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Mantle API presentation by AMD, DICE and Oxide - AMD Summit 2013

The last time RuskiSnajper had a thread like this it was the "MEGA RAGE" thread and how iD software was gonna change the world with the tech5 engine........we all saw how that turned out.

http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=150325

1. They didn't focus on PC as they promised but the mod tool still got released, the internal problems were far worse than I've allowed my self to speculate, doom4 debacle, carmack now working for Oculus.
2. This is exactly what Mantle will fix, all the rage problems were because of AMD OGL Drivers. The developers would be able to fix all those problems before the game would ship. The clusterfuck on Rage was supercharged because AMD released the wrong driver initially, it had nothing to do with the game, the game code was the most bugless and clean of any game at the time.

All these things were impossible to predict from outside.
 
Unlike UDT, Mantle is real. I managed to watch the entire keynote without falling asleep.... That is all.
 
Unlike UDT, Mantle is real. I managed to watch the entire keynote without falling asleep.... That is all.

Did the keynote stop at some point to include any live in-game footage, preferably BF4?
 
There is gonna be a lot of butt hurt people when Mantel turns out to be pixie dust.

I'm sure others have pointed out that this is AMD, not some small company in the australian outback. And Dice have said it's cool. It might not be the second (or third) coming of Jeebus, but I'd say it goes a bit beyond pixie dust.

All discussion or sort of moot though until we see it in action.
 
Did the keynote stop at some point to include any live in-game footage, preferably BF4?

No, it's not done yet. I'm not talking about Mantle it self.

Look initial Mantle is already done, but they will keep updating the API ofcourse, DICE is making the render now, it's not just updating the existing engine, they probably started doing it in september or a bit earlier, the 2 months might be total hours summed up so it might mean more practical time, I think you guys should get a bit more patience, the Mantle opens up the possibility, it has no code on it's own for any of the games, the developers have to rewrite the whole graphics engine and then develop optimizations that will further increase peformance beyond DX implementation. And If i remember, DICE guy said somewhere they already have it basically done, but not with all the visual features, most of them, but they need more time to develop optimizations, so if they do a really good job that's how good it will be, right now, they have nothing to show, unless they're lying, but these are developer summits, not PR summits, like E3 or something, why would they make stuff up, unless you're nvidia.

The Mantle is there now, they could show it, they could get out the code right now, the problem is, there's no point, Mantle it self does nothing, it's not a driver like DX drivers are, although it has a thin mantle-specific driver but that's solely hardware operational stuff, no optimizations, no app-specific code, nothing, barebone, only so that the Mantle works and OS can detect the hardware properly. I do not yet know how that will all work in practise, will be able to run both drivers at once, AMD rep said it'll be released in the december Catalyst package, that's only the driver, but since they haven't made it Open yet, this is speculation, I think mantle it self might come with the APP it self in a form of a DLL file or something, the point is, whatever the implementation is around this, there will be no such thing as constant AMD updates needed to run Mantle games, the developers of the game are now the "driver builders" at the same time and they're going to do a much better job, this is the whole point of the existance of this API.

It's also good to note that, it's not just about giving developers control, away from Vendor's, under DX and OGL, all those driver optimizations were hacks, not proper to the metal coding like developer will be able to do now.

OGL and DX drivers contain game-specific optimizations, because the APIs are ridicolous, a ton of things that run in them, and those are all driver hacks, they're not proper optimizations, it's just a pile of junk that is FINALLY GOING TO GO AWAY.:cool:

What they mean with Mantle being close to the PS4 engine, it's about low-level, and they mean, they use the way of doing thing, techniques, how the code is structures is more closer to PS4 than to any other device compared with Mantle, this is their app specific stuff, but it also means the PS4 API might be better than Xone's and ofcourse GDDR5 makes all the difference, they have to restructure the engine for ESRAM (if you watched DICE keynote)

I've been waiting for this for the last 3 years, I never believed it would come so soon, this is just amazing.

