-graphics-debugger) – Graphics Debugging and Profiling for Tegra K1. Tegra Graphics Debugger is a console-grade tool that allows developers to debug and profile OpenGL ES 2.0, OpenGL ES 3.0, and OpenGL 4.x on Windows, OSX and Linux enabling game and graphics developers to get the most out of Tegra K1.
https://developer.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/akamai/gamedev/images/tegragraphicsdebugger2.png
Tegra System Profiler (https://developer.nvidia.com/tegra-system-profiler) – Tegra System Profiler is a multi-core CPU sampling profiler that provides an interactive view of captured profiling data, helping improve overall application performance. Available on Windows, Linux, or MacOSX host platforms and Tegra-based target platforms.
https://developer.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/akamai/tools/images/tegrasystemprofiler_2_1_sshot_md.png
NVIDIA PerfKit (https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-perfkit) – NVIDIA PerfKit is a comprehensive suite of performance tools to help debug and profile OpenGL and Direct3D applications. It provides access to low-level performance counters inside the driver and hardware counters inside the GPU itself. The counters can be used to determine exactly how the application is using the GPU, identify performance issues, and confirm that performance problems have been resolved.
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In addition to Developer Tools we provide authoring tools (https://developer.nvidia.com/apex-physx-tutorials), such as the PhysX plug-ins for 3DS Max and Maya which support PhysX Clothing and PhysXLab, which is a standalone tool for PhysX Destruction.
<big>Code Samples (https://developer.nvidia.com/gameworks-samples-overview)</big> – We have released several graphic and compute samples to show users how they can best put in place different features. Both DirectX and OpenGL graphics samples (including OpenGL ES) focus on advanced features such as anti-aliasing, tessellation, interleaved rendering, deferred contexts, compute shaders and instancing. The samples run from a single source base on Windows, Android, Linux desktop and Linux 4 Tegra.
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OpenGL Samples (https://developer.nvidia.com/gameworks-opengl-samples) – Includes samples for Blended Antialiasing, Cascaded Shadow Mapping, Conservative Rasterization, Normal-Blended Decal, Weighted, Blended, Order-independent Transparency, Particles, Water Surface, FXAA, HDR, Instanced Tessellation, Motion Blur, and more. The OpenGL samples include source for a simple cross-platform application framework which forms the basis of all the samples.
https://developer.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/akamai/gameworks/images/OpenGLSamples/BlendedAA-screenshot.png
DirectX Samples (https://developer.nvidia.com/gameworks-directx-samples) – Includes samples for Antialiased Deferred Rendering, Advanced Motion Blur, FXAA, Deinterleaved Texturing, Compute Filter, Soft Shadows, and more.
https://developer.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/akamai/gameworks/samples/D3DImages/motionbluradvanced-screenshot.jpg
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<big>Research/People (https://developer.nvidia.com/research)</big> – Our research team is working on leading edge visual effects and has published several papers at Siggraph, GTC and other conferences. The research topics span a wide range of technologies including large scale fluid simulations, strain based dynamics, unified particle physics, voxel based global illumination, and real time multi-layered clothing simulation.
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Fast Grid-Free Surface Tracking (http://matthias-mueller-fischer.ch/publications/explicitSurfaceTrackingPreprint.pdf) – We present a novel explicit surface tracking method. Its main advantage over existing approaches is the fact that it is both completely grid-free and fast which makes it ideal for the use in large unbounded domains. A further advantage is that it's running time is less sensitive to temporal variations of the input mesh than existing approaches.
https://developer.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/akamai/gameworks/images/GW_Research_SurfaceTracking.png
Air Meshes for Robust Collision Handling (http://matthias-mueller-fischer.ch/publications/airMeshesPreprint.pdf) – We propose a new method for both collision detection and collision response geared towards handling complex deformable objects in close contact. Our method does not miss collision events between time steps and solves the challenging problem of untangling auto-matically and robustly. It is conceptually simple and straight forward to parallelize due to the regularity of the algorithm.
https://developer.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/akamai/gameworks/images/GW_Research_AM.jpg
Unified Particle Physics for Real-Time Applications (http://matthias-mueller-fischer.ch/publications/flex.pdf) – We present a unified dynamics framework for real-time visual effects. Using particles connected by constraints as our fundamental building block allows us to treat contact and collisions in a unified manner, and we show how this representation is flexible enough to model gases, liquids, deformable solids, rigid bodies and cloth with two-way interactions.
https://developer.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/akamai/gameworks/images/GW_Research_FleX.png
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<big>People. Tools. Technologies.</big> In short, that’s GameWorks. It’s a program that’s more than the sum of its parts. Our unified GPU physics solver FleX is a great example for that. FleX is a particle based simulation technique for real-time visual effects that we created based on cutting-edge research. It’s using one unified solver for different simulated substances that can interact with each other. With FlexX we’ve built a tool that can bring this to gaming – and our team is working with developers to make this happen. The result: FleX will use the power of GPUs to create effects which before were only possible through offline applications.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA_k2NA80vM
Noticia:
https://developer.nvidia.com/content/what-gameworks
Jorge-Vieira
15-12-15, 15:54
AMD’s Answer To Nvidia’s GameWorks, GPUOpen Announced – Open Source Tools, Graphics Effects, Libraries And SDKs
As you read this AMD will have officially announced GPUOpen, a platform that delivers open source tools, graphics effects, libraries and SDKs. GPUOpen is AMD’s initiative to offer developers support with a robust set of tools and resources to extract the most out of GPUs for both gaming and compute applications. It enables game developers to create more beautiful, complex and immersive game worlds. And facilitates the employment of the powerful parallel engines inside modern GPUs for computation. All under a cohesive and easily accessible open source umbrella.
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We’ve detailed what GPUOpen is and what exactly AMD is offering with this new program to developers globally in a separate article which you can find here (http://wccftech.com/amd-further-embraces-open-source-with-gpuopen-for-games-and-compute). In this article we’re going to talk more about what this program means to you as a developer or a PC gamer and how it may represent the crucial step that the PC gaming industry has been missing to drive innovation in a way that benefits everyone involved and move the entire industry forward.
Both Sides Of The Coin, Nvidia’s & AMD’s Industry Catalysts To really understand what GPUOpen is and why it matters we have to go back to a program called GameWorks that Nvidia introduced a while back.
