Tuesday, September 29th 2009
Batman: Arkham Asylum Enables AA Only on NVIDIA Hardware on PCs
Anti-Aliasing has been one of the most basic image-quality enhancements available in today's games. PC graphics hardware manufacturers regard it as more of an industry standard, and game developers echo with them, by integrating anti-aliasing (AA) features in the game, as part of its engine. This allows the game to selectively implement AA in parts of the 3D scene, so even as the overall image quality of the scene is improved, so is performance, by making sure that not every object in the scene is given AA. It seems that in one of the most well marketed games of the year, Batman: Arkham Asylum, doesn't like to work with ATI Radeon graphics cards when it comes to its in-game AA implementation.
Developed under NVIDIA's The Way it's Meant to be Played program, and featuring NVIDIA's PhysX technology, the game's launcher disables in-game AA when it detects AMD's ATI Radeon graphics hardware. AMD's Ian McNaughton in his recent blog thread said that they had confirmed this by an experiment where they ran ATI Radeon hardware under changed device IDs. Says McNaughton: "Additionally, the in-game AA option was removed when ATI cards are detected. We were able to confirm this by changing the ids of ATI graphics cards in the Batman demo. By tricking the application, we were able to get in-game AA option where our performance was significantly enhanced." He further adds that the option is not available for the retail game as there is a secure-rom.
With no in-game AA available to ATI Radeon users, although the features do technically work on ATI Radeon hardware, the only way AA can be used is by forcing it in Catalyst Control Center. This causes the driver to use AA on every 3D object in the scene, reducing performance, compared to if the game's in-game AA engine is used. "To fairly benchmark this application, please turn off all AA to assess the performance of the respective graphics cards. Also, we should point out that even at 2560×1600 with 4x AA and 8x AF we are still in the highly playable territory," McNaughton adds. Choose with your wallets.
Developed under NVIDIA's The Way it's Meant to be Played program, and featuring NVIDIA's PhysX technology, the game's launcher disables in-game AA when it detects AMD's ATI Radeon graphics hardware. AMD's Ian McNaughton in his recent blog thread said that they had confirmed this by an experiment where they ran ATI Radeon hardware under changed device IDs. Says McNaughton: "Additionally, the in-game AA option was removed when ATI cards are detected. We were able to confirm this by changing the ids of ATI graphics cards in the Batman demo. By tricking the application, we were able to get in-game AA option where our performance was significantly enhanced." He further adds that the option is not available for the retail game as there is a secure-rom.
With no in-game AA available to ATI Radeon users, although the features do technically work on ATI Radeon hardware, the only way AA can be used is by forcing it in Catalyst Control Center. This causes the driver to use AA on every 3D object in the scene, reducing performance, compared to if the game's in-game AA engine is used. "To fairly benchmark this application, please turn off all AA to assess the performance of the respective graphics cards. Also, we should point out that even at 2560×1600 with 4x AA and 8x AF we are still in the highly playable territory," McNaughton adds. Choose with your wallets.
353 Comments on Batman: Arkham Asylum Enables AA Only on NVIDIA Hardware on PCs
The thing about the shortcut is nt only BS, but imposible to make. No matter how FSAA is used it always has a performance hit. UE3 can't do MSAA, it can do FSAA though, at cost of a lot of performance.Of course they would, but it's more probable that they work with the develper and get the feature working. Something they should have done since the beginning if they wanted in-game AA. But truth is that if they trully wanted in-game AA, they would have done it before, in any of the various other UE3 games. They don't want to spend their money on such a feature, they want others to spend that money and have it for free. That's what they are crying for. No more no less.
And I doubt ATi will get MSAA working with Batman: AA, they didn't care to do it before the game was launched, why would they do it after? They have bigger things to worry about. So you will always be forsed to use FSAA, which we have seen has a major performance hit compared to MSAA.
On top of that, even if they get MSAA going, it will still take more of a performance hit because the engine is not optimized like it is for nVidia's hardware.
'Financing something doesn't make it proprietary'.
Uh, yea it does. If I spend money to buy something, I own it, or the rights to it. If the bank gives me home financing, guess what. They own my house and I buy it back from them. What do you think it means?
I was pointing out to the guy above that there has been AA on a UE3 game before this, and it and it has run on ATI gpu's:"proprietary - one that possesses, owns, or holds exclusive right to something" I am using proprietary with the meaning "holds exclusive rights". Nvidia doesn't have exclusive rights to AA on Batman... They paid the devs to add a non-proprietary technology (AA) into the game for use by their gpu's.
Now, does Nvidia have the right to include in the agreement that ATI cards should not be allowed to use the AA? Of course, they funded it. But please don't try to tell me that AA is a proprietary technology from Nvidia....
Second sentence. They didn't paid developers to add non-propietary technology, they paid to add propietary technology.
AA as a whole no, but the AA present in BM is propietary.
What you fail to understand is that no one prohibited the developers adding AA for Ati cards, it's tha lack of interest from AMD what made it happen that way. AA is only in BM because Nvidia said to add it. If AMD had done the same and asked, helped and tested that or any oter AA technique, there would be AA for Ati cards too. They didn't, end of story.
This is not AMD asking for the implementation of AA and having a NO as the answer. This is AMD not collaborating.
Propietary AA modes exists. At least, CSAA (Coverage Sample Anti-aliasing) from Nvidia or CFAA (Custom Filter AA) from Ati, have to be known to you.
Antia-aliasing in the end is nothing more than interpolating the color of more than oe pixel to form a single pixel.
FSAA or supersampling 4x, renders the complete image 4 times or at double the resolution per axis if you prefer looking at it that way and then interpolates.
MSAA: Calculates 4 different color points based on patterns, so that there is an offset between them, the interpolates them and then calculates the rest, lighting, shadowing, etc. That's why it's performance is much higher.
Edge detect AA: It's like MSAA but it detects edges before doing AA and only does it on the edges.
BM:AA: From what it saw described somewhere. It does edge detect, but some algorithms determine if objects have to be antialiased or not. For instance it's stupid to antialias an object in the distance if it's going to be blurred by depth of field. I guess it does that.
CFAA: I have no idea.
CSAA: No idea.
I think you get the idea. The important thing is that the math behind those AA modes is different. Although they share some algorithms, they are different. And most of them have patents behind them.
ATi's driver level AA is propriatery to ATi, nVidia's driver level AA is propriatery to nVidia. Both developed the different methods of doing AA. It isn't like ATi developed AA, and then just gave it to nVidia. Both had to figure out the methods on their own.
The same goes for in-game AA. Some game engines support AA natively, the method for that AA is proprietary. The game engines that don't have AA natively, require AA to be added. The game developers add it their own way, and that is proprietary.