If it effects the direction of games, and quality of the DX and Mantle versions of the game. They have to split some focus. Like the motion blur feature on the swarm demo. The feature clearly took a Mantle approach, rather than a DX approach at it. Now most gamers won't ever be able to use that feature.
That changed several years ago. Now many people even play BL2 with advanced PhysX options on AMD/Intel systems.
Same goes for any solution to a problem. If nVidia tries to solve stutteringIf it effects the direction of games, and quality of the DX and Mantle versions of the game. They have to split some focus.
As far as Mantle goes, I wouldn't be mad if it died off completely as long as it spurred competition to have a better engine to replace DX. OGL doesn't seem to be that engine, and DX is just getting kind of bloated at this point. But, of course, backwards compatibility is a huge factor, otherwise we wouldn't be on Windows or using x86 really....
PhysX works on all systems. The highest PhysX settings in some games are too much for the CPU to handle and require an Nvidia GPU. That is a bit different than Mantle. Don't you think?
That said, I was thinking more in terms of G-sync vs Mantle. G-sync has no adverse effect on anyone without it. Mantle might. PhysX may slightly have adverse effects. G-sync coming out as proprietary is much better than it not coming out at all. It also has 0 effect on those without it.
And therefore it fails and is fading away.
Why do people keep acting as though Mantle will ever be used by the consoles? The consoles have their own lower level API (lower than Mantle) as their hardware is fixed. It makes no sense for the consoles to use Mantle in that regard, as it has much more abstraction than needed...Mantle is also about getting monopoly, lots of marketing, but its far more developer driven. The platform is 50% of the future gaming market - the consoles.
Stop spouting inaccurate nonsense about PhysX. Yeah, it's fading away, so much so that it's been integrated in a major next gen 3D Engine, used in several MMOs including the upcoming Everquest Next, and is featured in AAA titles like the Witcher 3, CoD Ghosts, AC IV etc..
Yeah, it's definitely going the way of the dodo
Why do people keep acting as though Mantle will ever be used by the consoles? The consoles have their own lower level API (lower than Mantle) as their hardware is fixed. It makes no sense for the consoles to use Mantle in that regard, as it has much more abstraction than needed...
The only cross platform support I would expect from Mantle is on Linux, Steam OS..
*sighs* people need to realise; no Mantle will not be used on the consoles; but the code; the low level code; specially on the PS4 - translate almost perfectly over to Mantle....
Right, and how on Earth would you even know this? Have you examined Mantle code personally and compared it to the PS4's API?
PhysX works on all systems. The highest PhysX settings in some games are too much for the CPU to handle and require an Nvidia GPU. That is a bit different than Mantle. Don't you think?
That said, I was thinking more in terms of G-sync vs Mantle. G-sync has no adverse effect on anyone without it. Mantle might. PhysX may slightly have adverse effects. G-sync coming out as proprietary is much better than it not coming out at all. It also has 0 effect on those without it.
this_is_what_nvidia_fans_actually_believe.jpg
Nvidia has been caught doing shady stuff with the x86 version of physix:
- used only one thread
- used x87 fpu instructions (stuff from before the pentium mmx) instead of MMX-SSE-SSE2-SSE3-SSE4-AVX which were all available at the time
http://techreport.com/news/19216/physx-hobbled-on-the-cpu-by-x87-code
I bet that a proper version of physix with 4-8+ threads and SIMD extensions enabled could work just fine or even outperform a gpu.
Since it's closed source we can be pretty sure that Nivida still has means to slow down the x86 version in more subtle ways.
Mantle troubles me because I remember the days of Glide and every 3d chip vendor having proprietary apis, it sucked back then to have anything different than a 3dfx card and I'm not looking for a day when you'll be forced to have amd hardware to play with everything enabled.
Closed standards are bad for consumers and for the industry.
Some guys have - slides 31 and 36
http://www.slideshare.net/DICEStudio/mantle-for-developers
And slide 26 here -
http://www.slideshare.net/DevCentra...ief-with-new-amd-technology-by-jurjen-katsman
The point being that games developed for consoles are basically already set up perfectly for multithreading and GCN anyway, making the final Mantle elements a breeze to implement. A DX "port" will need more work - this is why the devs want it to go away.
I think "this now translates easily to the PC" is almost exactly what he was saying. No implications needed.Howhere on those slides implies that, if you have ever programmed anything you should know it.
I think "this now translates easily to the PC" is almost exactly what he was saying. No implications needed.
man, if you can just copy&paste code it whould say it, what the slides are trying to say its that mantle gives you similar features and control, meaning you are likely to be able to do the same things you do with the console api, that does not mean anything more, you still need to do the work, no code sharing and no the same performance either, its really crazy thinking you can share code like that with consoles apis.
Now, DX to Mantle its another thing, and you can see they said it directly about sharing DX shader code.
man, if you can just copy&paste code it whould say it, what the slides are trying to say its that mantle gives you similar features and control, meaning you are likely to be able to do the same things you do with the console api, that does not mean anything more, you still need to do the work, no code sharing and no the same performance either, its really crazy claiming you can share code like that with consoles apis, and even more crazy to claim it when no SDK are released and even if they where, you cant really go and download PS4 SDK to compare it.
Now, DX to Mantle its another thing, and you can see they said it directly about sharing DX shader code.
Performance and visual effects.The main problem is no matter how easy it is to go from console to Mantle, you still have to do a DX version of the game (otherwise, you're getting a tiny fraction of the available PC market). What is there to entice developers away from just doing a DX port at this point?
Nvidia has been caught doing shady stuff with the x86 version of physix:
- used only one thread
- used x87 fpu instructions (stuff from before the pentium mmx) instead of MMX-SSE-SSE2-SSE3-SSE4-AVX which were all available at the time
http://techreport.com/news/19216/physx-hobbled-on-the-cpu-by-x87-code
I guess I'm confused. How can you take features that were designed to work on consoles, port them to Mantle, and then not be able to implement them on any other API for PC, when the XBox One uses DX 11.x and PS4 uses OGL?
If they work on both of those two separate APIs, then they should be able to be made to work on DX whatever version on PC. Granted, perhaps not as efficiently, but still work.
Now, if there are specific routines or functions enabled only by GCN hardware, great. But there are ways to deal with that with current APIs. Direct X games, and developers that code for them seem to be able to have capability queries figure out if you can run TressFX/MLAA/FXAA/TXAA whatever... just fine. Similarly, with current coding, if I decide I don't want to run or my hardware can't efficiently support one of those features, it doesn't shunt me into a completely unoptimized code path running a separate game build. (well unless you are talking about DX version builds, but that's somewhat different)
I'm still struggling, because the "This enables visuals millions of times way ahead of consoles" and "This is the same capability set and code as the consoles, so faster and cheaper ports!" flags seem to be switched and reswitched depending on what logic or questions get asked. I can't soo how it can be both, but the frantic pace of posting in this thread means that both sets of statements aren't in proximity long enough for most people to try and compare.
Sigh. I should probably just stop trying to force it to make sense and wait for the benchmarks. The sheer volume of information being slung about though makes me wonder what sorts of repercussions this is all likely to have, if only on the fate of civil discussion.