tessellation

[He111]

ok, I'm looking at buyinga new rig and just looked at some bench tests of NVidia V ATI graphics cards, showing nVidia have Tessellation down pat while ATI have been left behind! Question, will Tessellation be important in SOW? the answer to this question will guide me whether to go nVidia or ATI.

Thanks

[dduff442]

Tessellated polygons are just polygons in the end of the day, so any difference is down to drivers I'd guess.

DX 10 was not a massive success, and DX 11 cards aren't common yet. There's no telling if tessellation will ever be a big hit with designers. There are other ways of doing what tessellation does.

The Nvidia v ATI thing is as old as the hills and everybody has their own opinion. I can't look past ATI myself for the power management alone.

If you live somewhere hot it should be a no-brainer... a high-power card will be working against your air conditioning, basically doubling the power wastage. I've no a/c and the heat is a nuisance in summer. An Nvidia card would be even hotter still.

dduff

[Blackdog_kt]

I think you'll be dissapointed to know that the answer is not that simple :grin:

I don't exactly remember it the way i read it, but there's certain architecture differences that complicate things.
First of all, the reason nVidia works so well with tesselation is that it has a load of tesselation-specific shaders in comparison to Ati. On the other hand, Ati handles it a different way, using some general purpose architecture but having lots more of it. The end result? In applications with heavy tesselation nVidia is faster. In applications without heavy tesselation use (or if you turn it off) Ati is faster.

Ati is also cheaper to buy, cheaper to run (less wattage required and runs cooler), more reliable hardware-wise (as it runs cooler) and all around great value. Ati's drawbacks are the fact that sometimes they have "funky" driver support for older games (like it was with IL2 and the unreadable text bug). For DX11 cards today, the main advantage of nVidia is driver quality and marketing/developer connections. Unless someone runs tesselation full tilt and 24/7 (maybe first person shooter games, i don't know) i don't think it's good value for money and i wouldn't buy one today. I might buy one 3-6 months down the line though, if the market shifts around a bit.

I've had both Ati and nVidia cards over the years and i was pleased with both, because i always had cost effectiveness in mind and not brand loyalty. If i was buying a new PC today i would go for an Ati. For as low as 50-100 bucks more than the top of the line single GPU nVidia DX11 cards you can have a dual GPU Ati DX11 card.

Certain benchmarks from the early nVidia 480s showed that comparable Ati models were maybe 5% slower (and that at very high resolutions, it's equal or faster at normal resolutions depending on game/benchmark, ie the differences were negligible) but ran quieter, smoother and cooler. The nVidia cards were still the fastest single GPU cards but being priced so close to Ati's dual GPU models totally defeated the purpose, especially since they needed comparable power (which is a factor if you keep your PC on for long times or days on end, like i do, it shows in the electricity bills) and ran even hotter than them. After all, at the end of the day i'm looking at what kind of performance per dollar (and i mean total cost: buy, power consumption, possible malfunctions) i'm getting, not what kind of performance per GPU ;)

As for wether SoW will use a lot of tesselation, there was such a discussion in the recent update thread. The general feeling is that it will probably be confined to the near-distance LOD models. Meaning, it might be used to render your cockpit but it won't be used to render a railway embankment 3 miles away, until you are flying directly over it and it switches to the near-distance LOD models and even then, i don't even know if it's worth the processing expense when you are zipping along at 250mph.

If this is accurate it's one more reason not to invest in nVidia if SoW is your main interest, as nVidia's main advantage and clear performance lead comes in applications with heavy tesselation use. If tesselation is used just for a bit of touching up and small details, an Ati card will do just fine and save you quite some money to maybe get something else (eg, extra RAM). Also, the new 6xxx series of Ati cards will be on the market in a few months, so we can expect the current models of both nVidia and Ati to drop in price.

[T}{OR]

While this is all nice and true, you have to consider the fact that IL2 ran and still runs better on nVidia cards. And that Oleg didn't mention anything about holding a presentation for ATI/AMD this month. ;)

The best answer and suggestion is - wait for the game (or game specs) to come out.

