NVIDIA Unveils GeForce Experience

[btarunr]

NVIDIA unveiled GeForce Experience, a new cloud-based technology that assesses PC hardware and tweaks settings of games to deliver the most optimal gaming experience. GeForce Experience goes a step beyond today's System Requirements Labs applets, and assesses hardware at a much more minute scale, sends information back to a data center that houses supercomputers, which methodically build the perfect game settings for each GPU, CPU, motherboard, and drivers configuration.

Speaking at GeForce LAN Shanghai, NVIDIA president and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said that PC games require a greater knowledge about the capabilities of the system than required by consoles. To get the most out of PC games, gamers need to dig into its settings and tweak them to work best with the hardware available, and that could be a disadvantage compared to consoles.



According to NVIDIA's statistics, a disturbing 80% of PC gamers don't tinker with their quality settings, and end up with sub-optimal visual experience compared to consoles. In contrast consoles have, since the beginning of their time, been as simple as inserting the game disc/cartridge and pushing the power button. Huang said his crew was looking to take PC gaming as close to that experience as possible, with NVIDIA GeForce Experience.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[syeef]

a disturbing 80% of PC gamers don't tinker with their quality settings

80% huh? all idiots...

 

[m1dg3t]

Oh yay! More data collecting programs :shadedshu

 

[RejZoR]

80% huh? all idiots...

Like it's so hard to make an algorithm that would systematically degrade settings to get optimal performance. Just make a quick benchmark of few in-game scenes when you start game for the first time. These scenes would include the more demanding parts of the game.
Then you just make rules, if the framerate is lower than that, turn off things gradually till it meets the target framerate. When its done, settings are saved and user is notified.
They could easily modify settings or re-run the assessment if they upgrade some component.
No need for the cloud and future proof forever. If the framerate is too low, it will degrade settings, if framerate constantly exceeds 60fps, it would set everything to max.
As simple as that.

 

[NC37]

And the envelope please...

*drumroll*

The winner of the most pointless waste of dev money award goes to...nVidia!!

 

[m1dg3t]

And the envelope please...

*drumroll*

The winner of the most pointless waste of dev money award goes to...nVidia!!

It's not a waste, do you know how much $$$ they will make off of the collected data?

 

[sergionography]

well this is pretty much like game profiles but with more pre configured data based on different systems, tho there are other factors to take into considerations, some computers might have so much malware and crap that it slows everything down
i think the best way is to work closely with game developers so each game can start with a benchmark the first time you start it, and have it set the thng accordingly, i know most games have that but its only optional

however this kinda reminds me of steambox in a way, i wonder if that will ever come to reality tho

 

[btarunr]

Oh yay! More data collecting programs :shadedshu

If you find this a data-mining operation, you're smart enough to make your own settings. This is for the 80 percent who aren't

 

[m1dg3t]

If you find this a data-mining operation, you're smart enough to make your own settings. This is for the 80 percent who aren't

Doesn't mean I wont let the 80% know they are going to be secretely monitored and have their info/habits harvested for future use.

First Nvidia takes OCing out of the end user's control and now this cool:

 

[syeef]

Like it's so hard to make an algorithm that would systematically degrade settings to get optimal performance. Just make a quick benchmark of few in-game scenes when you start game for the first time. These scenes would include the more demanding parts of the game.

1. As a Software Developer, it is hard

2. Nvidia won't be able to do it because they don't know how each developer has designed their games (as in which files and how to benchmark).

3. Games developers won't do it because it would be a waste of their time and money and if each game has its own benchmark tool, it will be redundant; think of HD space waste.

 

[RejZoR]

1. As a Software Developer, it is hard

2. Nvidia won't be able to do it because they don't know how each developer has designed their games (as in which files and how to benchmark).

3. Games developers won't do it because it would be a waste of their time and money and if each game has its own benchmark tool, it will be redundant; think of HD space waste.

1. Why? You just re-use existing things you've already developed during game design stage.

2. NVIDIA won't make that, game developers would. So it's irrelevant.

3. What HDD space if you just re-use what you've already made for the game. Adding a short flyby path on top of existing level would add what, extra 50MB (and i'm being very generous)? With games that are 15+ GB in size, that's nothing.

 

[hardcore_gamer]

In contrast consoles have, since the beginning of their time, been as simple as inserting the game disc/cartridge and pushing the power button. Huang said his crew was looking to take PC gaming as close to that experience as possible

I don't want "console experience" on my PC.

 

[syeef]

1. Why? You just re-use existing things you've already developed during game design stage.

3. What HDD space if you just re-use what you've already made for the game. Adding a short flyby path on top of existing level would add what, extra 50MB (and i'm being very generous)? With games that are 15 GB in size, that's nothing.

I was talking about the Benchmark tool, not the scene files. Making Benchmark tool for each and every game will be redundant, waste of time and money.

Since each game works differently, the algorithm for each Benchmark tool will be different, hence the waste of time and money.

 

[RejZoR]

It's not like you have to make some scientific algorithm... sometimes the most complex things can be done in the most simple way...

 

[PLAfiller]

That service they offer now is a very good observation in my opinion. Most of the people that play don't even know, what 'nVidia control panel' is about. At least from my co-players. That can actually help someone to get an extra frame here and there. And if you don't like it, don't installed it. As simple as that. I personally, don't need it- I thinker the settings more than enough, but I think it's kinda cool to see statistics gathered to get in use for a new service/product. Nvidia went into 'burst mode' - three rounds per shot. Go my little troopers, go!

 

[repman244]

It's not like you have to make some scientific algorithm... sometimes the most complex things can be done in the most simple way...

