Half Life 2 - Bad News For NVIDIA?

[yolkboy]

"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.

 

You can find the thread on the matter with quotes from Valve officials here.

 

Stay tuned with us because we are looking forward to bring you some comments from ATI Technologies and NVIDIA about the situation."

 

I was surfing the web today and ran across this which can be found here. X-bit Labs Hopefully Valve and Nvidia will find a way around this before the release date. Thoughts? Concerns?

[BCanr2d2]

For average Joe, they don't use FSAA, it takes away framerate!!!

 

I don't use FSAA, but I do have a system fast enough to enable it..

[Azrael]

Umm... Yoda!

[HertogJan]

It'll probably be solved in DX9.1 I heard... And I don't usually run with FSAA anyway... Although I do have the system for it

[Acrylic]

I love Fullscreen Anitialiasing. Its great. I have a 9700, and use it all the time. I also use Antisotoropic (sp?) filtering. It makes everything look ALOT better, and I love the BEST graphics possible on my games, so, I'm glad I'll be able to run it on my comp.

[jokemaster]

I have a Raedon 9700 PRO, so [Nelson from the Simpsons voice] HA-HA [/nelson voice]

[RoguePhotonic]

I never run antialiasing on my 9700...it makes it worse...this card has smoothvision that fixes the aliasing anyway and if I turn AA on it's alittle better close but further away it looks worse...

[Tyrion]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

........

 

What's Full Screen Antialasing?

 

 

Is it 4XS?

[HertogJan]

Full Scene Anti Aliasing is a method newer videocards can use to remove the blocky edges in a game. It kinda blurs them and makes the game look better.... BUT it destroys your framerate, although the Radeon is better with it than GeForce cards... Well not since the FX anywayz I believe