What GameWorks Is And Why It Exists GameWorks is a developer program set-up by Nvidia to provide game developers with a collection of graphics libraries and tools aimed at improving the visual quality of games. It includes technologies such as PhysX – Nvidia’s proprietary physics engine – as well as VisualFX which encompasses a number of Nvidia optimized rendering techniques and in-game visual effects. These include things like shadows, anti-aliasing, depth of field, global illumination, hair simulation, ambient occlusion, lighting and other effects.
Below you will find the VisualFX solutions as listed on Nvidia’s website (https://developer.nvidia.com/content/introducing-nvidia-gameworks).
VisualFX (https://developer.nvidia.com/gameworks-visualfx-overview) provides solutions for rendering and effects including:
HBAO+ (https://developer.nvidia.com/shadowworks) Enhanced Horizon Based Ambient Occlusion
TXAA (https://developer.nvidia.com/postworks) Temporal Anti-aliasing
Soft Shadows (https://developer.nvidia.com/shadowworks) Improves on PCSS to reach new levels of quality and performance, with the ability to render cascaded shadow maps
Depth of Field (https://developer.nvidia.com/postworks) Combination of diffusion based DOF and a fixed cost constant size bokeh effect
FaceWorks (https://developer.nvidia.com/faceworks) Library for implementing high-quality skin and eye shading
WaveWorks (https://developer.nvidia.com/waveworks) Cinematic-quality ocean simulation for interactive applications
HairWorks (https://developer.nvidia.com/hairworks) Enabling simulation and rendering of fur, hair and anything with fibers
GI Works (https://developer.nvidia.com/gi-works) Adding Global Illumination greatly improves the realism of the rendered image
Turbulence (https://developer.nvidia.com/apex-turbulence) High definition smoke and fog with physical interaction as well as supernatural effects
Nvidia told us about several motivations which formed the primary driving force behind the development of the GameWorks program. For starters the program would allow the company to both widen its scope of reach and speed up the adoption rate of its technologies. The company had grown frustrated from how slowly things moved and it had to accelerate the turnover of its investment in this field. Faster and wider adoption means that more games can leverage more of Nvidia’s tech. This in turn translates to the creation of more games where the company can positively influence the visuals to offer users of its latest GeForce products a better experience.
This in turn gives Nvidia a more authoritative (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/authoritative) say in how the feature runs and looks in the game, after all it is its intellectual property and perhaps more importantly it gives the company a competitive advantage by which it can justify its investment.
http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/gameworks-banner.png (http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/gameworks-banner.png)
By offering developers the convenience of an easy to integrate dynamically linked library – essentially a middleware solution – that’s already optimized for Nvidia’s hardware, it can cut back tremendously on the development time and allow game developers to dedicate their resources to focus on other areas in their games.
it’s still important to note that the initial introduction of GameWorks as a middleware solution was a subject of staunch criticism (http://wccftech.com/nvidia-responds-witcher-3-gameworks-controversy/) by the PC gaming community and numerous big names in the game development world, some of which went as far as to label GameWorks an “unusable blackbox”. Several issues were brought up around licensing, accessibility to source code and the developer’s ability to optimize for different, competing, hardware.
Nvidia has since made changes to its policies in response (http://wccftech.com/nvidia-responds-witcher-3-gameworks-controversy/) to requests from the game development community. We published a four thousand word in-depth investigative report (http://wccftech.com/nvidia-gameworks-amd-both-sides-analysis/) about GameWorks earlier this year that I’d urge you to check out if you’re interested in understanding both Nvidia & AMD sides of the GameWorks story.
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However in the end there were several issues rooted in the principle that were simply insurmountable. One hardware vendor providing a proprietary middleware solution which influences the visuals and performance of the game developer’s product as well as competing hardware was always going to result in some form of bias even if unintentional and that’s where GPUOpen comes in.
GPUOpen A Comprehensive Open Source Solution GPUOpen delivers a comprehensive approach to improving both gaming and compute in an industry wide approach that not only serves the Windows and DirectX ecosystem but also extends these benefits to Linux. All accessible from the GPUOpen portal on GitHub.
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It’s important to talk about what open source means in this context because it’s been a subject that had come under a lot of scrutiny in the past.
For example back in 2013 AMD introduced TressFX Hair which is the first hair physics and simulation technology of its kind to be implemented into a game. TressFX Hair as well as almost all of the visual effects developed by AMD are made available publicly (http://developer.amd.com/tools-and-sdks/graphics-development/amd-radeon-sdk/) for anyone to download and use on AMD’s developer website under a non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free, limited copyright license.
http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/AMD-Developer-Website.jpg (http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/AMD-Developer-Website.jpg)AMD Developer Website (http://developer.amd.com/tools-and-sdks/graphics-development/amd-radeon-sdk/)
Because these features are not packaged as a middleware solution they are integrated directly into games, so developers have full access to the source code to work with it and adjust it as they see fit. And this included a variety of effects such as soft shadows, high definition ambient occlusion, various techniques for anti aliasing, hair simulation global illumination and other effects.
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GPUOpen takes one step further for the sake of openness and adopts a model and a license that’s even more lenient. The license in question is MIT’s open source (https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT) license where everything can be used without restriction. Not only that but it also allows the assets to be altered, or improved and then sold for profit by any entity. This in turn gives a myriad of incentives to all kinds of independent developers, larger studios and even visual computing companies to actively participate in the initiative
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In many ways then GPUOpen tries to address the same industry challenges as GameWorks, but does so in a more cohesive and collaborative effort that allows the industry to move forward as a whole and where small contributions can come together to create something more effective, more exciting and more impactful than what each individual company can ever hope to achieve.
AMD is launching the GPUOpen platform this January with variety of effects, tools and SDKs planned, including : TressFX 3.0, GeometryFX, AOFX — Ambient Occlusion–, ShadowFX, LiquidVR SDK, DirectX 11 and 12 code samples, compute tools, and several other SDKs.
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Noticia:
http://wccftech.com/amds-answer-to-nvidias-gameworks-gpuopen-announced-open-source-tools-graphics-effects-and-libraries/#ixzz3uPBO8N8C
Opensources sempre foram boas ideias. Parece que os trabalhos feitos desta forma correm sempre mais rápido e melhor, existem mais ideias a fluir para um mesmo proposito.
Opensources sempre foram boas ideias. Parece que os trabalhos feitos desta forma correm sempre mais rápido e melhor, existem mais ideias a fluir para um mesmo proposito.
Boas!