Imagine there is a gamebreaking GFX-related crash, or a huge FPS drop, that happens only on X card, on Y OS, with Z CPU, while running some specific program in the background, they don't have to wait for AMD to release the damn driver 3 weeks later, they can fix it them selfs, in a matter of days or hours even (hotfix) don't you get it how huge this is, among other little annoyances PC gamers had, all GONE.

The CPU and Crossfire optimizations will blow your heads off, even if Mantle doesn't make existing games run 50% faster, the Crossfire people will probably start crying or something. Don't you see it, SteamOS (clean, superfast linux code) + Mantle + Oculus Rift = The second PC golden age.

All those console boys who thought they would get 4K with next-gen, they're so going to get their butts smoken dry ...

What you guys need to do is to start pushing other developers to get on Mantle, because it requires developer work; people who don't understand tech need to know that Mantle isn't just an update you'll install and everything will run great. The Catalyst update in december does nothing by it self, only adds support, and you need BF4 and the BF4-Mantle update.

The worst case scenario I can image is, that some just-got-out-of-college trendy "indie" iphone developer (1,2) thinks he knows everything and tries to make a game and doesn't know what he's doing and starts crying to the media how "shit" mantle is, that could make a ton of people taking him seriously, who aren't techincally informed.
 
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Frick's right, all discussion or sort of moot though until we see it in action.

It's cool that AMD knows how to do PowerPoint slides, but we all want to see the results and bench Mantle vs DirectX. Too bad Dice is first on bat cause its gonna be a BUGGY mess... ahem... looking right at you BF4!
 
Now come on. First it sounds too good to be true. Then Microsoft does not enjoy it. Then Intel might not like it at all. I'm sure NVidia downright hates it. These are three much bigger players in the game than AMD. Do you think Mantle will become a standard?
 
i just don't see how this is possible. mantle must completely rewrite the rules for coding 3d games...

Here's a little example

ET5UsMi.png


The game wasn't very good lol. When was the last time iD made a great game? :laugh:

At least mantle is something new. An OK game with a bleh engine isn't exciting.

Engine had nothing to do with Rage's problems, it was all the driver's fault. As I said, even AMD Driver teams have a hard time optimizing by hacking drivers, it's not the way to properly optimize and I am so excited this nonsense goes away already.


I'm sure others have pointed out that this is AMD, not some small company in the australian outback. And Dice have said it's cool. It might not be the second (or third) coming of Jeebus, but I'd say it goes a bit beyond pixie dust.

All discussion or sort of moot though until we see it in action.

Dice didn't just said, dice among others wanted someone to do this, it was a vision for 5 years. It was co-development, which means continual meetings, and DICE guy visited AMD many times during this.

There's nothing moot about it. There are some details which aren't known yet, how will updating works, if old drivers will have to be uninstalled, etc, but that's a non issue, maybe this will change in future.

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meld...ber-AMDs-3D-Schnittstelle-Mantle-2045398.html

Frick's right, all discussion or sort of moot though until we see it in action.

It's cool that AMD knows how to do PowerPoint slides, but we all want to see the results and bench Mantle vs DirectX. Too bad Dice is first on bat cause its gonna be a BUGGY mess... ahem... looking right at you BF4!

Undoubtedly that battlefields are one of the most buggiest games, but that's more on the balance/functionality/script kind of things, the sycnronicity between animations and geometry is horrible, the weird physics and explosions, vehicle/object contact rubber banding, missing sound effects, missing damage feedback effects, it's not really a game I would give awards to.

BF4 might be better initially, but come on, I already know for a fact there is again the missing sound effect bug, affects footsteps and a few other stuff makes it so weird to play, not to mention recycling of old repetitive sound effects with no variation.
 
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At first read this might sound like AMD vs MS on graphics APIs, but in reality DICE had a lot to do with it's development, and considering that, I'd trust them over MS to make an efficient graphics API.
 
