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Graphics quality (Read 1685 times)
BlacK_Out
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Re: Graphics quality
Reply #15 - 19.09.03 at 08:25:08
 
I think this in part due to the how the texturing is handled by the driver, they look static and unrealistic in games now.

Compared to the voodoos that had more of a realistic look to it. Plus 3Dfx was the only one to use scan line interleaving -- may that be partly why things look better on a voodoo card?

I can only speak of this in regards to the Nvidia cards, because I have yet to test a Radeon.
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Andrew Boiu
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Re: Graphics quality
Reply #16 - 19.09.03 at 09:27:24
 
Saw Nvidia, saw ATI, seen Geforce, seen Radeon: no big deal actually... Radeon is better in terms of quality, but on par, or even worse in terms of drivers compatibility.

Belive-it or not, it's not a problem of how the textures are handeled. Unrealistic textures happend because everyone pushes the limits of textures size more and more, and most of the textures are designed by computer programmers, rather than coming from real life. And when you draw a leaf, no matter how much you try, it will still be a computer generated leaf, and it's never as near to the reality.

To demontate some miths. Interleaving means the creation of one screen from 2 or more sources. Basically, in a 2 chips system, one will draw all the odd lines, the other the rest. In 4 or more chips, 1 in 4 lines are handled by each chip. It does not improve quality but speed, doubling or quadrupeling, or even more...

Still, believe it or not, the main problem these days, if a game runs well on a voodoo (no graphic corruption), sometimes the difference between 3dfx and Nvidia gets less evident, because when both has to create the same jagged and blurry textures (aleready worse), some good filtering (even the best and precise), still offers an unpleasant result. Eg: you can't put a rocket inside a car, and turn it into a space shuttle. Even if it's faster than any car, still is not air-tight to live in space...

Games are mostly worse than they were 3 or more years, because there are less and less enthusiastic, trained people, that are left to work on long-term projects. All that is important these days is how fast they can finish a game, and how it costs them less... In this cases quality may be resonable for ones, but for the others who have seen and enjoyed the state of the art quality, it's just crap...
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BlacK_Out
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Re: Graphics quality
Reply #17 - 19.09.03 at 09:57:58
 
I know how SLI works.

Yeah I agree with what you say, though I wonder if maybe the reaoson the artistic nature isn't there, maybe becuase we got a whole new generation of programmers that are inexprienced?

I mean I doubt someone like John Carmak is going to stick around the scene for too much longer, who's going to replace him? another FNG.

But then again you have a point -- just in general terms, the mighty buck rules -- it used to not be that way!

It's all about profit nowadays, I don't even think some of these programmers take an art class to learn how to be a graphic artist -- to learn how to draw on paper so when you do it on the computer you can replicate it.

I wonder if they have any art skills at all, and think they can get by on that, along with the company not caring -- as long as the $$ flows in, quality can suck a goat.

It's like you said -- crap -- especially when you got not only this going on, but companies like Nvidia making expensive shit in a box with pretty pictures on it and passing it off as a video card.

So now you got a very expensive crappy video card and horrible quailty in the game as well -- man it does get worse.

Though with the Radeon as well - I wonder if you can blame it on the video card at the same time, are they what they used to be (quality wise) either?
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Re: Graphics quality
Reply #18 - 19.09.03 at 10:04:31
 
Radeon are quality wise: at least the FSAA is better, faster, and the texture seem to be less blurry than on Nvidia. But when you try a game as MS Train Simulator and Radeon fails with a crash when you try to see the winter with snow, it's more than strange. And another, not so praised card, S3 Pro SavageDDR, has no problem with running the game with snow, and it looks less blurry than the Radeon...
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« Last Edit: 19.09.03 at 10:04:54 by Andrew Boiu »  
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BlacK_Out
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Re: Graphics quality
Reply #19 - 19.09.03 at 10:10:52
 
I don't know what to think anymore...I mean you site some good examples of what's going on with video cards now-a-days.

Just some weird sh** goin' on in the industry.
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Re: Graphics quality
Reply #20 - 19.09.03 at 11:00:10
 
Also, to confuse even more, older games like those for Dx7 don't work properly, and some of the games run misteriously faster on the opengl than on d3d, even if most of most of the cards (that you buy for a PC, not for CAD), are first DX compliant, then OpenGL.

Also, the good old Unreal Tournament is a good test for how compliant the cards are: GeForce make for some strange Z-buffer problems and flicker when moving near lights, Radeon is having problems with the detail textures, which appear and dissapear sometimes, and even the overall look is not very good.

On contrast, you have to admit that each and every card runs extremely whell on 3dMark2001, Quake3. Never seen a card to have problems with these tests, since Quake3 and 3DMark is what sells the card. A few fps more in these games and the PC magzines notice and give 10+ score. Better performance in a game as NFS HP2 would bring no reviews.

