With a lot of new and interesting tech on the horizon in the PC market (both hardware and software), I thought it would be an interesting discussion to see what the community has their eyes on the most and would like to see in upcoming games. Now a couple things to preface with
-This is NOT meant to dictate to TWI how to make their games, but simply show what we as players are interested in seeing based on currently available info
-For myself, and I imagine most of you, this comes purely from a gamer/consumer standpoint rather than that of a developer
Now for a quick breakdown of the tech:
DX12 - Microsoft's newest API for Windows 10 that offers lower level access to the hardware than current API's such as DX11. Some of the features it offers include support for multi GPU configurations (even the use of an Nvidia & AMD card in the same machine) and significantly reduced CPU usage, as it allows for much more efficient multi-threading.
Vulkan - Another API which is actually extremely similar to DX12 in design. The major difference is that it's an open source and cross platform. As stated above, DX12 is only available to Windows 10 users, while Vulkan will work on Windows 7 & 8, Mac and Linux. Although Vulkan is the clear choice in my opinion, Dan Baker from Oxide Games (developers of Ashes of the Singularity, the first game designed from the ground up around DX12) stated that it's very easy to add support for Vulkan if you already have DX12 support implemented. In other words, I see no reason why both options couldn't be implemented if TWI decided to utilize one.
Links regarding DX12 & Vulkan:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsxn93Wb7vk&ab_channel=Techquickie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQOsbxaBVnw&ab_channel=pcper
Nvidia Gameworks - Middleware which includes effects, tools, libraries and SDKs that developers can implement into their games. Currently implemented in Killing Floor 2 via the PhysX Flex gore options. It has been implemented in a number of other games with features such as HBAO+ ambient occlusion, PCSS shadows, Hairworks, Godrays, etc. While the effects in and of themselves can be quite good, I do have a number of complaints about Gameworks:
1) To my understanding, developers are granted varying degrees of access to the code based on their agreement with Nvidia. What's true in all cases, however, is that developers are prohibited from sharing this code with AMD, meaning they cannot optimize their drivers to work with the tech. In cases like KF2, it's not a huge deal, as Flex is simply an extra visual feature that can be disable; it's not taking anything away from AMD users, but rather giving something extra to Nvidia users (thought it would be nice if all users had these options available). However, in other past games such as Project Cars and the recent Gears of War Ultimate, PhysX was coded directly into the core simulation, meaning there was no way to turn it off for AMD users. The result was that physics calculations were forced to go through the CPU rather than the GPU, which caused major performance issues.
2) To put it bluntly, some effects look like crap. While I think things like HBAO+ and Hairworks look quite nice, things like TXAA and PhysX as seen in Borderlands 2 and even KF2 look absolutely terrible. I don't want to sound too harsh, as I understand that accurate fluid simulation is incredibly difficult from both an artistic and computational standpoint, but FleX gore looks like something out of a B-movie grade horror film that isn't even operating under the same gravity conditions as the rest of the game.
3) Even on high end Nvidia cards, terrible performance has been a common complaint of most Gameworks features. I myself, with a 780 Ti, saw dips below 40-50 fps with FleX set on low compared to my normal 100+ fps.
AMD GPUOpen - An evolution on AMD's Gaming Evolved, which offered features such as TressFX. While AMD suggests its offerings will be very similar to Gameworks, GPUOpen promises to be fully open source under the MIT license. In addition to allowing all users to take advantage of these features, it also allows developers to modify/improve upon them at their discretion. It's worth noting that this toolset is very new, so we don't have a lot of games to use as examples. Even still, TressFX in Tomb Raider 2013 still looks great today and runs well on both Nvidia and AMD cards, whereas Hairworks in The Witcher 3 continues to struggle even on high end Nvidia cards.
