I was doing some thinking regarding the nVidia annoucement from yesterday. (I’m bit slow today at the 9-5 grind)
Joining the “Way it’s meant to be played” program could indicate that the conversion is complete and MA is joining up with nVidia to optimize the engine code for this particular application. If the conversion is complete, there is still a chance that we’ll see VU10 relatively soon. Also with the PhysX work nVidia has done lately, this could put some more meat in the theory.
“set to launch later this summer” would indicate a release before the end of September. and yes, theres would be a strong possibility that work has gone in to Physx being supported in suitable Nvidea cards.
the only thing that really means is that ma and nvidia is working together to optimize the engine to run on nvidia cards. What then that would mean exactly is another thing though but it means that nvidia optimize their drivers to work well with eu for one thing.
And that in itself is a commitment and acknowledgment from MA that there have been serious compatibility issues in the past.
I for one have had serious issues with SLi on XP with nVidia newer drivers. I upgraded to Vista and my problems vanished completely. I inquired support about my problem and they acknowlege it and are indefinately “working on a solution”.
“set to launch later this summer” can only be a goal not a definite timing. I’ve seen too many games set a release date only for it to be put back months and sometimes years.
The first issue I have with Nvidia gfx cards dates back a few years when they had the nasty habit of ‘fixing’ drivers to make the performance in certain benchmark programs so that it scored higher than it should. I’ve got first hand experience of seeing the difference when I upgraded from a 4800GTI to an ATI 9800 Pro although they can’t get away with the same now.
The only other issue is from my old machine and its crappy nforce2 chipset and their poor driver release schedule (v5.10 is still the latest official set) plus the machine self destructed several times in the couple of years I used it. So far my intel / ati gfx based machine has been rock solid for nearly a year.
I already know the next card I’m buying and it’s not going to be an nvidia product not because of performance but personal choice.
I ran an ATI x850 for a while until Bioshock came out, and for a “business graphics” card, it performed above expectations.
My only issue with ATI are bloated drivers. 3 package downloads, just to have a stable display. Over 100 MB in software. Although, these days, nVidia isn’t much better.
I’ve tried the All-In-Wonder series several times with nothing but driver problems.
physx is just a set of functions for simulating physical systems, gravitation, forces, etc, and implementing effects like the ragdoll on death. They can either be purely in software, running on the CPU, or be accelerated with hardware, and running on the GPU (or dedicated physx card when those existed).
With the latest drivers, all newer nvidia cards support the physx api, and as long MA is using the physx api also in the CryEngine 2 implementation, then yes, the game will benefit from hardware accelerated physx.
I don’t know what the “Meant to be played” program includes, but I don’t think NVidia will send a swat team to MA offices to implement kickass effects, I think its more in the lines of having better access to technical support persons, and benefit from co-marketing like the cards in loot…
Hahaha, I love this! But it also means ‘We think your game is good enough that we will give it the Nvidia logo-this is why Nvidia do not do this to ALL games’
Frankenberry
Exactly. Nvidia wants their logo on all the games with good graphics. Not many games out yet with the Cryengine so they want them all to bear nvidia seal.
Were plenty of cases where a game bearing nvidia seal ran way better on ati cards. Farcry 1 is such example.
I’d like to think it went the other way around. nVidia doesn’t need to buy logo space, they’re one of two companies. But for Mindark to have some ‘elitist’ status by having the N logo blessing the game…that’s something..
Ofc they need to. Same way McDonalds needs to open up another restaurant in another country or Coca-Cola needs to market their stuff in let`s say Botswana or something
I’d say its mainly cause of the cryeggine. Crysis has it so makes sense Entropia does too since it should mean prettyness. Hopefully it will imply a certain level of quality and testing though. Dunno, surely there is info on what it means someplace?
As regards the 2008 release thing I’ll believe it when I see it.
I think everybody is reading too much into this. The program is just the same as Microsoft’s and at’'s. The cryengine is in the program so it was inevitable that EU would sign up too (hey could even be a requirement of the engine licence).
Nvidia provides more support for the developers including full and very strict guidelines on the directX calls they use and hardware specific optimisations. Depending on the scale of the game you may even get a bit of beta testing out of them. The program if free in exchange for advertising.
This is not going to change the game design in any way and people with ATI cards will still be able to play the game with no disadvantage.
Physx is game engine dependent. The current CE2 engine does not support PhysX. However the SDK is very simple to use and has the ability to run as an addition to the game engine for additional effects. I personally would suggest this won’t happen though as it is a lot of extra work. Nvidia’s acquisition of Ageia and the subsequent work they have been doing has no relation.
I couldn’t find my whitepaper but you should be able to find it yourself easily enough if you want to know all the ins and outs of the program.
You can download and play with the PhysX SDK if your that way inclined. Its a bit of fun, I don’t know if you have to register first as I am already registered. Very little has changed from the Ageia SDK so if you looking for tutorials etc don’t forget to search for Ageia guides too.
