AMD Announces their GameWorks Equivalent

[RussianSensation]

AMD can't pay for proprietary implementation so next best thing they can do is make it open

You know "open source" is just their way of saying they can't do it, so can some one else do it for free please?

Good, actually amazing! I don't want PC gaming to turn into proprietary "console" like platform with brand agnostic locked out features and unoptimized code created in-house for the sole purpose of making your cards look good, the competitor's look bad, while the game developer then has to spend months and months working with the closed-source developer of said SDK/middle-ware to fix the broken game code. :sneaky:

Sorry, but I laugh at their "open initiatives" that usually end up in failure.

Ironic considering the best looking & optimized game of 2015 - SW:BF - is an open source title; and the entire track record of AMD GE vs. GWs shows your post is just a pigment of your imagination. Most objective gamers want their games to work well because we don't want to be locked into a specific CPU/GPU vendor for life.

No, it's typical on AT forum: any news with something positive about AMD and for sure you will see usual negative spinning.

The thread's title is misleading. If AMD has an open-source program for developers, by very definition, it is NOT GameWorks Equivalent.

Nothing to do with hate, all to do with reality, and previous experience. So to implement gamesworks nvidia has a pretty large team of engineers working full time on it, in addition nvidia send support engineers to help devs implement the effects. In doing so nvidia get feedback on what to develop next, etc. Anyway this has taken many years, and costs nvidia lot of money, which they get back through gpu sales.

Yup, it in the process it help to turn many many highly anticipated titles into absolute turds as far as optimization was concerned. Furthermore, since the developer relied on close-source NV-created DLLs/middleware, instead of using open-source standards and learning them to incorporate into future games/engines, they just relied on a 3rd party to do their work. What does that mean? It means for their next game, they have no clue and previous experience learning & implementing true next gen open-source effects. So what are they going to do? Call NV as their mommy for help again?

The program's closed-source nature goes beyond just GPU sales. It neuters PC game development since it doesn't allow developers to start with a clean slate, using next gen open-source. They are thinking, WOW, I get to make a console port like Watch Dogs of Just Cause 3 and then this 3rd party will come, pay for part of our marketing, and then even send engineers to help do our work for us?! WOW, sign me up. Welfare-state PC game development.

Those open source devs just don't exist, hence it'll just linger there for a few years until AMD quietly forget about it. See bullet physics, various APU efforts, etc.

Sure they do. Open-source development means the entire approach to how a game is made when incorporating next gen graphics tech. These companies use technologies that can be re-used in all future games. With closed-source development, you have to rely on NV's GWs DLLs to get graphical effects since you never made them in-house, have no control or optimization over them without NV's permission. It's basically outsourcing a part of game development to a 3rd party.

Volumetric lighting: Rise of the Tomb Raider features a plethora of volumetric lights throughout. Using a resolution-agnostic voxel method similar to Killzone Shadow Fall, each light is generated using asynchronous compute late in the rendering order. We see these lights appear in a multitude of situations ranging from sun shafts to thick fog. In many cases, volumetric lighting is combined with screen-space light shafts to create some very dramatic scenes.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2015-rise-of-the-tomb-raider-tech-analysis

vs.

FO4 = outdated game engine on day 1, NV helps them put in lights using tessellation aka the developer relies on a 3rd party to get their mediocre looking game up to 2012 standards instead of making the game a true 2015 PC game to start with.

The only way AMD could rival gamesworks is if AMD themselves were willing to spend the money to make something like gamesworks - something they can't do.

Even when NV made PhysX proprietary, back then ATI group had enough $ to implement their own closed source standards but they didn't. It's not how they think. The only thing that stands between us buying 2 GPUs for your rig is AMD. If AMD went GWs on us, we'd be screwed. That's why it's amusing to see people defend GWs because in their mind they never envisioned how in 10-20 years Intel's GPUs could get good enough and Intel could just pay to win and beat NV/AMD graphics into the ground. Is that what we want for gaming? Pay to win. I don't.

 

[desprado]

It wont happen or succeed in 2016 until AMD have more PC user or they increase their percentage of DGPU and MGPU users. Why gameworks game were the best selling game this year like

Witcher 3
Dying Light
Fallout 4
Star Craft 2 legacy
MGS V

AMD games were mostly disappointed this year like Star wars and BFH.

The Thing is that nvidia has a very large and massive user base who love to purchase nvidia sponsored games where as AMD do not have that.Therefore, most of AAA developers wont be interested in that because it will require more and time and optimization.

 

[SirPauly]

Applaud, great news!