Links regarding Gameworks & GPUOpen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7fA_JC_R5s&ab_channel=AdoredTV
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5CA6KE6mSY&ab_channel=AdoredTV
http://www.dsogaming.com/news/amd-announces-its-open-source-answer-to-nvidias-gameworks-gpuopen/
-This is NOT meant to dictate to TWI how to make their games, but simply show what we as players are interested in seeing based on currently available info
-For myself, and I imagine most of you, this comes purely from a gamer/consumer standpoint rather than that of a developer
Now for a quick breakdown of the tech:
DX12 - Microsoft's newest API for Windows 10 that offers lower level access to the hardware than current API's such as DX11. Some of the features it offers include support for multi GPU configurations (even the use of an Nvidia & AMD card in the same machine) and significantly reduced CPU usage, as it allows for much more efficient multi-threading.
Vulkan - Another API which is actually extremely similar to DX12 in design. The major difference is that it's an open source and cross platform. As stated above, DX12 is only available to Windows 10 users, while Vulkan will work on Windows 7 & 8, Mac and Linux. Although Vulkan is the clear choice in my opinion, Dan Baker from Oxide Games (developers of Ashes of the Singularity, the first game designed from the ground up around DX12) stated that it's very easy to add support for Vulkan if you already have DX12 support implemented. In other words, I see no reason why both options couldn't be implemented if TWI decided to utilize one.
Links regarding DX12 & Vulkan:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsxn93Wb7vk&ab_channel=Techquickie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQOsbxaBVnw&ab_channel=pcper
Nvidia Gameworks - Middleware which includes effects, tools, libraries and SDKs that developers can implement into their games. Currently implemented in Killing Floor 2 via the PhysX Flex gore options. It has been implemented in a number of other games with features such as HBAO+ ambient occlusion, PCSS shadows, Hairworks, Godrays, etc. While the effects in and of themselves can be quite good, I do have a number of complaints about Gameworks:
1) To my understanding, developers are granted varying degrees of access to the code based on their agreement with Nvidia. What's true in all cases, however, is that developers are prohibited from sharing this code with AMD, meaning they cannot optimize their drivers to work with the tech. In cases like KF2, it's not a huge deal, as Flex is simply an extra visual feature that can be disable; it's not taking anything away from AMD users, but rather giving something extra to Nvidia users (thought it would be nice if all users had these options available). However, in other past games such as Project Cars and the recent Gears of War Ultimate, PhysX was coded directly into the core simulation, meaning there was no way to turn it off for AMD users. The result was that physics calculations were forced to go through the CPU rather than the GPU, which caused major performance issues.
2) To put it bluntly, some effects look like crap. While I think things like HBAO+ and Hairworks look quite nice, things like TXAA and PhysX as seen in Borderlands 2 and even KF2 look absolutely terrible. I don't want to sound too harsh, as I understand that accurate fluid simulation is incredibly difficult from both an artistic and computational standpoint, but FleX gore looks like something out of a B-movie grade horror film that isn't even operating under the same gravity conditions as the rest of the game.
3) Even on high end Nvidia cards, terrible performance has been a common complaint of most Gameworks features. I myself, with a 780 Ti, saw dips below 40-50 fps with FleX set on low compared to my normal 100+ fps.
AMD GPUOpen - An evolution on AMD's Gaming Evolved, which offered features such as TressFX. While AMD suggests its offerings will be very similar to Gameworks, GPUOpen promises to be fully open source under the MIT license. In addition to allowing all users to take advantage of these features, it also allows developers to modify/improve upon them at their discretion. It's worth noting that this toolset is very new, so we don't have a lot of games to use as examples. Even still, TressFX in Tomb Raider 2013 still looks great today and runs well on both Nvidia and AMD cards, whereas Hairworks in The Witcher 3 continues to struggle even on high end Nvidia cards.
Links regarding Gameworks & GPUOpen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7fA_JC_R5s&ab_channel=AdoredTV
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5CA6KE6mSY&ab_channel=AdoredTV
http://www.dsogaming.com/news/amd-announces-its-open-source-answer-to-nvidias-gameworks-gpuopen/
