Brace yourself for ray tracing in new games being AMD or Nvidia exclusive

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Topic is ray tracing related, but ok. Who cares if it’s exclusive if it’s still shit either way? It will be the same situation as Mantle was years ago, which ended up in Vulkan and working on both AMD and Nvidia.
The topic is exclusivity of said feature. Doesn't matter if it's shit or not. The game itself is 100% dog shit, but we shouldn't give any company a pass for making a GPU feature a timed exclusive, whether it's AMD or Nvidia or whether said title is an AMD title or an Nvidia title.
 
Topic is ray tracing related, but ok. Who cares if it’s exclusive if it’s still shit either way? It will be the same situation as Mantle was years ago, which ended up in Vulkan and working on both AMD and Nvidia.
Its already there. Ray Tracing is DXR (Direct X Raytracing). Its a standard.

The situation with Godfall is a developer, for one reason or another (in this case, it seems to be payed exclusivity), manually limiting their game code to one brand.

There are only two or three games with propriety ray tracing extensions, and that's because Vulkan's Ray Tracing extensions weren't finished by the time devs wanted to implement Ray Tracing with Nvidia's RTX cards. (Quake II RTX is one of those games).


I said it in another thread but this is hilarious and ridiculous. Nvidia has had RTX for two years. AMD has ray tracing for one day, and they pay a developer to exclude Nvidia. I like AMD and this is not a good look.
 
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Seems weird they would intentionally limit something that is a standard to only work on one piece of hardware but have planned to release an update to support Nvidia. I wonder if they developed the game on AMD hardware assuming it would work fine on Nvidia only to realize once they got into testing it wasn't running right, so rather than delay they just disable it on Nvidia until they can work out the issues. If the case is that it works 100% fine and it's just disabled in code to appease a company, then this is 100% rediculous and AMD deserves a lot of flack for it. Im hoping they will release some statement as to WHY it's being done this way and hopefully this is not the new normal. The point of using a specification that works on multiple platforms is to NOT limit it to one platform. Kid of defeats the purpose.

The other possibility I can think of is AMD has some vendor specific extensions to eek out a bit more performance to look decent in RT, which means no Nvidia support until the mainstream/non extension implementation is done. Either way, this doesn't have a great feel or connotation for the future.
 
Seems weird they would intentionally limit something that is a standard to only work on one piece of hardware but have planned to release an update to support Nvidia. I wonder if they developed the game on AMD hardware assuming it would work fine on Nvidia only to realize once they got into testing it wasn't running right, so rather than delay they just disable it on Nvidia until they can work out the issues. If the case is that it works 100% fine and it's just disabled in code to appease a company, then this is 100% rediculous and AMD deserves a lot of flack for it. Im hoping they will release some statement as to WHY it's being done this way and hopefully this is not the new normal. The point of using a specification that works on multiple platforms is to NOT limit it to one platform. Kid of defeats the purpose.

The other possibility I can think of is AMD has some vendor specific extensions to eek out a bit more performance to look decent in RT, which means no Nvidia support until the mainstream/non extension implementation is done. Either way, this doesn't have a great feel or connotation for the future.

It’s be awful strange for a dev to go with the company with 0% market share unless they were incentivized...

Just imagine the stuff AMD would be doing if they had majority market share.
 
It’s be awful strange for a dev to go with the company with 0% market share unless they were incentivized...

Just imagine the stuff AMD would be doing if they had majority market share.
I'm sure it was developed with assistance, which is why I was *hoping* the reason for the delay was lack of testing or required use of extensions to get some extra performance and not just as simple.as AMD wanted us to. Aka, I was hoping there was a technical reason and this won't become the norm as it would be a pretty sh1tty move. The fact they already announced support.for.nvidia is incoming makes me think it's more of a technical/not ready yet reason than an actual vendor lock in (lock out?). Hoping to get more details though as it's sketchy at best.
 
Well they own more then 0%. Remember the new console are using AMD RT tech. Godfall was a PS5 exclusive also.

Good point. I don’t follow consoles at all.

So RT is actually enabled on that PS5? That would be pretty neat.
 
The topic is exclusivity of said feature. Doesn't matter if it's shit or not. The game itself is 100% dog shit, but we shouldn't give any company a pass for making a GPU feature a timed exclusive, whether it's AMD or Nvidia or whether said title is an AMD title or an Nvidia title.
It matters because AMD and Nvidia are using proprietary code for a feature that is still shit. Ray-Tracing might go the way of DVD-HD and Blu-Ray where the two standards were fighting each other and nobody gave a shit because they were expensive and something better came along called NetFlix. You don't need special hardware to do Ray-Tracing, as Crysis Remastered has proven. If this technique of Ray-Tracing works better than both AMD and Nvidia's then these standards will go the way of Mantle. As long as games don't require Ray-Tracing hardware then we shouldn't worry. This is AMD's and Nvidia's job to worry.
 
I’ll withhold judgement until I know for certain why RT is exclusive to AMD at the moment. but if this is paid exclusivity, it’s shady as fuck.
It says in the article that the nVidia RTX version is also being worked on and will be patched in later.
 
