Half-Life 2 & FSAA

[TS | Thomas]

Spotted this one via nvnews. Apparently Half-Life will have compatibility problems with FSAA support & certain Graphics cards (Seemingly everything that's not an ATi Radeon 9500+). Here's the info.;

1) Is this a problem that can be fixed with new drivers, or would we have to buy a whole new card to recitify it? If so, are there any cards on the horizon that would offer it?
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.

2) Is this a problem unique to hardware + Source?
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.

Full thread on the matter here. As regards the ATi "possibility", apparently they support the requiste feature, albeit they (Valve/ATi) aren't sure how to expose it, though seemingly they are close.

 

[Phantasm66]

I've read your post over twice, just to make sure I was not imagining it.....!

This is ridiculous.... Either Value and ATI are in bed together, or Value have gone insane...

 

[TS | Thomas]

Warp2search has a detailed post on the matter also;
http://www.warp2search.net/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=13290

It's probably for the best in the end, why have support for crap looking FSAA?

 

[Phantasm66]

If the rationale for this is that they want the technology to catch up to what the game can do, then that's a good technical argument, but not a very sound business one.

They are getting a little ahead of themselves, though - aren't they?

 

[TS | Thomas]

I guess they're in a bind either way, if current FSAA implementations were to work, then according to them it wouldn't appear very pleasing. While of course if they have to wait for everything else to catch up then those who want it will moan .

Besides ATi potentially being able to support it in their *current* cards, it's also reling on Microsoft posting DirectX 9.1 in time as well to expose support for it (I think I read they can do it in OpenGL already - this "Centroid sampling", but Half-Life 2's using Direct3D only - if I read the forum right anyway).

Still, anisotropic filtering should work just fine, which to me is more important when it comes down to it - ATi still has months left to get its Radeon Drivers sorted too, NVIDIA'll probably pull something out of its hat, just like they did when they got FSAA support for those early Detonator Driver (5.xx ?).

 

[Phantasm66]

Well, its happened before that a particular game has changed the whole market and buying pattern for graphics cards.

Matrox and some others were on to some nice 3D ideas (the mystique had a patch for tomb raider one that was pure eye candy at the time), then Quake II came out with beautiful support for the 3dfx cards, and that was that. 3dfx as king, almost until nVidia came along. you needed 3dfx voodoo for that game.

Maybe this game will ensure ATi's place as graphics card king for a while. Maybe this game will be the thing that gets nVidia.

 

[TS | Crazyace]

These are some of the reasons why I play CONSOLE games now!

 

[acidosmosis]

Oh, I'm sorry that you have to deal with those weak console games. It'll be alright

 

[Julio Franco]

In a somewhat unrelated note, I finally downloaded the full Half-Life2 600mb movie I linked from the frontpage the other day... detail isn't as good as in the individual movies but still nicely showcases technology and gameplay in Half-Life 2.

I'm afraid to say so, sorry Duke... you won't be missed anymore, Doom3 will be nice, too... but HL2 looks amazing to me.
(yes, I was still looking fwd Duke Forever but come on, if they would release a few new screenshots at least!).

 

[acidosmosis]

I haven't been interested in Duke since the first screenshots were release. Even then the graphics seemed a bit outdated to me. Now, considering it's been years, I've lost all faith in 3D Realms and lost all interest.

 

[olefarte]

Regarding the Half-Life 2 bug, here's something from a friend of a friend of a, well you know the drill. Maybe just another rumor, but could be the truth. This can be found at NTFS.org

A friend at NVIDIA has let me know that while the current release of drivers, referred to as Rel40 do have this problem, the Rel50 based drivers will not. The drivers, which will be more commonly known as Detonator 5.x will hopefully be available by the time Half-life 2 begins shipping.

 

[olefarte]

Here's somemore info on a lot of nVidia issues, including some questions about the Half-Life 2 bug. It's a chat session with some nVidia personel. It's a very long read, I read it all, and I didn't see much new. Read it here if you've got the time. One of the kind of humorus question and replies was;

How/Why the dawn demo works better on radeon 9700pro cards.... have newer seen a comment on that?
[01:53] that's a good question you should ask ATI. From our standpoint we are constantly improving the performance of our drivers

 

[olefarte]

A good day for nVidia Q&A sessions. Here's another one at nV News. It's a lot easier read, not near a long. Again, I don't think there's much new that's not known already.