Nvidia launches GameWorks 3.1 at GDC 2016

[HEXUS]

With three new "groundbreaking graphics techniques" for shadows and lighting.

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[kalniel]

Arbitrarily vendor locked techniques are bad for gamers, not something someone who is passionate for gaming would be developing.

[edzieba]

Arbitrarily vendor locked techniques are bad for gamers, not something someone who is passionate for gaming would be developing.

Game developers seem to disagree with you, and continue to use Gameworks. Likely because having code that is pre-optimised and can just be dropped in saves a lot of development time that would be wasted re-inventing the wheel.

This will be more important down the road with DX12 and Vulkan: low-level APIs move all the optimisation work from the driver developer to the game developer. Pre-optimised code will be even more welcome there.

[kalniel]

Game developers seem to disagree with you, and continue to use Gameworks. Likely because having code that is pre-optimised and can just be dropped in saves a lot of development time that would be wasted re-inventing the wheel.

This will be more important down the road with DX12 and Vulkan: low-level APIs move all the optimisation work from the driver developer to the game developer. Pre-optimised code will be even more welcome there.

Gameworks when used in a non-propriatary way works as you describe, but if you're using it to add vendor-locked features then you're not reinventing the wheel because you still need to do the work for the other vendors. Better to provide open help and techniques that benefit all.

[Tabbykatze]

A homogenised system is far better than a locked down hidden system.

The other issue is when a developer has a bug or issue that's in a proprietary/locked down feature, the lead time to resolution will be longer because they have to go through NVidia which reduces player experience

[jigger]

Great. More gameworks games for me to ignore.

[lumireleon]

Nvidia is in trouble coz many developers are working for games that run on PS4 & Microsoft and we all know they are powered by AMD graphics. Who even uses PhysX nowadays??

[YazX]

Arbitrarily vendor locked techniques are bad for gamers, not something someone who is passionate for gaming would be developing.

Game developers seem to disagree with you, and continue to use Gameworks. Likely because having code that is pre-optimised and can just be dropped in saves a lot of development time that would be wasted re-inventing the wheel.

This will be more important down the road with DX12 and Vulkan: low-level APIs move all the optimisation work from the driver developer to the game developer. Pre-optimised code will be even more welcome there.

you are so naive, Nvidia send their engineers to game studios to implement their game works crap, no company would bother to waste time and resources (which equals money) to implement Nvidia specific features, in every damn title that uses game works there are a team of Nvidia's Engineers implementing those features and integrating it with the game engine.

[shaithis]

Nvidia is in trouble coz many developers are working for games that run on PS4 & Microsoft and we all know they are powered by AMD graphics. Who even uses PhysX nowadays??

GameWorks seems to run fine on next-gen consoles. The amount of games that have released with it are testament to how vendor-agnostic it can be.......

[kalniel]

GameWorks seems to run fine on next-gen consoles. The amount of games that have released with it are testament to how vendor-agnostic it can be.......

Exactly. While it's not as nice as an open system, there's no need for it to be vendor-locked either. When they do open it the results can be good on AMD as well - eg The Witcher 3

[jigger]

Nvidia is in trouble coz many developers are working for games that run on PS4 & Microsoft and we all know they are powered by AMD graphics. Who even uses PhysX nowadays??

GameWorks seems to run fine on next-gen consoles. The amount of games that have released with it are testament to how vendor-agnostic it can be.......

Seems to run fine on AMD console hardware compared to what? How much better would it run without all the anti AMD rubbish?

It's best to just boycott Gameworks. The sooner we see the back of game works the better.

[shaithis]

It's best to just boycott Gameworks. The sooner we see the back of game works the better.

That's never going to happen on the scale it needs to. Might as well roll with it.........

For me, around 8 of the last 10 games that I have played (and thoroughly enjoyed!) I would have to have gone without. Never going to happen.

[Corky34]

Great. More gameworks games for me to ignore.

A first class example of cutting your nose off to spite your face, I'm proud of you.

[kalniel]

A first class example of cutting your nose off to spite your face, I'm proud of you.

Not really - voting with your wallet is the only measure that either counts or is noticed really. There are a huge number of games to choose from, so boycotting a minority isn't a big problem. Then it's up to the devs/publishers to weigh up the cost saving of nvidia help vs lost sales. We should all be choosing games based on their value to us as individuals, and what makes up that value will differ from person to person.

[jigger]

The more people spend money on gameworks the longer the scheme will take to die/the more damage gameworks inflicts on the industry. If devs desperately need the gameworks cash to produce games then they shouldn't be in business. If Dev's are happy to take the money and allow Nvidia to distort market then they don't deserve to make money.

[Sharpethunder]

All I can say is NVidia seam to be the only one out of the 2 doing anything to improve the way games look yes Gameworks is bad for the openness of that the PC offers.
But if you Spent Millions on new Graphic techniques like FXAA and so on you would want it closed until it was standard in every Games engine out there or until you have develop a new AA technique. So all I can say is Carry on.

Also apart from that when was the last time AMD release a New AA technique which was back in 2012 AMD EQAA.
NVidia has release since then HBAO+ TXAA and more recently Multi-Frame Anti-Aliasing and a list goes on

So if you want to experience better graphics and lighting NVidia can spend as much as they like on R&D. ITS closed to AMD GPUs it fine with me as they didn't research it.
If AMD wants it so badly they could offer to pay NVidia to have access