Dayaks RT is enabled on the new xbox and the new PS5, both using AMD innards. Basically 30fps at 4k or 1440p/dynamic resolution if you want raytracing (maybe some environment limited games like track-based racing will be RT+60fps) on the consoles its looking like, now. Or if you want 60fps at 1440p/4k/dynamic, you don't run the RayTracing, which makes sense.
 
AMD is just using Microsoft's DXR.

Nvidia is the one I am more worried about, they have done shit like this before, but they are on record saying the only reason they developed their own standard was because the API wasn't ready yet.

Time will tell.

Other than that, it's neither here nor there. It's not an important feature yet. Takes too much performance and provides too little benefit, so it really doesn't matter if it is an exclusive or not at this point. Hopefully over time everyone will come to their senses and by the time it is valuable it will be entirely standards basedm.
 
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If the developers are working on an nvidia patch doesn't that make this post worthless? I mean besides a place for some faux concern by op.
 
Topic is ray tracing related, but ok. Who cares if it’s exclusive if it’s still shit either way? It will be the same situation as Mantle was years ago, which ended up in Vulkan and working on both AMD and Nvidia.
Nvidia's 3000-series cards do RT pretty well, much better than the 2000 series managed. AMD is still a generation behind in hardware RT development.
 
Ray tracing is a waste of time right now as far as I'm concerned. AMD doesn't use any tech to wall off their ray tracing, I believe they just use DXR for it. The only company that really can make ray tracing "exclusive" is nVidia since their tech is "exclusive".

If the developers are working on an nvidia patch doesn't that make this post worthless? I mean besides a place for some faux concern by op.
It's all about outrage and super hating the team your aren't a fanboy for, not just OP, but the article as well.

There may be "exclusive" ray tracing at some point though. Especially if AMD catches and passes nVidia in RT performance, nVidia's "special tech" might not be worth the effort (and money) any longer when DXR is already standard. Especially when AMD hardware is in vastly more machines than nVidia's.
 
https://www.pcgamer.com/amp/ray-tracing-amd-nvidia-exclusivity/

Isn't this a move that should be criticized? Imagine if it had been Nvidia the one who had done this.
Or we can blame Nvidia.... for jumping the gun on the tech when the industry was working on a standard. (unless you think RT was added to the consoles on a whim in the last year)

As the developer said in their patch notes... Nvidia support coming later. As I understand it AMD uses DX 12... and the issue here is Nvidias solution is the outlier.

With consoles being AMD RDNA2 and now supporting RT. Expect this to happen a lot. AMD RT at launch... and Nvidia support coming later via a patch if it comes at all.

EDIT I understand Nvidia uses DX12 as well... but to get proper performance clearly it needs a ton of optimization we have seen that with every RT title released so far. Developers get it working but it takes a few patches before performance doesn't suck terribly Clearly developer optimizations are required. So it is very possible Godfalls devs turning it off for Nvidia until they can optimize it is a GOOD thing for Nvidia. Better to have no result then give AMD a large win.
 
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Ray tracing is a waste of time right now as far as I'm concerned. AMD doesn't use any tech to wall off their ray tracing, I believe they just use DXR for it. The only company that really can make ray tracing "exclusive" is nVidia since their tech is "exclusive".


It's all about outrage and super hating the team your aren't a fanboy for, not just OP, but the article as well.

There may be "exclusive" ray tracing at some point though. Especially if AMD catches and passes nVidia in RT performance, nVidia's "special tech" might not be worth the effort (and money) any longer when DXR is already standard. Especially when AMD hardware is in vastly more machines than nVidia's.

There is no reason Nvidia's RT cards can't work just as well with Microsofts DXR and other abstraction layers.

This recent news post comes to mind:

https://wccftech.com/nvidia-intervi...ary-extensions/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

Short, straightforward interview from wccftech

NVidia says only 3 games with ray tracing, use custom extensions. Those are Vulkan games. And that's because the standards for Vulkan were not finished by the time those games needed ray tracing.
All other games (asa far as Nvidia is aware) follow DXR standards and should work on any other GPUs which also follow the DXR standards.

I'm paraphrasing there. It's a good little interview. Check it out!

So, straight from the Horses mouth, the only reason they have had proprietary RT is that Vulkan RT was not ready yet, and they needed it in a few Vulkan games that were launching.

It seems like we can read into this that they plan on using standard abstraction layers going forward.
 
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There is no reason Nvidia's RT cards can't work just as well with Microsofts DXR and other abstraction layers.

This recent news post comes to mind:



So, straight from th eHorses mouth, the only reason they have had proprietary RT is that Vulkan RT was not ready yet, and they needed it in a few Vulkan games that were launching.

It seems like we can read into this that they plan on using standard abstraction layers going forward.
Additionally, the PS5 doesn't even support Direct X. And Godfall's console version is currently exclusive to PS5. So....Godfall either uses an exclusive AMD codepath for the PC version, or they are using DXR and have manually locked Nvidia out.
 
I would suggest that is not the case. Just developed on AMD hardware and needs to be fully qualified on NVIDIA, which has not been done yet.

I'm with you on this.