[kalimba]

At the end of November, both ATI and nVIDIA will release their new top of the line cards...THe 6900 series for ATI and the GTX580 for nVIDIA...

nVIDIA is supposed to have a new desing that is aiming at gaming, so faster AND cooler, and ATI uses same technologie as 6800, but more of it on a single card....:grin:

Will see !

Salute !

[Triggaaar]

ok, I'm looking at buyinga new rig and just looked at some bench tests of NVidia V ATI graphics cards, showing nVidia have Tessellation down pat while ATI have been left behind! Question, will Tessellation be important in SOW? the answer to this question will guide me whether to go nVidia or ATI.I have the same question on my mind, and am waiting for the new cards to come out, and for the details on the game. I think tesselation should be important in a game like this, that hasn't been made for a console, but we'll have to wait and see what the developers were able to do.

At the end of November, both ATI and nVIDIA will release their new top of the line cards...THe 6900 series for ATI and the GTX580 for nVIDIA...

nVIDIA is supposed to have a new desing that is aiming at gaming, so faster AND cooler, and ATI uses same technologie as 6800, but more of it on a single card....:grin:I don't think the Cayman cards (69xx series) are expected to be the same technology as Barts (68xx series).

If you're after a top of the line card, you really have to wait until both sides release their cards, and if it is primarily for BoB, try and hold out for more information from Oleg.

[Les]

ATI have announced new 6900 series cards coming out before the end of the year, and details are emerging of a GTX580 from nVidia early next year, which is when the latest rumours suggest BOB will be out. So if you're into the latest and greatest, I'd say wait and see, or just get something to tide you over until then (ATI or a GTX260 with after-market cooling).

You might want to consider too though, even if BOB does make great use of tesselation (who knows, it could be used on the water, maybe even the coastline), chances are even the next generation cards from both camps won't be able to crank it right up and give you good frame-rates. That was the case with the Il-2 series when new graphical enhancements were introduced (with the Pacific Fighters release IIRC), so there is a precedent, and it makes sense that a brand new game in a new series is going to be ahead of the hardware curve for at least a while, if they don't want their game looking too dated too soon.

It should still be playable on pretty much all current hardware, but it's highly unlikely you'll be able to max it out until at least a year or two from now, at which point they'll probably introduce some new hardware-choking enhancements and the cycle will go on. So if you're really serious about buying a rig that will be tailored around BOB, right now is not the time to be doing it. That's how it seems to me anyway.

[Letum]

While this is all nice and true, you have to consider the fact that IL2 ran and still runs better on nVidia cards[...]


If that's a fact, I want a sauce!

Apart from a few months this year when a new driver version was incomparable, IL2 has run perfectly on my last three ATI cards.

ed: ran allright on my old Voodoo3 as well :P

[Chivas]

He didn't say ATI couldn't run IL-2.

[LoBiSoMeM]

I had ATI and NVIDIA cards during the almost 10 years of IL2 lifespan, and it runs fine in both brands...

As any other PC game in modern VGAs... Pointless discussion! Today, IL-2 will runs better in better ATI card if you compare with a weak NVIDIA card, and will runs better in one better NVIDIA card if you have an old ATI card, as any game out there...

But even today, with x64 OS, lots of RAM, faster HDs, multicore processors, +1GB VGAs, people still disabling Vsync in "ATI cards" to prevent "ATI stutters"... Really strange logic!!!

I can run Il-2 1946 using an ATI HD4850 with just 512MB, with Vsync, AAX8, AFX16, 1680X1050, etc, without any stutter, just using a good amount of ram and a fast processor... Amd the "water" is the same as an NVIDIA card...

The big bottleneck in IL-2, as in ANY good flight sim, is the CPU. Any decent and strong VGA can run IL-2 really OK, and probably will run BoB...

[Letum]

He didn't say ATI couldn't run IL-2.

T.}{.O.R did say it didn't run it as well.
That's not my experience at all, so I am curious.

[Baron]

NVidia GTX 580 will most likely be released next week.(9th of November)


http://www.gnd-tech.com/main/content/409-NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-580-Full-Specs-and-Release-Date

[Hecke]

I heard it's just a paper launch to get people off buying the new Ati 69**

[T}{OR]

If that's a fact, I want a sauce!

