Half-Life 2 - Nvidia cards can't do FSAA (?!?!)

This is only a bug in nVidia's hardware implementation. They took a
shortcut and it burned them. This was a known issue back in early 2002 when
DX 9's roadmap was published to hardware makers. nVidia lobbied to change
the DX9 treatment of the texture pipeline, supposedly because this
benefitted their patents on texturing. In any case, it has bit them on the
a** now, and deservedly so. The only unfortunates are the gamers who have
new nVidia hardware and are SOL...

Things like this make you realize what amazing pieces of hardware the Radeon
series cards really are.

WTH

"Pluvious" wrote in message
...
http://www.driverheaven.net/index.ph...articleid=4589

The highly-anticipated Half-Life 2 game will have a major bug with
current DirectX 9.0 hardware resulting in impossibility in enabling
Full-Scene Anti-Aliasing, a popular feature that dramatically improves
image quality in games. Apparently, there is a limitation in DirectX
9.0 and/or DirectX 9.0-compliant hardware that will not allow the
function to be enabled on certain graphics cards if the workaround is
not found.

According a Valve officials quoted in forums at HalfLife2.net
web-site, there are problems with the way that current hardware
implements FSAA. If you enable it, you will see a lot of artifacts on
polygon boundaries due to the way that current graphics processors
sample texture subjects with FSAA enabled.

Valve continued that this is a problem for any application that packs
small textures into larger textures. The small textures will bleed
into each other if you have multi-sample FSAA enabled.

Currently both leading graphics chips designers use multi-sampling or
hybrid multi-sampling + super-sampling methods to for FSAA.

The developers of the legendary Half-Life game said that drivers are
not likely to solve the problem, however, it still can be solved for
graphics cards based on VPUs from ATI Technologies, such as RADEON
9500-, 9600-, 9700- and 9800-series. As for NVIDIA GeForce and GeForce
FX-series, there are practically no chances to find a workaround,
according to Valve.

Some industry sources indicated that the problem with such FSAA is a
known one and is to be addressed in DirectX 9.1 and next-generation
graphics processors with Pixel Shaders 3.0 and Vertex Shaders 3.0,
such as ATI Technologies's code-named R420 and NVIDIA's code-named
NV40 VPUs and derivatives. Both next-generation products will come
later than the Half-Life 2 that is expected to be available by
October.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-


OMG.. I'm sooo glad I made the switch to ATI last month. Whew..

Pluvious


Ps.. if you havn't watched the HL2 teaser movie of the lab released
today.. do so. It will blow you away.

Sounds like ATI FUD. First off, FSAA isn't a supported feature in most
games. It's great if it works usually, but few guarantee it.

You know what, I played through Splinter Cell on PC without FSAA because
my card didn't support it (Radeon 9700... it had wierd lighting artifacts,
then apparrently a released patch locked out FSAA), and it was OK. I won't
die if just one game won't have FSAA.

Doom 3's FSAA support is somehow working with GeForce cards.

Sounds like Valve are the ones with the problem.

Of course, if it's an omen of things to come, it's gonna suck because I
just got a GeForce FX 5900... heh heh. You can't win, can you?

"Pluvious" wrote in message
...
http://www.driverheaven.net/index.ph...articleid=4589

The highly-anticipated Half-Life 2 game will have a major bug with
current DirectX 9.0 hardware resulting in impossibility in enabling
Full-Scene Anti-Aliasing, a popular feature that dramatically improves
image quality in games. Apparently, there is a limitation in DirectX
9.0 and/or DirectX 9.0-compliant hardware that will not allow the
function to be enabled on certain graphics cards if the workaround is
not found.

According a Valve officials quoted in forums at HalfLife2.net
web-site, there are problems with the way that current hardware
implements FSAA. If you enable it, you will see a lot of artifacts on
polygon boundaries due to the way that current graphics processors
sample texture subjects with FSAA enabled.

Valve continued that this is a problem for any application that packs
small textures into larger textures. The small textures will bleed
into each other if you have multi-sample FSAA enabled.

Currently both leading graphics chips designers use multi-sampling or
hybrid multi-sampling + super-sampling methods to for FSAA.

The developers of the legendary Half-Life game said that drivers are
not likely to solve the problem, however, it still can be solved for
graphics cards based on VPUs from ATI Technologies, such as RADEON
9500-, 9600-, 9700- and 9800-series. As for NVIDIA GeForce and GeForce
FX-series, there are practically no chances to find a workaround,
according to Valve.