Apenas não sei se isso chega para contrabalançar os €€€ que a Nvidia dá ás equipas dos jogos para integrarem o Gameworks...
Cumprimentos,
LPC
Jorge-Vieira
15-01-16, 13:59
Exclusive – What’s Next For Nvidia’s GameWorks? How It All Started And Where It’s Going
As a graphics company first and foremost Nvidia has made it a goal to be at the forefront of pushing visual computing technology in every avenue where it’s deemed feasible. The GameWorks program is a prime example of the company’s extensive hands-on approach to push graphics technology to its limits in arguably the purest, most engaging and most challenging media of all, video games.
http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/The-Witcher-3-Nvidia-GameWorks.jpg (http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/The-Witcher-3-Nvidia-GameWorks.jpg)The Witcher 3
Games have been long regarded as works of art. They’re creations sculpted in the eyes of their creators to make their dreams a living breathing reality. Game worlds are truly that, worlds. They’re complex and intricate constructions that exist not only to serve the purpose of achieving the desired gameplay design but more importantly to tell a story. And what better way to tell a story than to visualize it. The process by which an idea evolves to something that you can interact with using your most stimulating sense of all, sight.
And it’s this process of creation, of transforming a concept into something tangible that we can interact with using our senses is what truly defines creativity. The more ambitious the project the more challenging it becomes for creators to make their ideas a reality as they’ve envisioned them. This is where a program like GameWorks can help bright minds in the game development world make their games look the way they’ve always thought they should look and put them on our screens.
Nvidia GameWorks : How It All Started And Where It’s Going Today you’re in for a treat. I’ve been engaged with the folks over at Nvidia, who have kindly humored me for several weeks in my attempt to tell the GameWorks story in all of this. How it started, what it’s doing and where it’s going. So buckle up, because this is going to be a fun ride.
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Let’s begin by explaining what GameWorks actually is and why it exists. GameWorks is a developer program that was established by Nvidia in late 2013. Its goal is to provide developers with a collection of tools and graphics libraries for a variety of ends. Be it to help them improve the visual quality of their games, develop software for Virtual Reality solutions or even mobile platforms powered by Nvidia hardware.
A great number of technologies fall under GameWorks and they include software development kits, game physics engines and a library called VisualFX. This library encompasses a number of Nvidia optimized rendering techniques and in-game visual effects that span everything from shadows to anti-aliasing, depth of field, global illumination, hair and fire simulation, ambient occlusion, lighting, and other effects.
Below you will find the Physics and VisualFX solutions as listed on Nvidia’s website (https://developer.nvidia.com/content/introducing-nvidia-gameworks).
VisualFX (https://developer.nvidia.com/gameworks-visualfx-overview) Provides solutions for rendering and effects including:
HBAO+ (https://developer.nvidia.com/shadowworks) Enhanced Horizon Based Ambient Occlusion
TXAA (https://developer.nvidia.com/postworks) Temporal Anti-aliasing
Soft Shadows (https://developer.nvidia.com/shadowworks) Improves on PCSS to reach new levels of quality and performance, with the ability to render cascaded shadow maps
Depth of Field (https://developer.nvidia.com/postworks) Combination of diffusion based DOF and a fixed cost constant size bokeh effect
FaceWorks (https://developer.nvidia.com/faceworks) Library for implementing high-quality skin and eye shading
WaveWorks (https://developer.nvidia.com/waveworks) Cinematic-quality ocean simulation for interactive applications
HairWorks (https://developer.nvidia.com/hairworks) Enabling simulation and rendering of fur, hair and anything with fibers
GI Works (https://developer.nvidia.com/gi-works) Adding Global Illumination greatly improves the realism of the rendered image
Turbulence (https://developer.nvidia.com/apex-turbulence) High definition smoke and fog with physical interaction as well as supernatural effects
FLEX: https://developer.nvidia.com/<wbr>flex (https://developer.nvidia.com/flex)
Physics (https://developer.nvidia.com/gameworks-physx-overview) Rigid bodies, cloth, destruction, particles and fluids:
PhysX (https://developer.nvidia.com/physx-sdk) Scalable multi-platform game physics solution supporting a wide range of devices, from smartphones to high-end multicore CPUs and GPUs
Clothing (https://developer.nvidia.com/apex-clothing) Quickly generate dynamic clothing. Artist focused with intuitive and easy authoring tools
Destruction (https://developer.nvidia.com/apex-destruction) Enables artists to quickly generate pervasive destruction significantly enhancing the gaming experience
Particles & Fluids (https://developer.nvidia.com/apex-particles) Particles enable artists to easily provide a much more immersive environment by using physical particles which can interact e.g. with wind and explosion force fields. Particles can also be used to simulate fluids
We wanted to learn how the program has been received since its inception and the rate of adoption thatit has seen. As such, Nvidia’s Brian Burke has kindly agreed to share some stats exclusively with us. We’re told there are over 150 thousand members enrolled in the program as you read this, which is quite remarkable and it has seen constant growth month on month. Members of the program are very global and have wildly diverse needs. The most popular downloads we’re told are Nsight, Androidworks, PhysX, Flex and HairWorks.
Interview With Nvidia’s Rev Lebaredian – The Past, Present And Future Of GameWorks However, to really tell the story of how all of this came to be and where it’s going there’s really no better person to talk to than Rev Lebaredian, Mr GameWorks himself. Rev’s official position within Nvidia is Sr. Director, GameWorks and he has headed the program since its inception. Rev kindly agreed to chat on the phone a few weeks back and talk about how the program started, the challenges the team faced, where he hopes to take the program in the DirectX 12 era and what has been his proudest achievements.
Khalid Moammer – Editor, Hardware at WCCFTech.com
Please walk our readers through how GameWorks grew from an idea to a vision and ultimately to this large initiative with over 300 engineers, highlighting any important evolutionary milestones along the way since the program’s inception two years ago.
Rev Lebaredian – Sr. Director, GameWorks
“GameWorks as a name was introduced two years ago, but the team and the dedication to pushing the envelope have been in place for many years. For over a decade, we’ve been working closely with game developers to enhance and optimize their games, maximizing the full potential of our GPUs.