Here are some of the historical hints to this: I remember 3 years ago I was pumped something was done to get rid of DX, tons of developers pushing AMD to do something about it:

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2011/03/16/farewell-to-directx/
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/API-DirectX-11-Shader-Richard-Huddy-PC-gaming,12418.html
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meld...h-Es-wird-kein-DirectX-12-kommen-1835338.html
http://news.bigdownload.com/2011/03/18/amd-game-developers-want-directx-to-go-away/
http://techreport.com/news/20628/amd-huddy-developers-want-directx-to-go-away
http://games.slashdot.org/story/11/...tting-in-the-way-of-pc-game-graphics-says-amd

AMD Huddy (2011):
On consoles, you can draw maybe 10,000 or 20,000 chunks of geometry in a frame, and you can do that at 30-60fps. On a PC, you can't typically draw more than 2-3,000 without getting into trouble with performance, and that's quite surprising - the PC can actually show you only a tenth of the performance if you need a separate batch for each draw call.

All this time we were running thermoelectic powerplants in the house.:shadedshu


---------------------------
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Throughout the years Carmack in interviews explained how much faster PCs would be with console-like approach of writing to the metal; "significantly more powerful"

But sees like Carmack changed gears toward Oculus and I think I can safely say he's pretty much irrelevant in this talk as others have taken it from the mouth to actual prototypes and I have to personally thank Johan Andersson. And now he seems to be defending Nvidia's OGL approach of first of all number 1. company to be screwing linux around, and even if carmack is correct about OGL extensions, that doesn't make all the other improvements that Mantle will bring, that doesn't make developers in control of the other stuff, that still will be dependant on the GPU vendor for various updates.

I think some of the people more care about the industry as an investor, kind of looking at it how mcuh money it makes, and some totally non-AAA developers whine about "development costs" like they're some kind of public service for the industry, who cares how much it costs for 1 developer, it's their money and their right to do (almost) whatever they want with it ; I don't really care about the non-high end PC market, they can have how the heck they want, we on the high end want something that works the best without the pettyness and others slowing us down, nobody's dictating they should sell their house to buy a better PC, but they should stop allowing us to have alternative to spinn off the failtrain, and that's what DICE's doing and they deserve a huge thanks.

All this stupid blogger, twitter talkheads you see criticising Mantle, they are so irrelevant, and some of them are stupid "developers" out of college, brainwashed by call of duty and stupid iphone games, who think they know everything about the industry.

It's also known that id Software are almost all Nvidia fanboys and they joked "we need to make sure next time we have some people with AMD cards in the office" But I don't know why would he at some point take blame on them selfs but another point saying it's all AMD's fault, because technically it is AMDs fault, I think the "taking the blame" was more for damage control to kind of not make uninformed guys go nuts on "escaping and blaming someone else" ... with Mantle none of that would have happened with Rage.

But it's not really anyone's fault who works there, I don't want to come out hard now, the Doom4 debacle was a management issue, Carmack doesn't know how to manage, they didn't seem to taken it seriously then it got out of hand and the developers who were ofcourse young biased by other games made it into a call of duty clone, that would have been a disaster for id software if that got out, I am so glad it had a restart.

So there you go, those that think I'm too optimistic.
 
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either way, i support anything that is "open." we have to move away from the old directx architecture...
 
There is gonna be a lot of butt hurt people when Mantel turns out to be pixie dust.

Exactly It all comes down to seeing it in action not just presentations anyone remember the guys at Euclideon who claimed Unlimited Detail? You know with all the interviews and videos and bs yet people still loved every minute of it? Oh yea no one has heard a damn thing from them in nearly 2 years with even their latest stuff still not up to par to regular plain old traditional techniques

Unlimited Detail Real-Time Rendering Technology Pr...

Until Mantle is actually used and shows this 50-150% increase its pretty much just PR marketing speak and vague promises.
 
Exactly It all comes down to seeing it in action not just presentations anyone remember the guys at Euclideon who claimed Unlimited Detail? Y

i already mentioned that above. these types of bold claims never pan out. interesting that AMD and some of the dev companies seem to be selling it like the next big thing yet we don't see ANY evidence that is more than just a bunch of slides at a tradeshow.
 