Apart from a few months this year when a new driver version was incomparable, IL2 has run perfectly on my last three ATI cards.

ed: ran allright on my old Voodoo3 as well :P

Haha, I had a feeling you might comment on this. :D

Can't recall way back, but with the latest ATI cards there are issues with drivers and IL2. Just browse Battle-Fields.com and see for yourself.

Also - why was water = 4 supported only by nVidia cards at first? ;)



EDIT:

Just to be clear about this, I am thinking of going AMD(GPU) for my next build. SoW or no SoW, AMD(GPU) it is better value for the money. Unless prices change in the 2011.

[zipper]

Haha, I had a feeling you might comment on this. :D

Can't recall way back, but with the latest ATI cards there are issues with drivers and IL2. Just browse Battle-Fields.com and see for yourself.

Also - why was water = 4 supported only by nVidia cards at first? ;)



EDIT:

Just to be clear about this, I am thinking of going AMD(GPU) for my next build. SoW or no SoW, AMD(GPU) it is better value for the money. Unless prices change in the 2011.


I've got a 5870 (got it ASAP when released and I'm soon to get a second) and when the initial drivers had "issues" a simple atioglxx (driver component) transplant from a slightly older driver fixed it. Not long after the drivers were fixed and I haven't had any problems with unmodified drivers since, maybe, May.

As for the water setting? I believe it was based on which OpenGL shader was supported - ATI drivers currently support shader 3.2 (I believe) and Nvidia supports 4.1. I believe The Game uses 3.0.

[kimosabi]

The atioglxx.dll file and the issues you had to sort with it are long gone on my computer. 10.8 fixed just about everything.

[KG26_Alpha]

. And the "water" is the same as an NVIDIA card...

.

No its not the same, there's a huge difference with Water=4

ATI 1/2
Nv 1/2/3/4

Regarding tessellation.

Have a look at the video in the post below and then imagine damage modelling on the aircraft done the way it is in the Alien v triangles "Map" demo

[JG27CaptStubing]

Something new on the front of Nvidia's Tessellation video. What is the card? It's most likely the 580.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCPMHIDpT88&feature=player_embedded

[Hecke]

I think this tesselation technology could be some serious stuff also for SoW.
Hopefully Oleg has taken it into account.

[KG26_Alpha]

Something new on the front of Nvidia's Tessellation video. What is the card? It's most likely the 580.
]

Endless City

2 billion polygons

:shock:

[T}{OR]

Endless City

2 billion polygons

:shock:

I'm no programmer although I do have some basic knowledge... If implemented right, imagine what it could do to boost the number of planes in air battles and overall details. Procedural programming should have been focused on long time ago IMO. It is good to see GPU-s developing in that direction.

Maybe OT, but games like Infinity (http://www.infinity-universe.com/) show that the capabilities are endless.

[The Kraken]

I'm no programmer although I do have some basic knowledge... If implemented right, imagine what it could do to boost the number of planes in air battles and overall details. Procedural programming should have been focused on long time ago IMO. It is good to see GPU-s developing in that direction.

Maybe OT, but games like Infinity (http://www.infinity-universe.com/) show that the capabilities are endless.

The GPU most likely won't be the bottleneck when it comes to the number of planes or other active objects. Especially given that SoW's models have a relatively conservative polygon count. We don't know yet how CPU-heavy SoW's AI will be, but I have no doubt that new damage and flight models will take a toll.

[LoBiSoMeM]

No its not the same, there's a huge difference with Water=4

ATI 1/2
Nv 1/2/3/4

I had NVIDIA cards and run IL-2 over Water=4 setting. And have ATI and run Water=2.

Please show me some screenshots with the "huge difference" between Water=2 in an actual ATI card and Water=4 in equally actual NVIDIA card and come back again.

Just some number in conf.ini mean nothing. In 2010 people still don't understanding that Water=3/4 are OPTIMIZATIONS to 3.0 shaders in the "Stone Age"... Even my HD 4850 have 4.0 shader model...

[KG26_Alpha]

I had NVIDIA cards and run IL-2 over Water=4 setting. And have ATI and run Water=2.