The creative engineers that worked with our partners developed new graphical techniques, wrote SIGGRAPH papers, published GeForce SDK Samples and example code, and produced some really incredible tech demos to push the leading edge of computer graphics. These efforts proved to be necessary, but not quite sufficient. One lesson we learned is that until we proof-test a new tech in a real game engine and ship it in a game, the job isn’t done. That’s why the GameWorks developer program emphasizes putting each tech to work in a game before it is fully released, to sort through the complex issues arising from real-world applications. Ultimately, we are passionate about pushing the limits of the gaming experience, and are committed to helping developers get to the future faster.”
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Rev explained that for long developers have had no incentive to use all of the new features that the latest hardawre has been bringing to the table. That’s because all the work and effort spent on these new technologies would only benefit a very small minority of the market that has adopted this new hardware. This meant that visuals were always several years behind and that’s why initiatives like GameWorks are very important to keep pushing the envelope.
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Khalid Moammer – Editor, Hardware at WCCFTech.com
How have you managed to cater to the broad spectrum of developers that range from the really experienced and adventurous who like to know every little detail about the tech and tweak it and others who just want things to work and don’t necessarily share the same level of interest in the nitty and gritty of things?
Rev Lebaredian – Sr. Director, GameWorks
“Our GameWorks program has evolved the past few years, as we figure out how to work best with different types of game developers. Some game developers are passionate about their own engines, and customizing how our technology is integrated with theirs; while others prefer to use existing 3rd party game engines (e.g. UE4, Unity), with our technology readily integrated for them. We’ve been working to please both types of developers as we integrate our technologies into popular engines, as well as modifying our APIs and source access to please the hardcore developers.”
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Rev made it a point to underline how developers. just like ordinary people, are a wildly diverse group with varying needs and goals. Hence their level of engagement in the program is naturally different and very much dependent on what they’re looking to achieve. Some are just happy to have the technology integrated and working while others love to learn about the technology, tinker and improve upon it
Rev went on to say that it’s really important to have a mechanism by which developers are able to do just that but in a away that doesn’t let code branch. So whatever improvements are made can then be passed on to all other developers. This also ensures that updates can be made on a continual basis without issue. Rev noted that this is a challenging area where it’s been a constant learning process for the team to work on and refine this mechanism.
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Khalid Moammer – Editor, Hardware at WCCFTech.com
DirectX 12 is coming next year bringing with it a few new features such as conservative raster and tiled resources. Have you run into any challenges or problems that you believe DirectX 12 or the new features can help you overcome in terms of realizing a visual effect or a performance target that was quite challenging under DX11?
Rev Lebaredian – Sr. Director, GameWorks
“We support all APIs that game developers care about. Currently, DX11 is still the most widely used API, so we continue to support it and provide efficient solutions within this API. That being said, as DX12 gains more adoption, we will release DX12 compatible versions of GameWorks modules, as we see demand for them.
Currently, we haven’t seen any cases where DX11 is limiting us in regards to GameWorks technologies, particularly the physically based ones.”
Khalid Moammer – Editor, Hardware at WCCFTech.com
What areas of the program or achievements are you proud of the most and which areas do you believe deserve more attention, development and general improvement? And can you give us some examples of game developers’ involvement in this process of improvement? Be it through feedback or other means.
Rev Lebaredian – Sr. Director, GameWorks
“Personally, I’m most proud of the adoption of our technology in top titles in the past few years. Most recently, we worked with Bethesda on the Volumetric Lighting feature in Fallout 4; the hair and fur in Witcher 3 was a big hit as well.
If it wasn’t for our hard work and cooperation with these game developers, some of the effects we can enjoy now would probably not be in any games for years to come.
We are continually looking to improve all of technologies through direct feedback from game developers, and from feedback from our own team of engineers and technical artists who work directly on title engagements. As our libraries, tools, and engine integrations mature, we’re seeing quicker adoption of our technology.
Let’s take a look at our PhysX SDK as an example. Since the first version shipped in 2005, thousands of developers have used PhysX in hundreds of games and demos, in several game engines, as well as for applications like education and industrial simulation. The PhysX ecosystem spans desktop, mobile, console and cloud platforms. Over the years we have received tons of feedback from our developer partners, particularly Epic, Unity, Natural Motion and Autodesk, among many others. Whenever practical, we collaborate directly with developers to implement new features, and we have often adopted changes suggested by customers. We co-developed our first PS3 ports with Sony. In 2015 we opened up source access through GitHUB.
Also, it’s always great to see how enthusiast gamers and the hobbyist communities make use of the tech we publish. There are many examples on Youtube, particularly from the Unreal Engine 4 crowd. Have a look at this video produced by Byzantos using VXGI , it’s a beautiful example.”
<iframe width="635" height="388" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cH2_RkfStSk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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Bringing this to a close it’s important to look back at 2015 and realize how significant it’s been for GameWorks. Last year has seen the highest level of adoption of Nvidia GameWorks technologies to date by our account. Not only have we seen more more major titles come out with GameWorks features than ever, but we’ve also seen some GW technologies make it into games for the very first time such as WaveWorks in Just Cause 3 (http://wccftech.com/just-cause-3-waveworks-detailed-nvidia-no-solution-can-achieve-this-realism/) and War Thunder.
We’re already two weeks into 2016 and while the Nvidia folks told us that they weren’t ready to announce anything new just yet, they did hint at some exciting things to come this year for GameWorks and DirectX 12. Which makes a year that’s already shaping up to be one of the most exciting for gamers and enthusiasts (http://wccftech.com/most-exciting-pc-gaming-tech-coming-in-2016/) even better.
Noticia:
http://wccftech.com/exclusive-nvidias-gameworks-started/#ixzz3xJyzgMv4
(http://wccftech.com/exclusive-nvidias-gameworks-started/#ixzz3xJyzgMv4)
Jorge-Vieira
06-03-16, 14:06
Nvidia GameWorks HBAO+ Behind Visual Corruption In Gears Of War Ultimate Edition
Earlier this week Gears of War: Ultimate Edition was exclusively released on the Windows 10 Store as the world’s first DirectX 12 game. An event that was supposed to represent Microsoft’s commitment to PC gaming and a community that has been growing inpatient for many years with a company that it believes has effectively abandoned it in favor of chasing the elusive “living room” market.
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[UPDATED 03/05/2016 03:35 PM] We’ve just learned that no one at AMD was informed by Microsoft that review codes were being handed out to journalists for performance testing earlier this week and only found out after the fact.
We have also tested the game again with the newly released patch. This patch was intended to fix the visual corruption issue with ambient occlusion turned on. However, it appears that all this patch does to address the issue is forcibly disable Ambient Occlusion, even if enabled through the menu.
