Batman: Arkham Asylum Enables AA Only on NVIDIA Hardware on PCs

[BlackOmega]

Wow,almost 200 posts!(Ok,I contributed a little...)

So,the conclusions i can draw after reading those 9 pages is that either Nvidia is a big bad company who doesn't like to play fair or ATI is full of incopetent people.There's another thing which I think is more reasonable:if Nvidia put their money helping in the development of better features for the game(in-game AA and Phsyx),then why would it share it with ATI?Is there a rule anywhere saying that it should?

I think the more accurate assumption would be that the game had AA already implemented and Nvidia paid the game devs to disable it with ATi hardware.

I definitely wont be buying this game due to this bullshit. I was planning on upgrading my folding rigs (2 of them) to 260/216's but thats not going to happen either. I hope Stanford gets the ATi clients right and us ATi guys will finally be able to see some decent PPD associated with our hardware.

 

[Mussels]

the problem isnt that nvidia had more work put it and wont share, its that they did a dirty trick and hid the setting.

if the setting was there *for all GPU's* it would be fair, like every other game title - it may run worse on AMD, and be useless on intel IGP's, but at least then they could release new drivers to fix the performance/compatibility bugs. nvidia would have a headstart on a fair playing field



how many people here would mind, if crysis 2 didnt allow AA on nvidia cards? you had to run it via your nvidia control panel, and you took a 20% FPS hit over ATI using the inbuilt options?

 

[pr0n Inspector]

the engine supports it, its just that on nvidia card DX10 rendering is normally required to use it.
ATI could always run it, with a few odd glitches when HDR was used at the same time.

http://www.pcbuyersguide.co.za/showthread.php?t=6757
http://img.techpowerup.org/090930/Capture160.jpg


all thats happened here, is that nvidia took tweaking to get it to work and ATI didnt, but instead of just letting ATI run they "hid" the option to make their sponsors look better.

Not HDR. I'm tired of mentioning this again and again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deferred_shading

also, UE3 did not support AA in DX9 until now.

 

[Mussels]

Not HDR. I'm tired of mentioning this again and again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deferred_shading

sorry pron man. HDR was mentioned in the link i found.

 

[entropy13]

Sorry too pron man, we're talking about UE 3.5 here and not UE 3.

 

[pr0n Inspector]

Sorry too pron man, we're talking about UE 3.5 here and not UE 3.

And guess what? When Epic announced UE 3.5 there's not a single word about AA@DX9. I wonder what does that mean?

 

[Mussels]

And guess what? When Epic announced UE 3.5 there's not a single word about AA@DX9. I wonder what does that mean?

it means what i said earlier.

ATI could do it since the get go (remember oblivion, with HDR+AA?) and Nvidia couldnt.

nvidia took the time to make it work (and it does), and cock-blocked ATI from joining the party, when they could do it all along.

 

[Hayder_Master]

this year come with many cool games and i don't have time to play it all so I was thinking which game i will leave play it this year and thanks for nvidia they make the easy chose for me

 

[wiak]

i miss the time they (ATI/NVIDIA) were cheating in 3dmark, atleast it wasnt a game, so it didnt realy impact us that much

 

[pr0n Inspector]

it means what i said earlier.

ATI could do it since the get go (remember oblivion, with HDR+AA?) and Nvidia couldnt.

nvidia took the time to make it work (and it does), and cock-blocked ATI from joining the party, when they could do it all along.

So you are saying this is the same old HDR+AA issue?

 

[Mussels]

So you are saying this is the same old HDR+AA issue?

it pretty much is, yes.

ATI followed the DX9/10 specs better than nvidia did, and Nv forced games to disable these options, so that ATI wouldnt have a features or performance advantage.

its an ages old game they play.

