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.
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.