Gears of War : Ultimate Edition post-patch – Ambient Occlusion On – R9 Nano http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/AMD-Radeon-Gears-of-War-Ultimate-Edition-Ambient-Occlusion-On.jpgGears of War Ultimate Edition post-patch / Ambient Occlusion On
Gears of War : Ultimate Edition post-patch – Ambient Occlusion Off – R9 Nano http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/AMD-Radeon-Gears-of-War-Ultimate-Edition-Ambient-Occlusion-Off.jpgGears of War Ultimate Edition post-patch / Ambient Occlusion Off
http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/12787215_10100126885168469_1733808464_o_2.jpgPhoto showing Gears of War : Ultimate visual corruption – Taken by our Hardware Editor Keith May
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Sadly what we ended up with was a broken mess and “one of the most disastrous PC game launches in years” writes Forbes’s Jason Evangelho (http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2016/03/01/gears-of-war-ultimate-edition-on-pc-is-a-disaster-for-amd-radeon-gamers/#6c96256e7e7e). We covered the many foibles of this, there’s no other word for it, broken game earlier in the week. We would highly advise you to go check out that article (http://wccftech.com/amd-nvidia-gears-of-war-ultimate-broken/) if you haven’t already as we’re not going to cover all of the game’s issue here. Rather we will focus on the elephant in the room. Something that’s been so often cited as the culprit in many broken games in the past.
Controversy Always Seems To Find Nvidia’s GameWorks Program GameWorks is a developer program that was established by Nvidia in late 2013. Its goal was to provide developers with a collection of tools and graphics libraries for a variety of ends. Be it to help them improve the visual quality of their games or develop software for Virtual Reality solutions and mobile platforms powered by Nvidia hardware.
We’re going to focus primarily on the PC wing of the GameWorks program, more specifically a library dubbed VisualFX. This library encompasses a number of Nvidia optimized rendering techniques and in-game visual effects that span everything from shadows to anti-aliasing, depth of field, global illumination, ambient occlusion, lighting, hair and fire simulation as well as other effects.
http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/NVIDIA-GameWorks.jpg
There’s been a lot of controversy, a lot of confusion, hearsay, misconceptions and mischaracterizations around several aspects of GameWorks since its inception. GameWorks had been a subject of debate for a long while due to various concerns over alleged obfuscation of developers’ control (http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/173511-nvidias-gameworks-program-usurps-power-from-developers-end-users-and-amd) by Nvidia and the serious implications this has (http://wccftech.com/witcher-3-initial-benchmarks/) on the technical quality and performance of games involved with the program. There were also numerous accusations (http://wccftech.com/fight-nvidias-gameworks-continues-amd-call-program-tragic/) of GameWorks harming the gaming industry and sabotaging the performance of AMD hardware.
A number of prominent developers went as far as to describe the program at one point as a “blackbox” (http://wccftech.com/nvidia-responds-witcher-3-gameworks-controversy/)and called it “unusable” at the early stages of its life. All of this is what prompted us to take a deeper look into the program and investigate the numerous claims (http://wccftech.com/nvidia-gameworks-amd-both-sides-analysis/) being made. However, it’s been a long while since many of those concerns had been voiced and Nvidia did react by introducing improvements and adjustments (http://wccftech.com/nvidia-gameworks-amd-both-sides-analysis/2/) along the way to address many of the issues raised.
Suffice to say it’s been a hot topic that we attempted to address head-on by talking with both Nvidia and AMD in a four thousand word investigative report (http://wccftech.com/fallout-4-nvidia-gameworks/) that I published last year. Earlier this year I spoke with Nvidia again and published a follow-up to underline some of the much needed improvements (http://wccftech.com/exclusive-nvidia-gameworks-directx-12/) and changes that the company has made.
Unfortunately it seems the controversy never ends. Beginning with a string of disastrous game launches – Including the terribly buggy and poor performing Assassin’s Creed Unity (http://wccftech.com/ubisoft-points-finger-amd-technical-bugs-assassins-creed-unity/) And the similarly broken Batman Arkham Knight (http://wccftech.com/nvidia-encouraging-users-disable-sli-batman-arkham-knight-due-performance-issues/) – on the PC over the past two years all of which were part of the GameWorks program to the ultimately broken Gears of War : Ultimate Edition which was released earlier this week.
Nvidia’s HBAO+ GameWorks Feature Is Behind The Visual Corruption Issue In Gears Of War Ultimate Editionhttp://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/yuck2-635x357.png
http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/yuck-635x357.png Screenshots showing Gears of War : Ultimate visual corruption – Taken by our Hardware Editor Keith May
As it turns Nvidia’s HBAO+ ambient occlusion feature was the culprit behind the horrible artifacting / visual corruption issue that plagued some of AMD’s Radeon graphics cards. What’s more eyebrow-raising is the fact that there isn’t even any mention of HBAO+ inside Gears of War Ultimate Edition’s graphics settings menu. There’s only an option to turn “Ambient Occlusion” on or off, with no mention of what type of ambient occlusion it is.
http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/GoWsettings.jpg (http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/GoWsettings.jpg)
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Typically when a vendor specific visual effect is implemented in any game it ends up listed under its vendor specific designation . For example HairWorks would be listed as HairWorks and HBAO+ under HBAO+ rather than given generic “hair physics” or “ambient occlusion” designations. When no such specificity is present it’s assumed that the visual effect in question is a developer specific, hardware agnostic implementation.
In the case of Gears of War Ultimate Edition it was Nvidia’s proprietary HBAO+ GameWorks feature (https://developer.nvidia.com/shadowworks) listed under a generic name. In fact we only learned that the ambient occlusion implementation in Gears of War : Ultimate Edition was in fact HBAO+ when Nvidia’s Andrew Burnes announced the availability of Game Ready drivers on the GeForce.com blog (http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/articles/far-cry-primal-gears-of-war-ultimate-edition-game-ready-driver-released) and named it as one of the game’s features.
http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/NVIDIA-HBAO-gears-of-war.jpgSource : GeForce.com – Game Ready Driver Announcement (http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/articles/far-cry-primal-gears-of-war-ultimate-edition-game-ready-driver-released)
I can only speculate about why the decision was even made by Microsoft to give HBAO+ a generic label. It’s quite unusual and very much the opposite of what you’d want to do as a developer to ensure transparency. For contrast let’s look at what the Far Cry 4 developers decided to label the exact same ambient occlusion implementation in their game’s menu.
http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Far-Cry-4-Nvidia-GameWorks-HBAO.jpg
Far Cry 4 – visual quality settings menu
Not only is it plainly labeled as a GameWorks feature but it’s also optional. As in it’s not part of any of the game’s graphics presets. On the other hand in the case of Gears of War Ultimate Edition, HBAO+ is enabled by default if the Ultra preset is selected.