 

[sontin]

Volumetric lighting: Rise of the Tomb Raider features a plethora of volumetric lights throughout. Using a resolution-agnostic voxel method similar to Killzone Shadow Fall, each light is generated using asynchronous compute late in the rendering order. We see these lights appear in a multitude of situations ranging from sun shafts to thick fog. In many cases, volumetric lighting is combined with screen-space light shafts to create some very dramatic scenes.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2015-rise-of-the-tomb-raider-tech-analysis

vs.

FO4 = outdated game engine on day 1, NV helps them put in lights using tessellation aka the developer relies on a 3rd party to get their mediocre looking game up to 2012 standards instead of making the game a true 2015 PC game to start with.

Anno 2205 uses an inhouse engine with no Gameworks effects and you are still complaining. And Anno2205 looks 100x better than Ashes and runs much better.

Batman:AO has a much better snow effect than Tomb Raider which doesnt use any Gameworks libary and yet people like you will still complain about it.

Project Cars uses no Gameworks effects and looks much better than Dirt:Rally and yet people will find enough reason to blame Gameworks for AMD's performance.

Inhouse or third party middleware... Certain people will always find reason to blame developers and nVidia for the performance.

 

[Good_fella]

Anno 2205 uses a in house engine with no Gameworks effects and you are still complaining. And Anno2205 looks 100x better than Ashes and runs much better.

Batman:AO has a much better snow effect than Tomb Raider which doesnt use any Gameworks and yet people like you will still complain about it.

Project Cars uses no Gameworks effects and looks much better than Dirt:Rally and yet people will find enough reason to blame Gameworks for AMD's performance.

Inhouse or third party middleware... Certain people will always find reason to blame developers and nVidia for the performance.

I love how's he trying to spin facts.

Using something who favors Nvidia is bad but...

each light is generated using asynchronous compute late in the rendering order.

...using something who favors AMD is good.

He said Nvidia doesn't support Async.

 

[Techhog]

Anno 2205 uses an inhouse engine with no Gameworks effects and you are still complaining. And Anno2205 looks 100x better than Ashes and runs much better.

Batman:AO has a much better snow effect than Tomb Raider which doesnt use any Gameworks and yet people like you will still complain about it.

Project Cars uses no Gameworks effects and looks much better than Dirt:Rally and yet people will find enough reason to blame Gameworks for AMD's performance.

Inhouse or third party middleware... Certain people will always find reason to blame developers and nVidia for the performance.

AO's snow effect is really nothing special. Seriously, it's not like there are actual footprints or anything.

Project Cars has forced heavy CPU PhysX. Not only does it use GameWorks, but you can't even turn it off! Nobody has come up with a good reason for why that game works the way it does (someone brought up draw calls, but nobody has explained why it's so draw call-heavy), and the devs wouldn't just choose to gimp all every AMD card and all Nvidia cards below the 980, so until someone has strong evidence to the contrary I'm not convinced.

 

[96Firebird]

Project Cars has forced heavy CPU PhysX.

This is false.

- Project Cars is not a GameWorks product. We have a good working relationship with nVidia, as we do with AMD, but we have our own render technology which covers everything we need.
- NVidia are not "sponsors" of the project. The company has not received, and would not expect, financial assistance from third party hardware companies.
- The Madness engine runs PhysX at only 50Hz and not at 600Hz as mentioned in several articles
- The Madness engine uses PhysX for collision detection and dynamic objects, which is a small part of the overall physics systems
- The Madness engine does not use PhysX for the SETA tyre model or for the chassis constraint solver (our two most expensive physics sub-systems)
- The Madness engine does not use PhysX for the AI systems or for raycasting, we use a bespoke optimized solution for those
- The physics systems run completely independently of the rendering and main game threads and utilizes 2 cores at 600Hz
- The physics threading does not interact with the rendering, it is a push system sending updated positional information to the render bridge at 600Hz
- Any performance difference with PhysX would not be reflected with differences in comparing rendering frame rates. There is no interaction between PhysX and the rendering
- Overall, PhysX uses less than 10% of all physics thread CPU on PC. It is a very small part of the physics system so would not make a visual difference if run on the CPU or GPU
- Direct involvement with both nVidia and AMD has been fruitful in assisting with the game performance at various stages of development. Both AMD and nVidia have had access to working builds of the game throughout development, and they have both tested builds and reported their results and offered suggestions for performance improvements.
- Testing of the game with different driver versions has produced a variety of performance results on both nVidia and AMD hardware. This is entirely to be expected as driver changes cannot always be tested on every game and every card, and this is the reason why both companies produce game-specific driver profiles, to ensure that they can get the best out of the game.
- Project CARS does not use nVidia specific particle technology - the system we use is a modified version of the same technology we used on the Need for Speed: Shift and Shift Unleashed games, and was entirely developed in-house. The reason the performance drops when there are a lot of particles on screen is simply because processing a large number of particles is very expensive.

Source

 

[sontin]

AO's snow effect is really nothing special. Seriously, it's not like there are actual footprints or anything.