ATi had pixel shader 1.4 out when nvidia were stuck on 1.3 (so games stayed on 1.3 longer)
NV released the GF4 MX series without shaders at all (moving BACK two generations in hardware) (which helped NV catch up with PS2.0, bypassing their lack of PS 1.4)
FX series ony did 16 and 32 bit precision for floating point in PS2.0 when the standard called for 24 bit (meaning they were slower, or lower quality)
6 series cards were fine, but had slower SM3.0 performance for the most part (but it was fairly even there)
7 series: nothing in my memory, both sides had a fair go
8 series and up: Nv didnt support many features of DX10 properly, so they got them removed from the specs and pushed into DX10.1


nvidias hardware has often been behind ATI in the features game, and they use their influence (such as TWIMTBP) to get those features removed from games, lest ATI have an advantage. Thats all this is: ATI can do AA on top of all these fancy features, and nvidia cant (which is part of the specs of DX10.1 if you look).

nvidia got B:AA to work on their cards through hard work, and blocked ATI from allowing the same (even tho it works fine, as proven by forcing it in the CCC - try forcing AA onto an unreal engine game with nvidia, and you'll find it doesnt work)

 

[El Fiendo]

Hold on a second there Mussels, there's nothing to prove that NVIDIA intentionally hid it. In fact, what seems more likely is the game developer hid it on their own doing. As you mentioned it runs but with bugs. Could be just as likely that it caused system instability without the tweak so it was disabled by the game.

The point is not one of you, nor I, know what happened. And while I find it fun to watch everyone so ravenously chant bloody murder on the basis of nothing more than text, its getting old.

You're forgetting one thing. Why this one game? Why disable AA on JUST this game but none of the others? Were you guys just looking for a reason to burn people at the stake? I'm sure everyone remembers the Far Cry 2 scandal that, oh wait. It wasn't. It was an error in ATI driver code. But that was a witch hunt too, wasn't it?

Edit:
Official response from NVIDIA:


“A representative of AMD recently claimed that NVIDIA interfered with anti-aliasing (AA) support for Batman: Arkham Asylum on AMD cards. They also claimed that NVIDIA’s The Way It’s Meant to be Played Program prevents AMD from working with developers for those games.

Both of these claims are NOT true. Batman is based on the Unreal Engine 3, which does not natively support anti-aliasing. We worked closely with Eidos to add AA and QA the feature on GeForce. Nothing prevented AMD from doing the same thing.

Games in The Way It’s Meant to be Played are not exclusive to NVIDIA. AMD can also contact developers and work with them.

We are proud of the work we do in The Way It’s Meant to be Played. We work hard to deliver kickass, game-changing features in PC games like PhysX, AA, and 3D Vision for games like Batman.If AMD wants to deliver innovation for PC games then we encourage them to roll up their sleeves and do the same.”

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/news...ms-meddling-batman-arkham-asylum-aa-features/

So they say that the game engine does not natively support it. I doubt they'd get something like that wrong in a press release. So the questions, who do I (/we) believe?

 

[pr0n Inspector]

It doesn't "work just fine" btw.

 

[laszlo]

i read from page 12 where the thread was yesterday....

a lot of arguments,facts&even proofs ...from both supporters..

i like to read between the lines because the truth is there somewhere...

so if this game was made with nvidia money they have the right to ask the developer to make subtle changes in order to not allow for ati cards to use a specific feature;who have the money and pay is making the rules in any fields

we don't have to forget the fact that nvidia has bought ageia and now they see that is wasn't a good investment as expected, so till they can they'll try to make money from it to compensate this bad investment;neither physx or cuda don't have the expected popularity whatever they make and they'll loose a lot of $ when other similar applications will have a higher usage-market share;a perfect analogy is blu-ray and HDVD;the shift of market to the 1st was deadly for the other with huge loses for the 2nd involved parts

is a known fact that both vga producer invest money in games for obvious reasons:they have to sell cards! ;both of them have optimized games & favorite engines and they can ask the developer to write what they consider necessary in the game soft in order to create an advantage over the competitor

we don't need to be angry or upset for findings like this because the community has always find solutions to fix this problems for the benefit of all users - no matter if ati or nvidia

from my point of view i consider this thread closed...

 

[DaedalusHelios]

i read from page 12 where the thread was yesterday....

a lot of arguments,facts&even proofs ...from both supporters..

i like to read between the lines because the truth is there somewhere...

so if this game was made with nvidia money they have the right to ask the developer to make subtle changes in order to not allow for ati cards to use a specific feature;who have the money and pay is making the rules in any fields

we don't have to forget the fact that nvidia has bought ageia and now they see that is wasn't a good investment as expected, so till they can they'll try to make money from it to compensate this bad investment;neither physx or cuda don't have the expected popularity whatever they make and they'll loose a lot of $ when other similar applications will have a higher usage-market share;a perfect analogy is blu-ray and HDVD;the shift of market to the 1st was deadly for the other with huge loses for the 2nd involved parts

is a known fact that both vga producer invest money in games for obvious reasons:they have to sell cards! ;both of them have optimized games & favorite engines and they can ask the developer to write what they consider necessary in the game soft in order to create an advantage over the competitor

we don't need to be angry or upset for findings like this because the community has always find solutions to fix this problems for the benefit of all users - no matter if ati or nvidia

from my point of view i consider this thread closed...