Disabling HBAO+ Will Solve The Visual Corruption Issue But That’s Only The Tip Of The Iceberg Simply turning off ambient occlusion in the settings will completely resolve the artifacting that we witnessed while testing the AMD Radeon R9 Nano and R9 380 graphics cards.
<iframe width="635" height="388" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/73LpLwPfbbw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
As it turns out HBAO+ wasn’t the only thing hidden behind a veil. Whilst digging into the game’s files a friend of WCCF – youtuber Blindrun (https://www.youtube.com/user/blindrungaming) – spotted a very interesting hidden game file. The file is BaseEngine.ini and it can be found in the following folder path on Windows 10 : C:\ProgramFiles\WindowsApps\Microsoft.DeltaPC_1.6. 0.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe\Engine\Config
The WindowsApps folder is windows protected. Which you means that you’ll have to jump through some hoops to actually access it. But here’s how to do it (http://superuser.com/questions/498774/how-to-get-access-to-c-program-files-windowsapps-in-windows-8).
http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/BINGO.jpg
In BaseEngine.ini we spotted a very peculiar entry. “bDisablePhysXHardwareSupport=False”. More peculiar is the fact that this file cannot be edited in anyway. If it is, the game will simply overwrite any changes once it’s booted up and connected to Microsoft’s servers.
The entry means that hardware accelerated PhysX is enabled by default in the game and because any changes to the file are overwritten automatically upon game start-up means it can’t be disabled. For those of you unaware PhysX is Nvidia’s proprietary game physics engine (http://www.nvidia.com/object/physx_faq.html) and can only be accelerated by Nvidia’s own graphics cards. If a competing GPU is detected by the PhysX driver, the work will instead be automatically offloaded onto the CPU. This in turn means that the feature will run disproportionately slower on non Nvidia equipped systems.
In the past, all games that included hardware accelerated PhysX features such as debris, water physics and so on included the option to turn it off. This was critical because these features directly influenced how the game performed. The option was also necessary when evaluating AMD and Nvidia graphics cards to ensure that the testing was done on an even playing field.
Additionally, because hardware accelerated PhysX features are only visual and aren’t part of the game’s core mechanics ;disabling them would not affect the game’s behavior in any way. Sadly because we are unable to turn off hardware acceleration in Gears of War Ultimate Edition we don’t know what it’s actually doing. And whether it could account for some of the performance disparity we’re seeing between Nvidia and AMD graphics cards. Right now we simply don’t know what effect it has because we simply can’t test it.
Suffice to say there seem to be some “shenanigans” going on here so we’ll keep a close watch and update everyone accordingly. In the meantime we’d advise PC gamers to wait until the mist clears on the issues surrounding this troubled PC release before pulling the trigger.
Noticia:
http://wccftech.com/nvidia-gameworks-visual-corruption-gears-war-ultimate-edition/#ixzz428CeZTr2
Espera-se mais umas guerras por causa disto...
A nVidia podia aplicar as suas tecnologias mas sem prejudicar ninguém e, já não é a primeira vez que isto acontece... quem fica prejudicado são sempre os consumidores.
(http://wccftech.com/nvidia-gameworks-visual-corruption-gears-war-ultimate-edition/#ixzz428CeZTr2)
Ultimate visual corruption parece-me...apropriado:)
Já não bastava a cortina da nVidia, agora ainda tem outra da M$ à frente. E com isso cada vez se complica mais o averiguar destas tretas por parte do jornalismo, porque obviamente a M$ não quer cá ninguém a mexericar com os files. Isto tá a ficar bonito está...
Jorge-Vieira
17-03-16, 09:30
Details about NVIDIA's GameWorks 3.1 Update...
Shedding a little light on Monday's announcement Most of our readers should have some familiarity with GameWorks, which is a series of libraries and utilities that help game developers (and others) create software. While many hardware and platform vendors provide samples and frameworks, taking the brunt of the work required to solve complex problems, this is NVIDIA's branding for their suite of technologies. Their hope is that it pushes the industry forward, which in turn drives GPU sales as users see the benefits of upgrading.
http://www.pcper.com/files/imagecache/article_max_width/review/2016-03-16/nvidia-2016-gdc-gameworksmission.png (http://www.pcper.com/image/view/67537?return=node%2F65003)
This release, GameWorks SDK 3.1, contains three complete features and two “beta” ones. We will start with the first three, each of which target a portion of the lighting and shadowing problem. The last two, which we will discuss at the end, are the experimental ones and fall under the blanket of physics and visual effects.
http://www.pcper.com/files/imagecache/article_max_width/review/2016-03-16/nvidia-2016-gdc-volumetriclighting-fallout.png (http://www.pcper.com/image/view/67538?return=node%2F65003)
The first technology is Volumetric Lighting, which simulates the way light scatters off dust in the atmosphere. Game developers have been approximating this effect for a long time. In fact, I remember a particular section of Resident Evil 4 where you walk down a dim hallway that has light rays spilling in from the windows. Gamecube-era graphics could only do so much, though, and certain camera positions show that the effect was just a translucent, one-sided, decorative plane. It was a cheat that was hand-placed by a clever artist.
http://www.pcper.com/files/imagecache/article_max_width/review/2016-03-16/nvidia-2016-gdc-volumetriclighting-shaftswireframe.png (http://www.pcper.com/image/view/67539?return=node%2F65003)
GameWorks' Volumetric Lighting goes after the same effect, but with a much different implementation. It looks at the generated shadow maps and, using hardware tessellation, extrudes geometry from the unshadowed portions toward the light. These little bits of geometry sum, depending on how deep the volume is, which translates into the required highlight. Also, since it's hardware tessellated, it probably has a smaller impact on performance because the GPU only needs to store enough information to generate the geometry, not store (and update) the geometry data for all possible light shafts themselves -- and it needs to store those shadow maps anyway.
http://www.pcper.com/files/imagecache/article_max_width/review/2016-03-16/nvidia-2016-gdc-volumetriclighting-shaftsfinal.png (http://www.pcper.com/image/view/67540?return=node%2F65003)
Even though it seemed like this effect was independent of render method, since it basically just adds geometry to the scene, I asked whether it was locked to deferred rendering methods. NVIDIA said that it should be unrelated, as I suspected, which is good for VR. Forward rendering is easier to anti-alias, which makes the uneven pixel distribution (after lens distortion) appear more smooth.