Please show me some screenshots with the "huge difference" between Water=2 in an actual ATI card and Water=4 in equally actual NVIDIA card and come back again.

Just some number in conf.ini mean nothing. In 2010 people still don't understanding that Water=3/4 are OPTIMIZATIONS to 3.0 shaders in the "Stone Age"... Even my HD 4850 have 4.0 shader model...

You made the claim there's no difference show me the proof :)

If you look back through my posts you will see some videos that no one ever challenged.

.

[Tempest123]

I'm no programmer although I do have some basic knowledge... If implemented right, imagine what it could do to boost the number of planes in air battles and overall details. Procedural programming should have been focused on long time ago IMO. It is good to see GPU-s developing in that direction.

Maybe OT, but games like Infinity (http://www.infinity-universe.com/) show that the capabilities are endless.


OT again but this video for Infinity blew my mind, imagine the hours you could spend farting around in this universe, jeez. If only someone can make a new X-wing, or Tie fighter out of this engine ;)

http://www.infinity-universe.com/Infinity/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=113&Itemid=93

[T}{OR]

Now you can better understand why procedural programming is a step in the right direction. :)

[JG27CaptStubing]

The GPU most likely won't be the bottleneck when it comes to the number of planes or other active objects. Especially given that SoW's models have a relatively conservative polygon count. We don't know yet how CPU-heavy SoW's AI will be, but I have no doubt that new damage and flight models will take a toll.

It's difficult to say... IL2 had a pretty good balance between Graphic Load on the GPU and of course FMs AI Damage etc on the CPU. IL2 scaled very well over the years and that tells me the code was pretty tight from a developer point of view.

It will be interesting to see if DX11 will have an affect on SOW. If WOP is any indication we aren't going to be that bad off even with current hardware. As Oleg mentioned they will unlock features over time as they continue to develop the sim. I certainly hope SOW is a success for them.

Just looking at that City Demo says that if they can take advantage of some of those newer card capabilities the future is pretty bright.

[T}{OR]

It's difficult to say... IL2 had a pretty good balance between Graphic Load on the GPU and of course FMs AI Damage etc on the CPU. IL2 scaled very well over the years and that tells me the code was pretty tight from a developer point of view.

It will be interesting to see if DX11 will have an affect on SOW. If WOP is any indication we aren't going to be that bad off even with current hardware. As Oleg mentioned they will unlock features over time as they continue to develop the sim. I certainly hope SOW is a success for them.

Just looking at that City Demo says that if they can take advantage of some of those newer card capabilities the future is pretty bright.

Actually IL2 is pretty CPU intensive. High end cards are overkill for it. You would be much better of with a powerful CPU when playing IL2 than GPU.

Here are some comparisons:

GPU & RAM tests (http://www.battle-fields.com/commscentre/showthread.php?t=21901)

nVidia vs. ATI (http://www.battle-fields.com/commscentre/showthread.php?t=21919)

[JG27CaptStubing]

Actually IL2 is pretty CPU intensive. High end cards are overkill for it. You would be much better of with a powerful CPU when playing IL2 than GPU.

Here are some comparisons:

GPU & RAM tests (http://www.battle-fields.com/commscentre/showthread.php?t=21901)

nVidia vs. ATI (http://www.battle-fields.com/commscentre/showthread.php?t=21919)

I never found that to be entirely true at 1920X1200... I agree it weighed in more on the CPU but it scaled quite well in terms of FPS when throwing a high end card on it. Especially with the mods and eye candy stuff.

As I suspected his test is at 1440X900 with his card is really only going to show CPU scaling... You can say the same about my 1920X1200 being more video card scaling...

[WhiteSnake]

Think about this one: Heaven DX11 Tessellations benchmark is heavly sponcered by nVidia, and... nVidia whipes the floor with ATI/AMD benching that...
But in the only game (Stalker Call of Pripyat) that really makes a lot of use of Tesselation its totaly the other way around and the ATI/AMD cards basicly crush the nVidia cards wen benching that, Weird huh? ;)

[JG27CaptStubing]

Benchmarks are only that... They measure something... Games on the other hand utilize a number of techniques and some cards perform better than others because of certain game features.