Yea you beat me to it Rhino I missed your comment while scrolling through the crap in this thread lol
 
Exactly It all comes down to seeing it in action not just presentations anyone remember the guys at Euclideon who claimed Unlimited Detail? You know with all the interviews and videos and bs yet people still loved every minute of it? Oh yea no one has heard a damn thing from them in nearly 2 years with even their latest stuff still not up to par to regular plain old traditional techniques

Euclideon Geoverse 2013 - YouTube

Until Mantle is actually used and shows this 50-150% increase its pretty much just PR marketing speak and vague promises.

And again, this is AMD and Dice making these claims, not just some dude. It could still be pixie dust, but AMD should know what they're doing.

And again, again, all is speculation until we see it in action. But I think it's extremely unfair to compare it with Unlimited Whatever. Completely different leagues.
 
Perhaps we should all wait till December and make judgements based on whats actually released.
 
Perhaps we should all wait till December and make judgements based on whats actually released.

Agreed. I'm excited to see it, but I'm also not really putting any faith into it till it's there. I just know DirectX is old, and it's just been over a decade of stacking different instructions and crap on top of different ones. At a certain point in time, everything needs a rebuild, can't just keep building off the footing of an old infrastructure.
 
Perhaps we should all wait till December and make judgements based on whats actually released.

Or we can talk about because that is what forums are for.
 
Here's a little example

http://i.imgur.com/ET5UsMi.png



Engine had nothing to do with Rage's problems, it was all the driver's fault. As I said, even AMD Driver teams have a hard time optimizing by hacking drivers, it's not the way to properly optimize and I am so excited this nonsense goes away already.




Dice didn't just said, dice among others wanted someone to do this, it was a vision for 5 years. It was co-development, which means continual meetings, and DICE guy visited AMD many times during this.

There's nothing moot about it. There are some details which aren't known yet, how will updating works, if old drivers will have to be uninstalled, etc, but that's a non issue, maybe this will change in future.

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meld...ber-AMDs-3D-Schnittstelle-Mantle-2045398.html



Undoubtedly that battlefields are one of the most buggiest games, but that's more on the balance/functionality/script kind of things, the sycnronicity between animations and geometry is horrible, the weird physics and explosions, vehicle/object contact rubber banding, missing sound effects, missing damage feedback effects, it's not really a game I would give awards to.

BF4 might be better initially, but come on, I already know for a fact there is again the missing sound effect bug, affects footsteps and a few other stuff makes it so weird to play, not to mention recycling of old repetitive sound effects with no variation.
I think amd and dice have put a slant on mantle that miss aligns it with amds api reality.
They wat one api able to optimise the use of cpux86-64 arm Gpu, dsps, possibly fpgas and a whole environment of circuitry busses and interfaces across all there products so it Leverages advantages.
DICE got pr exclusive feature label they are not the main input to mantle.
 
i just don't see how this is possible. mantle must completely rewrite the rules for coding 3d games...
It's AMD applying console techniques to PC. They're giving a direct path to developers to code for the GPU itself which eliminates a ton of overhead but at the cost of compatibility. It's the same reason why consoles can achieve so much with so few resources.
 
It's AMD applying console techniques to PC. They're giving a direct path to developers to code for the GPU itself which eliminates a ton of overhead but at the cost of compatibility. It's the same reason why consoles can achieve so much with so few resources.

thidH.5027844502520132pid1.7
 
Only watched the developer summit so far. Everything sounded good until the AMD driver dev implied the multi threading part might be a bit of a hurdle for some game devs.

It's already to the point where the chip vendor that gets more consultation time from dev teams that endorse their product have a significant advantage. Reverse that and give the devs more advantage for games endorsing their product, and you only wind up with worse problems as far as games working noticeably better with one chip vendor than another.

At the start of the presentation they briefly implied the possibility of Mantle eventually being used by competitors as well, but it was mentioned rather half heatedly. I think we all know even if they pushed to expedite that, Nvidia would scoff at it.
 
Multithreading is a challenge for all developers, always. Games are especially difficult to multithread because most of it has to be symmetrical.

NVIDIA has a reputation for half-assing open implementations and pushing their own, proprietary designs. AMD knows that so they're not going to get all lofty with expectations. NVIDIA would rather reverse engineer it and sell it as their own product than cooperate with anyone else for an open standard.
 
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