Read on to see the other four technologies, and a little announcement about source access (http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/Details-about-NVIDIAs-GameWorks-31-Update).
http://www.pcper.com/files/imagecache/article_max_width/review/2016-03-16/nvidia-2016-gdc-vxao-tombraider-logo.png (http://www.pcper.com/image/view/67541?return=node%2F65003)
The second technology is Voxel Accelerated Ambient Occlusion (VXAO). Currently, Ambient Occlusion is typically a “screen-space” effect, which means that it is applied on the rendered image buffers. It can only use the information that is available within those buffers, which is based on the camera's 2.5D projection of the world. Voxel Accelerated Ambient Occlusion calculates ambient occlusion results upon a grid of voxels, in world space. It is not limited to camera's view of the world.
http://www.pcper.com/files/imagecache/article_max_width/review/2016-03-16/nvidia-2016-gdc-vxao-tank-ssao.png (http://www.pcper.com/image/view/67542?return=node%2F65003)
This is the current technology, which collects data from the camera's buffers.
The actual occlusion information is gathered by ray tracing from points within this voxel grid, outward in a hemisphere, to other points in the voxel grid. Axis-aligned voxels are highly efficient to ray trace, especially compared to triangles. Volume elements (vo... x el...) that are very close to other objects tend to appear darker, which is basically because indirect light bounces have fewer potential directions to come from.
http://www.pcper.com/files/imagecache/article_max_width/review/2016-03-16/nvidia-2016-gdc-vxao-tank-vxao.png (http://www.pcper.com/image/view/67543?return=node%2F65003)
VXAO uses world-space data, which properly shades the ground under the tank.
SSAO, on the other hand, has no way of knowing how deep the tank is.
In a truly realistic simulation, global illumination would be computed directly, rather than dimming your added “indirect” light term by some AO value at various points in space. That is slow, though... like, “too slow for Pixar” levels of slow. SSAO does a pretty good job considering its limitations, but VXAO takes the approximation further by accounting for the actual environment (rather than the camera's slice of it, as we've mentioned). This should be a major improvement for moving cameras, although you can definitely see the difference even in screenshots.
http://www.pcper.com/files/imagecache/article_max_width/review/2016-03-16/nvidia-2016-gdc-vxao-tank-voxels.png (http://www.pcper.com/image/view/67544?return=node%2F65003)
The buffer NVIDIA creates. Partially filled voxels visualized as blue; full as red; empty clear.
The third technology is called Hybrid Frustum Traced Shadows (HFTS), which increases the quality of dynamic shadows. Rather than using just shadow maps, shadows are also computed by rasterizing geometry in light-space and determining if a list of screen pixels are occluded by them. The two results, frustum traced shadows and the soft shadows that are calculated by PCSS, are interpolated between by distance from the occluding object. This gives sharp, accurate, high-quality shadows up close that smoothly blur with distance.
http://www.pcper.com/files/imagecache/article_max_width/review/2016-03-16/nvidia-2016-gdc-hfts-without.png (http://www.pcper.com/image/view/67545?return=node%2F65003)
Some sites reported, based on Monday's original press release, that NVIDIA is ray tracing these shadows. That is incorrect. NVIDIA states that the algorithm is two-stage. First, the geometry shader constructs four planes for each primitive in the coordinate system that the light sees when it projects upon the world. Basically, imagine that the light is a camera. The pixel shader then tests every (applicable) screen pixel, converted into the light's coordinate system, to see where it is. If it overlaps with a primitive, and that primitive is closer to the light than that screen pixel is, then that screen pixel is shadowed from that light. Unless I'm horribly mistaken, this looks like an application of the Irregular Z-Buffer algorithm that NVIDIA published in a white paper last year. They have not yet responded to my inquiry about whether this is the case.
http://www.pcper.com/files/imagecache/article_max_width/review/2016-03-16/nvidia-2016-gdc-hfts-with.png (http://www.pcper.com/image/view/67546?return=node%2F65003)
Those were the three released features. The last two are classified as experimental betas.
The first of these is NVIDIA Flow. This technology simulates combustible fluid, fire, and smoke. It does so with an adaptive voxel simulation. This version is now able to leak outside of its bounding box, and it also handles memory properly in that case. It will be added to Unreal Engine 4 in Q2 of this year, although they did not specify whether it would be available in Epic's binary version in that timeframe, or just the GitHub source.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/d-E43mTBQBM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
The second technology is PhysX-GRB. This is their popular rigid-body physics simulation, which has been given a major speed boost in this (experimental) version. NVIDIA claims that it is about two- to six-fold faster when measured under heavy load. They show a huge coliseum being reduced to rubble as balls from space crash upon it, managing ~40 FPS on whatever GPU they used. NVIDIA also claims that both CPU and GPU solvers should now produce identical results. “Flipping the switch” should just be a performance consideration.
http://www.pcper.com/files/imagecache/article_max_width/review/2016-03-16/nvidia-2016-gdc-open-timeline.png (http://www.pcper.com/image/view/67547?return=node%2F65003)
NVIDIA closed their presentation with a few announcements of GameWorks source code being released to the public. PhysX, PhysX Clothing, and PhysX Destruction are already available, and have been for quite some time. Two new technologies are being opened up at GDC as well, though. The first is their Volumetric Lighting implementation that we discussed at the top of this article, and the second is their “FaceWorks” demo, which models skin and eye shading with sub-surface scattering and eye refraction.
http://www.pcper.com/files/imagecache/article_max_width/review/2016-03-16/nvidia-2016-gdc-open-list.png (http://www.pcper.com/image/view/67548?return=node%2F65003)
NVIDIA has also announced plans, albeit not at GDC, to release the source for HairWorks, HBAO+, and WaveWorks. Again, they are not ready to announce a timeline yet, but their intentions have been declared. In fact, they intend to open up “most or all technologies over time.” This is promising because, while registered developers can access source code privately, the community at large benefits when the public gains access. They say that they do not want to open up projects until they've matured, and that makes sense. Both Mozilla and The Khronos Group do the same, holding some projects to their chest until they believe they are ready for the public.