The people moderating this thread: moderators btarunr, Mussels, and Erocker made it clear they do not see it your way though.

It doesn't "work just fine" btw.

Its all just hysteria. To bad people jump the gun without proof. Good read BTW.


I guess the witch hunt can end with that info.

 

[Wile E]

So what did I miss, more people claiming NV used TWIMTBP to do evil things against ATI?

Nonsense. If features were disabled for any reason other than technical, there would already be talks of ATI suing NV. It's either a technical limitation, or a bug.

EDIT: In fact, I would go one step further, and say it's ATI's fault for not getting involved with the game's development like NV does. They have every opportunity to go to the developer and help optimize for their platform.

 

[Benetanegia]

It doesn't "work just fine" btw.

That pretty much says it all. You can enable it using tricks, but it doesn't work. It's not anti-aliasing the game at all. And that's because it was an specific AA ADDED for Nvidia cards.

All the TWIMTPB bashing is so BS anyway and always based on previous cases that weren't true to begin with. This must is true, because what happened with Assassin's Creed? LIke I always said: If Nvidia didn't want DX10.1 in "their" game, why was it included in the first place? They work closely with the developer, they test a lot, they can test on Ati hardware... No Ati fanboi whiner has ever answered this simple question. The truth is that Nvidia never interferd, not in this game, not in AC, not ever, but the ball just continues rolling and rolling. The next time that something happens BM:AA will be mentioned, even if it's not true just like happned in the past. :shadedshu

EDIT: In fact, I would go one step further, and say it's ATI's fault for not getting involved with the game's development like NV does. They have every opportunity to go to the developer and help optimize for their platform.

I share that opinion and I already said that in more than one post, but it's lost in the labyrinth of posts this thread has become.

The one part that the people complaining are not understanding is this.

Quote from Nvidia's answer

"Both of these claims are NOT true. Batman is based on the Unreal Engine 3, which does not natively support anti-aliasing. We worked closely with Eidos to add AA and QA the feature on GeForce. Nothing prevented AMD from doing the same thing."

 

[zOaib]

I played the demo, the fighting was amasingly addictive. Plus the game ran like a dream on my ATi powered lappy, so as soon as it drops in price and I see it around, I'd totaly pick it up.

i got the game free with my GTX 275 i bought a month ago , which is now being replaced with the hd 5870 today ............... and i will play thte game with my ATI card at max res. for my LCD ........ the game is quite addictive the fighting style is very intriguing too , since it was free with the gtx ill be playing it on an ATI =)

 

[gumpty]

Meh,

I read like 5 pages then got bored of reading the same things over and over.

My suggestion: those that don't like what the game developers/nvidia have done - just don't buy the game and at the same time write an e-mail to both the game developers and nvidia telling them the reasons why. When the game devs get a hundred or a thousand e-mails, they'll quickly fix the problem.

Whining about it on here is going to get nothing done.

Cheers have a nice day.

 

[$ReaPeR$]

this is NOT healthy competition, this is disgusting. cant they just focus on being more productive?:shadedshu

 

[DaedalusHelios]

this is NOT healthy competition, this is disgusting. cant they just focus on being more productive?:shadedshu

Read the posts above you to understand blaming Nvidia was BS.

 

[$ReaPeR$]

i just did thanks!

 

[DaedalusHelios]

i just did thanks!

But Nvidia should still lower their prices since the 5870 had such a strong launch.

If people want to rage about Nvidia just complain about the pricing. It won't take lies or misconceptions to do so. Its just plain facts.

I got ripped buying a 7950GX2 back in the day. It scaled like crap and drivers had taken forever to make it scale decently. 9800GX2 and GTX 295's were another story though(still overpriced).

 

[wahdangun]

yep the conclusion is if you are ati owner then you never ever buy this game, they don't deserve our money

 

[DaedalusHelios]

Cruising on caps lock is cool.

Strange Indonesian kids are raiding TPU! oh noes!

*EDIT* btarunr just cleaned it up with an edit. Thank you sir.