Some industry sources indicated that the problem with such FSAA is a
known one and is to be addressed in DirectX 9.1 and next-generation
graphics processors with Pixel Shaders 3.0 and Vertex Shaders 3.0,
such as ATI Technologies's code-named R420 and NVIDIA's code-named
NV40 VPUs and derivatives. Both next-generation products will come
later than the Half-Life 2 that is expected to be available by
October.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-


OMG.. I'm sooo glad I made the switch to ATI last month. Whew..

Pluvious


Ps.. if you havn't watched the HL2 teaser movie of the lab released
today.. do so. It will blow you away.

This is funny as hell. This started with Splinter Cell. You had to wonder
how far it was going to go and it appears it's going to go a lot further.
HL2 will probably be the game of the year, if not the next three years. The
thing is, with all the mods/addons that will probably come out for it
(remember CounterStrike and Team Fortress anyone, isn't Team Fortress II
supposed to come soon? Hmmm...) this problem will only get worse. I guess
all the driver cheats in the world won't help Nvidia with this one...

Chris Smith

There are problems with the way that current hardware implements FSAA. If
you enable it, you will see a lot of artifacts on polygon boundaries due to
the way that they sample texture subjects with FSAA enabled.

We are working with the hardware companies and the DirectX team to make sure
that future hardware doesn't have this problem.

(As a side note: ATI hardware actually has what we need to do FSAA, but it
isn't exposed in DirectX 9.)

....Drivers aren't likely to fix the problem, with the exception of the ATI
9500-9800. There's hope there for being able to use FSAA properly. You are
out of luck on NVidia unless either NVidia or us come up with some clever
way of solving this problem.

....It's a problem for any app that packs small textures into larger
textures. The small textures will bleed into each other if you have
multisample FSAA enabled. The best thing to do right now is either buy an
ATI card in the hopes that it will be solved there, or wait until the next
generation of cards come out.

....no current hardware will be able to do FSAA with HL2 as it is now. We may
be able to get FSAA working on ATI 9500-9800 somehow.

Centroid sampling (which is the missing feature that makes FSAA work
properly) is probably exposed in OpenGL. . I'm not sure. It *is* exposed in
DirectX for hardware with pixel shader version 3.0. (All DirectX 9 hardware
so far is at most pixel shader version 2.0.) We are sticking with DirectX
for the foreseeable future.

Gary

That is straight from Gary McTaggart a Valve Programmer.

"Pluvious" wrote in message
...
http://www.driverheaven.net/index.ph...articleid=4589

The highly-anticipated Half-Life 2 game will have a major bug with
current DirectX 9.0 hardware resulting in impossibility in enabling
Full-Scene Anti-Aliasing, a popular feature that dramatically improves
image quality in games. Apparently, there is a limitation in DirectX
9.0 and/or DirectX 9.0-compliant hardware that will not allow the
function to be enabled on certain graphics cards if the workaround is
not found.

According a Valve officials quoted in forums at HalfLife2.net
web-site, there are problems with the way that current hardware
implements FSAA. If you enable it, you will see a lot of artifacts on
polygon boundaries due to the way that current graphics processors
sample texture subjects with FSAA enabled.

Valve continued that this is a problem for any application that packs
small textures into larger textures. The small textures will bleed
into each other if you have multi-sample FSAA enabled.

Currently both leading graphics chips designers use multi-sampling or
hybrid multi-sampling + super-sampling methods to for FSAA.

The developers of the legendary Half-Life game said that drivers are
not likely to solve the problem, however, it still can be solved for
graphics cards based on VPUs from ATI Technologies, such as RADEON
9500-, 9600-, 9700- and 9800-series. As for NVIDIA GeForce and GeForce
FX-series, there are practically no chances to find a workaround,
according to Valve.

Some industry sources indicated that the problem with such FSAA is a
known one and is to be addressed in DirectX 9.1 and next-generation
graphics processors with Pixel Shaders 3.0 and Vertex Shaders 3.0,
such as ATI Technologies's code-named R420 and NVIDIA's code-named
NV40 VPUs and derivatives. Both next-generation products will come
later than the Half-Life 2 that is expected to be available by
October.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-


OMG.. I'm sooo glad I made the switch to ATI last month. Whew..