And sometimes you think something is really easy but you get shocked at the complexity.

I don't think you actually understand the scale of such project. As syeef said, the algorithm wouldn't be the same for every game, since every game is different, you wouldn't even know what to look for in some games (which settings to increase/lower). Plus I don't think that developers or GPU manufacturers care about it, they just see it as an extra cost.
I saw the process of making an algorithm for website search engine (I can't remember the details, it was a few years back), but I can tell you that even tho it seemed a really simple thing to do, the work put into it was just huge.

Here's a cheaper and easier way than making an algorithm: educate people how to properly set up the game.

 

[hhumas]

its good .........

 

[Thor]

Huh. First thing i do when i install a new game is go to graphics settings and set everything to max. Then ingame i run EVGA precision X to see frame rate and GPU usage. And tweak settings if needed.
Aside from Nvidia control panel settings ofc.

 

[Fourstaff]

Very good for the 80%, but for the 20% I hope we can turn that off.

 

[RejZoR]

And sometimes you think something is really easy but you get shocked at the complexity.

I don't think you actually understand the scale of such project. As syeef said, the algorithm wouldn't be the same for every game, since every game is different, you wouldn't even know what to look for in some games (which settings to increase/lower). Plus I don't think that developers or GPU manufacturers care about it, they just see it as an extra cost.
I saw the process of making an algorithm for website search engine (I can't remember the details, it was a few years back), but I can tell you that even tho it seemed a really simple thing to do, the work put into it was just huge.

Here's a cheaper and easier way than making an algorithm: educate people how to properly set up the game.

I'm NOT talking about NVIDIA at all. Developers can make such things not NVIDIA. Thats why i think its a bit pointless. Because even with all the data collected they have a very limited control over games. Basically just texturer filtering, FSAA, AF and other such things.

 

[Fourstaff]

I'm NOT talking about NVIDIA at all. Developers can make such things not NVIDIA. Thats why i think its a bit pointless. Because even with all the data collected they have a very limited control over games. Basically just texturer filtering, FSAA, AF and other such things.

Devs have a preset for most profiles when they detect the graphics cards, but they can't be bothered to make a graphics card optimiser, to do so you will require almost all combinations of graphics card + cpu to get a detailed setting profile. Much easier and cheaper to outsource to the public.

 

[Benetanegia]

I'm NOT talking about NVIDIA at all. Developers can make such things not NVIDIA. Thats why i think its a bit pointless. Because even with all the data collected they have a very limited control over games. Basically just texturer filtering, FSAA, AF and other such things.

From what I undertood they are going to chage even in-game settings. JHH mentioned close work with a lot of game developers for this task and this will surely extend into the future to much more games and developers.

Anyway, a lot of the games I play, I'd say as much as 75% of them create a txt config file in the game data path or in the documents folder, which would be supereasy to edit with an automatic txt editor built into the tool. I'm sure ALL games have such files even though some of them are hidden somewhere intead of being an accessible and easily recognizable text file.

They DO have a lot of control over how most games would look, with only a very small contribution from the game developers, basically pointing to the config file.

And as others said this is a task that is better performed by someone like Nvidia/AMD, Steam (would be better) or even Microsoft and not something done by every developer beause it costs a ton to collect and test all the data necessary to optimize every single system config out there, and if done ONCE it is much cheaper, than doing it all over again. That's why TWIMTBP and Game Evolved exist and MUST exist and why performance is so much better in said games. Optimizing is anything but easy and nowadays it is not only that developers are lazy or tme contrained, it's that complexity is very high and they need the help from someone powerful and who has all the info on what kind of systems are out there and their capabilities, fetures, etc.

It's like with middleware, it exists because it's the better and cheaper option. Work it's done once and optimized once and then its adjusted for every game as required. In the case of Nvidia's new tool, it means that they will look extensively for which kind of impact each feature* has on each system. And only after this guideline is created, they will probably go on tweaking for every game they posibly can. The first part: looking for how each feature impacts performance on each of the multitude of hardware configurations is probably in the excess of 90% of the work done for each game. Of course Nvidia will have to do the last 10% a thousands times to covert all games, but it's still a better thing than each developer doing the 90%, because it's basically something they will NOT do, they will not spend time and money doing it, ever.

*Different lighting models, shadows, occlusion mapping, texture size and compression, shader lenght and complexity, tesselation, extension and variablity of accesses to sytem RAM and HDD for each card, everything else, you name it...

 

[Prima.Vera]

80%?? Common! I always go first to the game's settings and maximize everything, maybe AA to a 4x, but on the rest...

 

[newtekie1]

Pointless, every game should run on its max settings on mid-range hardware from 2 generations ago. If it doesn't the game just isn't optimized. /sarcasm

On a serious note, I think this is a good thing. It will help the less informed gamers that tend to go with consoles due to the simplicity of setup. Those of us that already tweak settings will see this as pointless, but most gamers will benefit from this, and it might even bring a little more business to the PC gaming side, which is always a good thing.

Is it a data mining thing? Not really any more than Steam or System Requirements Lab. It isn't like it runs constantly collecting data on every little thing you do on your PC.

Also, nVidia isn't forcing you to use it, so if you don't want it don't use it, simple. Don't bitch about it.

 

[m1dg3t]

People should take the time to learn their system's, if you want plug n' play stick with consoles. I'm no expert but i can manage a few tweak's here and there and it's MUCH more rewarding than just pressing the power button and loading up the game

This is just another way, as i see it, to make gaming streamlined across ALL platform's. Which IMO is bad for PC gaming

People complain about all the console port's, well

The way i see it is; Nvidia is taking the enthusiasm out of being an enthusiast!