More, all the cards can do a type of BumpMapping, and although it is a basic thing that enhances the realism in games (used in Max Payne, Slave Zero), hasn't been used in race games, in fps (Quake3, Unreal Tournament 2003 seems to lack it also, Alien vs Predator). Even a simple 1 channel bump mapping can increase the realism when you look at a paved footpath.

To make problems even more complex, lot of games use 32 bit color, but as a test proved on the Banshee, nor the Quake3, nor the Vice City nor the Serious Sam (1 or 2), put such a big difference when changing from 16 to 32 bits on another card than 3dfx. On 3dfx, even if no 32 bit is available, the filtering and way of working makes that you see no artefacts on smoke and fire, even if Nvidia and ATI are doing it...

Most of the games are 24 bit color, not 32 bit. 24 bit means 8 8 8 in R G B. The 32 bit mean that an alpha channel would exist in the parameeters, and you would see realistic bump-mapping, different as the light is casted on the object, which obviously never used in a game until now... So true 32 bit games were near sure never released until now, with the danger of broking some hearts...
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BlacK_Out
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Re: Graphics quality
Reply #21 - 19.09.03 at 18:58:57
 
I have found this to be true myself, you've hit the head on the nail again.  Wink

Funny thing is -- people are worried about FPS as well as the comapnies, but even 30FPS is beyond what the eye can differenciate. so funny they'd try to push famerate instead of keeping it steady at the point before the eye can differentiate and keep it from dropping below that.

Plus given the the fact that any given moment the human eye can only process so many amount of color at once, depending on whether or not it is a moving imageor not.
http://home.wanadoo.nl/paulschils/05.00.html/

Nvidia wants to go for 256Bit color -- after 32Bit - - I doubt you'de notice anything.
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« Last Edit: 22.09.03 at 20:55:16 by BlacK_Out »  

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Re: Graphics quality
Reply #22 - 22.09.03 at 09:38:55
 
In fact, mostly important is to have a constant, or as near to constant number of frames per second, rather than a fluctuating one. It is better to have a nice 30 fps all the time, rather than a go from 60 to 100 downto 13.

There exists good example of games that have constant framerate, and with a decent accelerated D3D card, it would go very fluent: GTA2, on a Vodoo, no matter if it is V2, V3... This game run extremely fast (over 60fps) on a Banshee with a CPU at 450Mhz AMD. Setting the framerate limiter, everyting is very nice.

I doubt that today games can run similarly, even on the best CPU/GPU combination. Games are just not designed in the way they used to be...

But you can't win the competition with others, when everyone sticks to number rather than near reality, and good sense...
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Re: Graphics quality
Reply #23 - 22.09.03 at 21:01:53
 
You know I am glad you bringthis up -- becuase I have noticed that the frame rate - from what I have noticed - is not consistant -- it fluxuates too much - in the day of the voodoo cards the frame rate was always consistent, at least more often than not.

And yeah -- it's all about how many frames per second you can make the card push - rather than have a card (or even a game for that fact) to be balanced -- good FPS - very little deviation/fluxaution, quality -- making it blanaced in all other important areas of what makes a great video card (AKA - 3Dfx). But that has all gone to the wayside.

Weird thing is -- Nvidia has some 3Dfx programmers that joined on when they bought out 3Dfx, you think they'd have input and try convince other to get these geforce (or what other weird names they care to come up with) up to the level of a 3Dfx card.
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Re: Graphics quality
Reply #24 - 23.09.03 at 11:14:52
 
To bring back the talk with the color depth...
3dfx intended to release the Rampage using 52 bit internal color processing. They knew very whell that this would be "photorealistic" quality. And the funny thing is that the 52 as oposed to 32 bit color depth wouldn't bring any performance penalty (as 22 bit did no overall stress over 16 bit in the Vodoo2/3 days).

What is interesting is that 3dfx was aiming to enter with very big respect into the high-end professional market, since Rampage could do in hardware some Adobe Photoshop effects, and probably it would have evolved to bring us near 3DMax full acceleration...

256 bits... If everyone would want to do that, the only reason would be to show how big they are. Think about the days in which Nvidia pushed 32 bits with the TNT/TNT2. No matter how much magazines will reccomend, 32 bits bring the TNT to loose more than twice the speed and bring maybe 10% more quality. but the 22 bit filter of Voodoo: 50% more quality, 1% performance penalty. So with 256 bits, the producer will only find a mean to push ultra-fast memory and GPU bandwidth into the market. Results may be nearly 0 in terms of true visual output, but the costs will be so big, that luckly competition will vanish in front of the large numbers of buyers that push eachother to buy, in the big numbers race. You will need 10 times more speed (fillrate, texture space, bandwidth), to use 256 bit colors reliably.

And when we think that the 8-bit color game consoles bring so much fun, and they were so cheap, 256 bit colors seems a huge stupid stress, with no real proof, very costly, wastefull...
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Re: Graphics quality
Reply #25 - 23.09.03 at 16:51:16
 
Quote:
To bring back the talk with the color depth...
3dfx intended to release the Rampage using 52 bit internal color processing. They knew very whell that this would be "photorealistic" quality. And the funny thing is that the 52 as oposed to 32 bit color depth wouldn't bring any performance penalty (as 22 bit did no overall stress over 16 bit in the Vodoo2/3 days).