Pluvious


Ps.. if you havn't watched the HL2 teaser movie of the lab released
today.. do so. It will blow you away.

I was under the impression that previous builds of Doom III were DX8.1.

WTH

"magnulus" wrote in message
...
Sounds like ATI FUD. First off, FSAA isn't a supported feature in most
games. It's great if it works usually, but few guarantee it.

You know what, I played through Splinter Cell on PC without FSAA because
my card didn't support it (Radeon 9700... it had wierd lighting artifacts,
then apparrently a released patch locked out FSAA), and it was OK. I
won't
die if just one game won't have FSAA.

Doom 3's FSAA support is somehow working with GeForce cards.

Sounds like Valve are the ones with the problem.

Of course, if it's an omen of things to come, it's gonna suck because I
just got a GeForce FX 5900... heh heh. You can't win, can you?

"Pluvious" wrote in message
...
http://www.driverheaven.net/index.ph...articleid=4589

The highly-anticipated Half-Life 2 game will have a major bug with
current DirectX 9.0 hardware resulting in impossibility in enabling
Full-Scene Anti-Aliasing, a popular feature that dramatically improves
image quality in games. Apparently, there is a limitation in DirectX
9.0 and/or DirectX 9.0-compliant hardware that will not allow the
function to be enabled on certain graphics cards if the workaround is
not found.

According a Valve officials quoted in forums at HalfLife2.net
web-site, there are problems with the way that current hardware
implements FSAA. If you enable it, you will see a lot of artifacts on
polygon boundaries due to the way that current graphics processors
sample texture subjects with FSAA enabled.

Valve continued that this is a problem for any application that packs
small textures into larger textures. The small textures will bleed
into each other if you have multi-sample FSAA enabled.

Currently both leading graphics chips designers use multi-sampling or
hybrid multi-sampling + super-sampling methods to for FSAA.

The developers of the legendary Half-Life game said that drivers are
not likely to solve the problem, however, it still can be solved for
graphics cards based on VPUs from ATI Technologies, such as RADEON
9500-, 9600-, 9700- and 9800-series. As for NVIDIA GeForce and GeForce
FX-series, there are practically no chances to find a workaround,
according to Valve.

Some industry sources indicated that the problem with such FSAA is a
known one and is to be addressed in DirectX 9.1 and next-generation
graphics processors with Pixel Shaders 3.0 and Vertex Shaders 3.0,
such as ATI Technologies's code-named R420 and NVIDIA's code-named
NV40 VPUs and derivatives. Both next-generation products will come
later than the Half-Life 2 that is expected to be available by
October.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-


OMG.. I'm sooo glad I made the switch to ATI last month. Whew..

Pluvious


Ps.. if you havn't watched the HL2 teaser movie of the lab released
today.. do so. It will blow you away.

"I won't die if just one game won't have FSAA??"
If we're talking about Half Life 2, Nvidia might not
be so lucky.

"magnulus" wrote in message
...
Sounds like ATI FUD. First off, FSAA isn't a supported feature in most
games. It's great if it works usually, but few guarantee it.

You know what, I played through Splinter Cell on PC without FSAA because
my card didn't support it (Radeon 9700... it had wierd lighting artifacts,
then apparrently a released patch locked out FSAA), and it was OK. I
won't
die if just one game won't have FSAA.

Doom 3's FSAA support is somehow working with GeForce cards.

Sounds like Valve are the ones with the problem.

Of course, if it's an omen of things to come, it's gonna suck because I
just got a GeForce FX 5900... heh heh. You can't win, can you?

"Pluvious" wrote in message
...
http://www.driverheaven.net/index.ph...articleid=4589

The highly-anticipated Half-Life 2 game will have a major bug with
current DirectX 9.0 hardware resulting in impossibility in enabling
Full-Scene Anti-Aliasing, a popular feature that dramatically improves
image quality in games. Apparently, there is a limitation in DirectX
9.0 and/or DirectX 9.0-compliant hardware that will not allow the
function to be enabled on certain graphics cards if the workaround is
not found.

According a Valve officials quoted in forums at HalfLife2.net
web-site, there are problems with the way that current hardware
implements FSAA. If you enable it, you will see a lot of artifacts on
polygon boundaries due to the way that current graphics processors
sample texture subjects with FSAA enabled.

Valve continued that this is a problem for any application that packs
small textures into larger textures. The small textures will bleed
into each other if you have multi-sample FSAA enabled.