The part that counts is whether they actually are released when complete.
Noticia:
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/Details-about-NVIDIAs-GameWorks-31-Update
ESperam-se mais batalhas com a AMD por causa destas novidades e espera-se também que isto não provoque problemas nos jogos a nível de optimizações como tem acontecido na esmagadora maioria dos jogos que utilizam o Game Works.
Jorge-Vieira
20-03-16, 15:12
Nvidia Partially Open Sources GameWorks Library
http://i2.wp.com/www.eteknix.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Nvidia-GameWorks-Open-Source-List-GitHub.jpg?resize=800%2C450
One of the biggest complaints about GameWorks is the closed source nature of the toolkit. Because of this black box like nature, developers and competitors have had a hard time optimizing games and hardware for it. With the release of GameWorks 3.1 though, Nvidia will be open sourcing parts of GameWorks which will be available on GitHub.
Right now PhysX, PhysX Clothing and PhysX destruction are already available on GitHub. Of the new additions to GameWorks, Volumetric Lighting will be added at GDC while the previously FaceWorks will join it as well. In the near future, HairWorks, WaveWorks and HBAO+ will also join the open source depository.
http://i1.wp.com/www.eteknix.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Nvidia-2016-GameWorks-Timeline-road-map.jpg?resize=800%2C450
Even with these open source additions, there still remains parts of GameWorks that will remain closed source. These are VAXO, VXGI, Turf Effects, FlameWorks and PCSS among others. This means that developers are still limited somewhat unless they agree to Nvidia’s EULA and gain some private source access.
The biggest question about GameWorks though is its implementation. Developers have been lazy in optimizing GameWorks and leaving too much at default or maxed out settings. Open sourcing might not help if developers don’t take the time to tweak things. This should help AMD though who have been on of the most vocal critics. The biggest question is how quickly the open source will track new GameWorks releases, especially given how version 3.2 has no mention of GitHub releases on the roadmap.
Noticia:
http://www.eteknix.com/nvidia-partially-open-sources-gameworks-library/
Tecnologias fechadas nunca foram boas para os consumidores, por isso espero que esta semi-abertura do código sirva para colmatar grande parte dos males que esta tecnolgia da nVidia tem nas placas da AMD.
Jorge-Vieira
23-03-16, 21:19
NVIDIA Releases HairWorks, Volumetric Lightning and FaceWorks Source Code on GitHub – HBAO+ To Be Added Soon
NVIDIA has released the source code of their GameWorks feature known as HairWorks on GitHub. This is just a few days after NVIDIA added source code of other gaming technologies following their GDC 2016 presentation where the graphics company announced their latest GameWorks 3.1 SDK (http://wccftech.com/unity-announces-support-nvidia-vrworks-gdc-2016/)for developers. The new features that are now available through GitHub include HairWorks, FaceWorks and Volumetric Lightning.
http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/NVIDIA-Gameworks-3.1-SDK_Github-635x357.jpg (http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/NVIDIA-Gameworks-3.1-SDK_Github.jpg)
NVIDIA’s HairWorks, FaceWorks and Volumetric Lightning Source Code Now Available on GitHub The source code for all three features which are incorporated in the latest AAA titles are available to all devs to use in their gamers. As we remember, NVIDIA’s HairWorks was featured in Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt which was announced as the Best RPG of 2016. The game utilized the power of NVIDIA’s powerful tessellation engine to render the hair on not only majority of in-game characters but also several monsters. The HairWorks renderer was used to simulate and render both fur and hair to provide a real life experience.http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/NVIDIA-Hairworks-635x357.jpg (http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/NVIDIA-Hairworks.jpg)
Another feature that is part of the GitHub release is Volumetric Lightning which was enabled in Fallout 4. The next chapter in Fallout Universe went on to become the Game of the Year for 2015. The game featured one of the best implementation of God Rays which were simulated on the GPU and leveraged from GPU tessellation. This feature added a lot of atmospheric depth to an already great AAA title and looked great in motion.
http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/NVIDIA-Gameworks-3.1-SDK_Volumetric-Lightning-635x357.jpg (http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/NVIDIA-Gameworks-3.1-SDK_Volumetric-Lightning.jpg)
In 2015 we started releasing source code for GameWorks libraries on GitHUB. We continued that at GDC 2016. Our intention is to advance graphics and simulation in gaming and be helpful to those that create games. As promised at GDC, this morning source code for HairWorks was made available on GitHUB.
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The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, the open-world fantasy role-playing game from developer CD Projekt RED, just walked away with the Game of the Year award at the 16th annual Game Developers Choice Awards ceremony during the 2016 Game Developers Conference. The critically acclaimed title also received the award for Best Technology for its complex game engine that combines brilliant visuals with a huge game world.
The same technology that CD Projekt used for hair rendering is available with source code for free to all developers. In addition, the same technology that was an integral part of the ambiance for the blockbuster Fallout 4 is also available with source code for all developers to use. via NVIDIA (http://www.nvidia.com/content/global/global.php)
http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/NVIDIA-Gameworks-3.1-SDK_Games-635x357.jpg (http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/NVIDIA-Gameworks-3.1-SDK_Games.jpg)
The source code for the following GameWorks libraries is currently accessible from GitHub. Do note that you won’t be able to access the source code unless you are part of the GameWorks Access Team on GitHub. To get access to NVIDIA’s GameWorks libraries, simply visit this page (https://developer.nvidia.com/join) to join the access team and you’ll be able to get the invitation within an hour.
PhysX
PhysX Clothing
PhysX Destruction
Volumetric lighting
FaceWorks demo
HairWorks
http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/NVIDIA-Gameworks-Roadmap-635x357.jpg (http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/NVIDIA-Gameworks-Roadmap.jpg)
NVIDIA has also released a roadmap stating that they will be offering more updates to the Gameworks 3.1 SDK in June followed by the release of the Gameworks 3.2 SDK in September 2016. More updates and information related to Gameworks will be revealed at upcoming events so be sure to stay tuned. There is also meant to be even more source code releases on GitHub and the next major release that arrives in June 2016 will include the HBAO+ libraries which are currently in use by a majority of AAA titles.
Noticia:
http://wccftech.com/nvidia-gameworks-hairworks-github-release/#ixzz43lNzVaCe
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