What is interesting is that 3dfx was aiming to enter with very big respect into the high-end professional market, since Rampage could do in hardware some Adobe Photoshop effects, and probably it would have evolved to bring us near 3DMax full acceleration...

256 bits... If everyone would want to do that, the only reason would be to show how big they are. Think about the days in which Nvidia pushed 32 bits with the TNT/TNT2. No matter how much magazines will reccomend, 32 bits bring the TNT to loose more than twice the speed and bring maybe 10% more quality. but the 22 bit filter of Voodoo: 50% more quality, 1% performance penalty. So with 256 bits, the producer will only find a mean to push ultra-fast memory and GPU bandwidth into the market. Results may be nearly 0 in terms of true visual output, but the costs will be so big, that luckly competition will vanish in front of the large numbers of buyers that push eachother to buy, in the big numbers race. You will need 10 times more speed (fillrate, texture space, bandwidth), to use 256 bit colors reliably.

And when we think that the 8-bit color game consoles bring so much fun, and they were so cheap, 256 bit colors seems a huge stupid stress, with no real proof, very costly, wastefull...


How to enable 22 bit filter in V3s ?
Bye !
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Re: Graphics quality
Reply #26 - 23.09.03 at 18:48:36
 
<quote>How to enable 22 bit filter in V3s ?
Bye ! </quote>

Go into your 3dfx Advanced Features, and in the Direct3d and Opengl/Glide settings, change the 3d Filter Quality to High and the Alpha Blending to Sharper.
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Re: Graphics quality
Reply #27 - 23.09.03 at 21:21:19
 
Exactly - 256Bit -- I see no need to do that, it's like you said - more expensive and reduces the performance of the video card, as opposed to how 3Dfx approached it with how they did 22bit.

Besides they'd need transfer an extrodinary amount of data accross the AGP bus - which some cards *only in theory* can do, but in reality I don't know one company yet that has been able to make the AGP bus transfer at even 1/4 of the speed promised.

Heck I have disabled fastwrites on my GF2Pro and got beter performance -- hmmm....it was supposed to work the opposite.

Maybe 3Dfx was knew something or was intune with certain features out there -- AGP IS a failure -- it
doen't do what it's supposed to -- can't live up to what it promised. It's better then PCI - but not by that much of marginal difference.

Yeah I notice that 8-bit game consoles were very fun, regardless of graphics, they were challenging - but not too much unlike today where they are so DAMN hard they aren't fun anymore - the just piss me off. didn't eve have that problem w/8-bit consoles.

this is true especially with the Playstation 2 - well great graphics, BUT the game designers are either touting the grpahics capabilities or making it too damn hard they no longer are any fun requirng me to get a game shark to beat it or waste my life away getting pissed off at it.

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Re: Graphics quality
Reply #28 - 23.09.03 at 22:51:19
 
IMHO, those 96, 128, and maybe soon 256bit internal accuracy are only needed to allow complex Shader Programs to run without rounding errors affecting colours (they don't require equivalent Texture Colordepth of course, which would make Textures waaaay to big to handle).

Still, even the latest available DirectX9 Cards are far from using anything exceeding 40-50 consecutive Shader commands (they're still too slow for more complex operations).

I agree, one always has to check the fine line between true, usefull "Gamer's Happiness" (3dfx style) and pure Marketing (the NVidia way currently) Tongue
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Re: Graphics quality
Reply #29 - 24.09.03 at 13:51:58
 
Even if 256 bits might be related to shaders, the big truth is that there is already a rumour that John Carmack will bring in Doom3 or their next game: 48 bits color depth.

AGP is bringing solid one big difference to all the cards: 66 Mhz speed, which in practical tests has proved that a V5 AGP can outrun steadly a V5 PCI, especially in higher resolutions (where most of the data transfer is pushed to the limit). But, given the fact that the V5 PCI handled so whell, even if it was on a 33 Mhz bus, even if it has no special priority over the Sound card for example, it would still bring those 60+ fps in your favorite game (Quake3 or Unreal Tournament, or Descent3...).

All the other things added to the AGP: Fast writes, Side-band addressing, AGP texturing, Faster transfer ratio (2x,4x,8x,???x), all bringed a little bit more performance, on paper or on real life. But what is mostly important is that if a GPU is already running with a full load, even AGP 16x with fast writes, wouldn't bring even a single fps more. It can probably slower the card's output, because the CPU becames too much occupied with fulling a buffer that is never totally used in the neccessary time by the GPU.

A similar case was with AGP Aperture, which in case of too big (4MB+), it actually make a lower performance with Voodoo's since the CPU and the Bios are all the times wasting cycles to fill that buffer, prior to doing other tasks...
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