Sure, sure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMbsXfnOpFc

Project Cars has forced heavy CPU PhysX. Not only does it use GameWorks, but you can't even turn it off! Nobody has come up with a good reason for why that game works the way it does (someone brought up draw calls, but nobody has explained why it's so draw call-heavy), and the devs wouldn't just choose to gimp all every AMD card and all Nvidia cards below the 980, so until someone has strong evidence to the contrary I'm not convinced.

Like is said: Certain people will always find some strange reasons to complain. Nothing is wrong with PhysX as a physics engine. PhysX is nearly the best engine out there: http://www.codercorner.com/blog/?p=748

 

[Techhog]

Sure, sure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMbsXfnOpFc



Like is said: Certain people will always find some strange reasons to complain. Nothing is wrong with PhysX as a physics engine. PhysX is nearly the best engine out there: http://www.codercorner.com/blog/?p=748

I mean in terms of the shape. You can talk about it all you want, but the fact that the same effect exists on last-gen consoles negates any point you can make there. It's also an unrealistic effect, since the snow just vanishes as soon as anything touches it.

If CPU PhysX is used, it should be used reasonably. Forcing advanced CPU PhysX for no reason other than Nvidia's coaxing is not reasonable. I swear, some of you wouldn't care if a game ran at 3FPS on a 980 Ti so long as it runs at 2FPS on a Fury X. You people are the reason we get poorly optimized games. Arkham Knight should have kept the 30FPS cap, since that's what you people want anyway.

 

[TestKing123]

Which ones?

Like AMD HD3D. Was intended to be an alternative to 3D vision, but "open source".

Piss poor support to third party devs and manufacturers. Then one day they dropped support completely from their drivers. Bye Bye all those suckers (consumers and developers) who put in all that resource for AMD 3D, can't even use their products for legacy purposes anymore.

 

[sontin]

I mean in terms of the shape. You can talk about it all you want, but the fact that the same effect exists on last-gen consoles negates any point you can make there. It's also an unrealistic effect, since the snow just vanishes as soon as anything touches it.

It doesnt exist on the last gen consoles. The PC version of the game got a huge improvement with Tessellation and better interaction. Oh and it looks better than the Eidos implementation in Tomb Raider.

If CPU PhysX is used, it should be used reasonably. Forcing advanced CPU PhysX for no reason other than Nvidia's coaxing is not reasonable. I swear, some of you wouldn't care if a game ran at 3FPS on a 980 Ti so long as it runs at 2FPS on a Fury X. You people are the reason we get poorly optimized games. Arkham Knight should have kept the 30FPS cap, since that's what you people want anyway.

You still looking for something to complain, dont you?

 

[BigDaveX]

Like AMD HD3D. Was intended to be an alternative to 3D vision, but "open source".

Piss poor support to third party devs and manufacturers. Then one day they dropped support completely from their drivers. Bye Bye all those suckers (consumers and developers) who put in all that resource for AMD 3D, can't even use their products for legacy purposes anymore.

The funny thing is, nVidia's proprietary standards actually seem to do more to advance the industry. 3D Vision may have basically collapsed into irrelevancy by now, but it did push the widespread introduction of 120Hz/144Hz screens, when LCD screens had been stuck at 60Hz since forever.

 

[Techhog]

It doesnt exist on the last gen consoles. The PC version of the game got a huge improvement with Tessellation and better interaction. Oh and it looks better than the Eidos implementation in Tomb Raider.

You still looking for something to complain, dont you?

You're right. They made it slightly better on PC to make it run like crap on AMD and lower-end cards. I stand corrected! How is it better than RotTR though? And how do you know it's not due to XBone limitations?

You can take the passive aggression to another conversation. I'll take your lack of an actual response as confirmation that I'm right. The game runs like crap for good reason, period.

People like you really make me just want to give up PC gaming. You're dead-set on seeing it die due to blind brand loyalty. Seriously, the next thing you're going to say is that i should play games in 720p with a 970 and that 1080p is good enough for people buying $1000 video cards. It really is all about AMD vs. Nvidia to you.

 

[caswow]

The funny thing is, nVidia's proprietary standards actually seem to do more to advance the industry. 3D Vision may have basically collapsed into irrelevancy by now, but it did push the widespread introduction of 120Hz/144Hz screens, when LCD screens had been stuck at 60Hz since forever.

uuhh certainly was nvidia that pushed this D:

 

[Azix]

The funny thing is, nVidia's proprietary standards actually seem to do more to advance the industry. 3D Vision may have basically collapsed into irrelevancy by now, but it did push the widespread introduction of 120Hz/144Hz screens, when LCD screens had been stuck at 60Hz since forever.

refresh rates were going with or without that.