Just picked up my GTX580 yesterday. So far it works as advertised. About 20% faster than my GTX480 I returned.

[Codex]

Think about this one: Heaven DX11 Tessellations benchmark is heavly sponcered by nVidia, and... nVidia whipes the floor with ATI/AMD benching that...
But in the only game (Stalker Call of Pripyat) that really makes a lot of use of Tesselation its totaly the other way around and the ATI/AMD cards basicly crush the nVidia cards wen benching that, Weird huh? ;)

That sort of thing has been going on since the late 90's.

The real test will be benchmarking Parallel Processing using OpenCL, only then will you see the true number crunching power of your CPU and GPU.

[Codex]

... Just picked up my GTX580 yesterday.

Jee's I missed the boat, was thinking of ditching my pair 5870's for a pair of these. I've been dying to get my hands dirty with CUDA. My fav store has sold out :mad:

[Blackdog_kt]

On the thread about the Moscow exhibition there's an interesting quote from mr. Maddox.

Long story short, he says tesselation in its current form is not very useful for the SoW engine. The reason is that since tesselation generates "protrusions" on surfaces on its own it results in a more or less unpredictable end result, one that will end up messing up their finely crafted aircraft models. I guess techniques like it are good for modelling complex but non specific things, like waves on the water or a cape flowing in the wind, wrinkles on clothes, etc, but not for things that need to be accurately shaped and sized in a predictable manner.
He says they might incorporate it in the future though.

Quite useful in deciding what kind of GPU to go for.

I think i've read that nVidia cards have more tesselation-specific shader processors than the Ati ones, but Ati cards usually have more shader processors overall (tesselation and generic).
This results in nVidia being faster under heavy tesselation load and Ati being faster under normal DX11 graphics that don't use much tesselation. Since SoW will not use it that much, i guess the best bang for the buck (esp since the new engine is DX based and not OpenGL) will be to wait for the new GPU releases and resulting price drops in previous series and pick up a 58xx series Ati card.

What would be interesting to know however is if tesselation applies globally or not. For example, is it possible to apply it only on terrain features and leave the carefully modelled aircraft alone?

[KG26_Alpha]

What would be interesting to know however is if tesselation applies globally or not. For example, is it possible to apply it only on terrain features and leave the carefully modelled aircraft alone?

Yes.


This might explain it for you.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/tessellation.html

In games with large, open environments you have probably noticed distant objects often pop in and out of existence.
This is due to the game engine switching between different levels of detail, or LOD, to keep the geometric workload in check.
Up until this point, there has been no easy way to vary the level of detail continuously since it would require keeping many versions of the same model or environment.
Dynamic tessellation solves this problem by varying the level of detail on the fly.
For example, when a distant building first comes into view, it may be rendered with only ten triangles.
As you move closer, its prominent features emerge and extra triangles are used to outline details such as its window and roof.
When you finally reach the door, a thousand triangles are devoted to rendering the antique brass handle alone, where each groove is carved out meticulously with displacement mapping.
With dynamic tessellation, object popping is eliminated, and game environments can scale to near limitless geometric detail.

.

[JVM]

I believe also that tesselation works with a "texture" mapping similar to what is done with the normal an bump map of an object.
If, and it is a big "if" as I have no idea, this map is different frome the bump/normal I presume that improving visual aspects of certain ground objects can be done without damaging the representation of the aircraft themselves...

JVM

[Blackdog_kt]

Thanks for clearing it up.

Even if it's not a top priority for me at this point in time, in the way you describe it it would indeed be useful eventually by making the transition between LODs smoother.

[Codex]

You can apply Tessellation to anything made from polys or normal maps, it's up to the developer to decide what they want to Tessellate.

Oleg could easily apply it to the SoW engine without "protrusions" on surfaces, he just needs to apply it only to the poly's on the model (don't use mapping) and limit the factored amount.

For a bit of fun try this (Note must a DX11 card) :
http://www.geeks3d.com/20100819/gpu-tool-tessmark-0-2-2-new-opengl-4-tessellation-benchmark/