Currently both leading graphics chips designers use multi-sampling or
hybrid multi-sampling + super-sampling methods to for FSAA.

The developers of the legendary Half-Life game said that drivers are
not likely to solve the problem, however, it still can be solved for
graphics cards based on VPUs from ATI Technologies, such as RADEON
9500-, 9600-, 9700- and 9800-series. As for NVIDIA GeForce and GeForce
FX-series, there are practically no chances to find a workaround,
according to Valve.

Some industry sources indicated that the problem with such FSAA is a
known one and is to be addressed in DirectX 9.1 and next-generation
graphics processors with Pixel Shaders 3.0 and Vertex Shaders 3.0,
such as ATI Technologies's code-named R420 and NVIDIA's code-named
NV40 VPUs and derivatives. Both next-generation products will come
later than the Half-Life 2 that is expected to be available by
October.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-


OMG.. I'm sooo glad I made the switch to ATI last month. Whew..

Pluvious


Ps.. if you havn't watched the HL2 teaser movie of the lab released
today.. do so. It will blow you away.

Sounds like Valve are the ones with the problem.


Doesn't Raven Shield also have a bad FSAA problem when night vision is
used or something like that?

Also, I know that MotoGP2 will not allow FSAA to be used within the game.

"Nobody_of_Consequence" wrote in message
...

"I won't die if just one game won't have FSAA??"
If we're talking about Half Life 2, Nvidia might not
be so lucky.


Hmm... I agree to an extent. This could be very bad for NVidia in the long
run. I'd just like to know why so few developers have encountered this
problem, if it's going to render a GeForce card useless for all DX 9 games.
My guess is it's a problem with the Source engine, possibly they are using a
technique that's in DX 9 specs that nobody supports.

And Doom III is OpenGL, isn't it?

Antialiasing is definitely a driving force behind the current high-end
cards. Each generation card, the anti-aliasing gets faster and higher
quality. Since there haven't been any true DX 9 games out all year, the
real push for new cards must be anti-aliasing. If you have the average CRT,
high resolutions like 1600X1200, or even 1280x1024, simply aren't possible
without too low a refresh. Even an older PC game will look amazingly clear
with these new antialiasing settings.

Back to DX 9... am I the only one thinking that DirectX is splitting too
much into ATI vs. NVidia features? It's almost like there are two versions
of DirectX now. ATI has Truform 1 and 2, Nvidia has Ultra-Shadow. ATI
supports several kinds of displacement maps, NVidia only supports one.
NVidia has it's own shader set, ATI has it's own shader set. NVidia has CG,
ATI has HLSL in DirectX 9. To top it off, both ATI and NVidia try and
leverage their architectures with game developers ("Nvidia: The way it's
meant to be played" ATI has a similar program). Granted, most of these
features, like Truform, are near worthless (I predict Ultra-Shadow will
also fall by the wayside), but what if a really important developer decides
to latch onto a hardware specific feature- it's going to leave somebody out
in the cold.

Well, Half Life 2 is a good half-dozen months away. I'm going to enjoy my
GeForce FX 5900 as much as a I can playing my old games. I'm not even sure
I'm going to be buying that many games this year anyways.

"Destroy" wrote in message
...


Sounds like Valve are the ones with the problem.


Doesn't Raven Shield also have a bad FSAA problem when night vision is
used or something like that?

Also, I know that MotoGP2 will not allow FSAA to be used within the game.



Splinter Cell disables FSAA with the image enhancer turned on. Somehow it
doesn't seem surprising. I remember with my Radeon 9700 Pro, before they
released the patch, the framerate and performance took a big hit with both
AA and nightvision on.

agreed,

about TF2, i have a theory, why TF2 has been in developemnt for so long and
is hush hush.

im thinking its going to be the multiplayer component to HL2, that would
sell way more HL2 box's, and would be garenteed to out do DoomIII



"who be dat?" wrote in message
...
This is funny as hell. This started with Splinter Cell. You had to
wonder
how far it was going to go and it appears it's going to go a lot further.
HL2 will probably be the game of the year, if not the next three years.
The
thing is, with all the mods/addons that will probably come out for it
(remember CounterStrike and Team Fortress anyone, isn't Team Fortress II
supposed to come soon? Hmmm...) this problem will only get worse. I guess
all the driver cheats in the world won't help Nvidia with this one...

Chris Smith






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