 

[AtenRa]

I wouldn't even say the primary problem is that Gameworks hinders performance. It's the fact that it exists and it sells.

This is what I think a lot of the AMD people miss. As a previous hardcore AMD guy, I want AMD to compete like NV does with Gameworks. NO, I don't want AMD to copy Gameworks (ie what Gameworks is, which is proprietary code). I want AMD to go back to what they were doing when we got the AMD Gaming Evolved initiative.

They courted big devs, got their name into big titles, and the most important thing was AAA titles of that year weren't floundering on AMD hardware during day 1 reviews/benchmarks. This prevents the mindset that "hey Gameworks, Nvidia must be good" that seems to exist.

When a buyer goes and looks at the list of AAA titles for 2015, over half are Gameworks titles. Regardless how the game performs to the end user, they are already seeing NV Logos before they even buy the game.

It goes back to marketing. AMD doesn't have to send on a hoard of engineers. They just need to partner with more devs and block Gameworks. The only question I have to this, is it a funding issue or management issue?

You will see a lot of 2016 DX-12 games on the AMD gaming Evolved initiative.

 

[Techhog]

The funny thing is, nVidia's proprietary standards actually seem to do more to advance the industry. 3D Vision may have basically collapsed into irrelevancy by now, but it did push the widespread introduction of 120Hz/144Hz screens, when LCD screens had been stuck at 60Hz since forever.

And now they're pushing hard to make 1080p60 the best that anyone can run in games...

 

[zlatan]

I think most people don't understand how important is this open source thing. Middlewares are not bad, but in 2015 more and more middlewares got source code access and a licenc that allow source code modification. Without this the optimization could be limited. GameWorks has some advantage, but the underlying idea is completely bad. If an effect is not compatible with the renderer, than the closed source don't allow the modification to make the effect compatible. In this case the only way to achieve the compatibility is the renderer modification. With this most actual optimization path might not work anymore, and building new optimization paths are not useful when the release date is not far away. Even if the user inactivate a closed source effect, this won't allow the original renderer optimizations, because these are missing in the public release. Using a closed source graphics middleware that requires renderer change is a super bad idea, and the PC port will be an unfixable mess.

 

[sontin]

That is not true and just wrong.
TressFX was a mess at the release of Tomb Raider. It needed a few patches to fix all of the problems.
AMD's CHSS in GTA5 were broken at release. I dont know if Rocksteady has fixed them.

Having access to the source code doesnt help much there...

 

[iiiankiii]

It wont happen or succeed in 2016 until AMD have more PC user or they increase their percentage of DGPU and MGPU users. Why gameworks game were the best selling game this year like

Witcher 3
Dying Light
Fallout 4
Star Craft 2 legacy
MGS V

AMD games were mostly disappointed this year like Star wars and BFH.

The Thing is that nvidia has a very large and massive user base who love to purchase nvidia sponsored games where as AMD do not have that.Therefore, most of AAA developers wont be interested in that because it will require more and time and optimization.

For reals. Nvidia send out people to help optimize for GameWorks and it still run like turd. GameWorks is a nice idea that was horribly executed.

I can't imagine how bad AMD's middlewares would be without the the manpower to help optimize it. The only saving grace is it being open source. That might allow more people to help optimize it.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Open source and with only the MIT license DOES matter.

Giving intel the right to use and optimize the code without restrictions or royalties could make a huge difference.

The same with the engine companies. If they want to embed TressFX into Unreal, Unity, etc. they can, without any license or royalty headaches.

I can see Unity in particular working to optimize the library and include it as built-in, possibly with an easier to use abstraction layer on top.

Competition is good. Cooperation like this is also good.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Giving intel the right to use and optimize the code without restrictions or royalties could make a huge difference.

Exactly.

People forget that Intel has a bigger market share than Nvidia does, and that will only grow as integrated graphics become "good enough" for 1080p gaming.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Unfortunately, all this reminds me of is HSA/Fusion is the future. Great in theory, but never really implemented to the degree that it is a game changer.

Open source sounds great in theory, but there need to be some sort of driving force with a lot of resources behind it.

 

[kaesden]

the problem is we have only two vendors for graphics. Both are effectively proprietary to their respective vendors. Gameworks only for nvidia, this new one will only work on AMD.(because nvidia sure as hell won't support it, just like freesync). So at the end of the day we are still stuck with two proprietary formats for basically everything, and it seems to be getting worse as more and more things are created as a single vendor solution.

 

[Mercennarius]

Exactly.

People forget that Intel has a bigger market share than Nvidia does, and that will only grow as integrated graphics become "good enough" for 1080p gaming.

Maybe, maybe not. If Intel doesn't evolve their integrated graphics fast enough they may never be able to play the newest graphically intensive games at anything but low settings. 1080P won't be so hot in 3-4 years when everything is 4K.