At the same time I think it is good that the community is alert about stuff like this, because if we don't keep the spotlight on them, it's only a matter of time before industry players try something like this.

Especially Nvidia. I don't trust them at all. AMD has a long history of being a proponent of open standards though.
 
Articale updated.

Update 11/19: After this article was posted, an Nvidia representative reached out to stress that Nvidia "is not pushing proprietary ray tracing features in any games." As I wrote above, AMD and Nvidia both have a history of introducing technology that exclusively works on their graphics cards. Right now, Nvidia is adamant that ray tracing won't follow that path:

"We support all industry standard APIs, including Microsoft DXR and the upcoming Vulkan RT, which is not yet released. The vast majority of games released with ray tracing support use the industry standard Microsoft DirectX Ray Tracing (DXR) API. Three exceptions we are aware of include Quake II RTX, Wolfenstein: Youngblood, and JX3, which use NVIDIA ray tracing extensions for Vulkan. But those extensions are necessary to get the standard released, and other venders can choose to support the NVIDIA extensions or not. They are not ‘proprietary’. Quake II RTX and Wolfenstein YB utilize our Vulkan extensions since Vulkan RT is not out yet. AMD could write extensions for Vulkan if they wanted to spend the resources doing so. Once Vulkan RT is publicly ready, we would have no reason to use extensions and we will move to Vulkan RT."
 
Yeah im bracing for nothing. Ray Tracing I have to go outside in the sunshine. Cant get a 3070 80 90 6800 6800xt. All vaporware

So this announcement is nothing but fantasy land story book news.
 
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More games with RT are coming because it saves developers time and money. Developers currently have to spend a lot of time "optimizing" textures for various levels of lighting and shadows and blah blah blah. The new engine features and Ray Tracing effects let them skip all that, just import the models and their textures, set the reflective values in the engine for their material properties, and let the game handle the rest. The adoption of Ray Tracing has the very real possibility of saving millions in development time while providing more consistent results. Granted I say more consistent not better, there are also a number of companies working on AI-based optimization and testing suites, so that way it will go through and test all surfaces for holes and performance hits from all possible angles and all those other fun things which further let it make changes to models and textures to improve overall performance. The tools quite literally let a developer import a massive movie quality model and texture set, move a few sliders press a few checkmarks, and walk away to grab a coffee to come back and have what would have taken somebody 2 days of painstaking work done.
 
After reading the article I am really trying to determine if the developer simply made it an AMD exclusive by doing a hardware scan and disabling the option if it detects a non-AMD card. The game is using the DX12 DXR library which is standard on both hardware sets so it makes no sense to me that it would work on one and not the other. Granted it may not work evenly on both but it should certainly work on both. Timed exclusives for launch partners are a thing so I get it, it just leaves me with a lot of questions that are unlikely to ever receive an adequate answer from the developer. I am sure some hacking community will dig into it though and determine if it is an artificial limitation or an actual one.
 
More games with RT are coming because it saves developers time and money. Developers currently have to spend a lot of time "optimizing" textures for various levels of lighting and shadows and blah blah blah. The new engine features and Ray Tracing effects let them skip all that, just import the models and their textures, set the reflective values in the engine for their material properties, and let the game handle the rest. The adoption of Ray Tracing has the very real possibility of saving millions in development time while providing more consistent results. Granted I say more consistent not better, there are also a number of companies working on AI-based optimization and testing suites, so that way it will go through and test all surfaces for holes and performance hits from all possible angles and all those other fun things which further let it make changes to models and textures to improve overall performance. The tools quite literally let a developer import a massive movie quality model and texture set, move a few sliders press a few checkmarks, and walk away to grab a coffee to come back and have what would have taken somebody 2 days of painstaking work done.
It saves nothing when you have to have a non rt code path as well... Now you have to do all that plus optimize the RT path to work with as few rays as possible while still giving ok results.
 
It saves nothing when you have to have a non rt code path as well... Now you have to do all that plus optimize the RT path to work with as few rays as possible while still giving ok results.
The tools are also still immature, but I think the point of the AI ones is to also do the non RT optimizations as well, but now that both parties have it I would not be surprised if in 2 years time it was the default option and we start to see games that don't offer a traditional approach. I'm also expecting to see more notices that the games will require an M.2 based drive by then as well.
 
Yeah, my thought is that the only way there are problems is if nVidia wants there to be problems.
Bingo! For the last month Nvidia has been pushing this "if AMD doesn't lock us out" crap. When AMD is way more open than they are. How's nvidia nouveau drivers coming along?
 
I don't care if the difference isn't big, I want to use the max graphic settings regardless of the brand I have in my PC.

Though I assume this will shake out similarly to G Sync.
 
This article explains alot. For people that say hey AMD should perform the same and it should just work and doesn't need any optimizations because its just dxr? I want the same people to come out now and explain this lol. It does require optimizations I don't care what anyone says. Yes card may run dxr based ray tracing but its not going to really run it best if its not optimized for hardware. AMD going in to the future will have a leg up though because eco system. Consoles being RDNA 2 and desktops being RDNA 2, if game supports ray tracing on consoles its likely to run well on AMD hardware. Now I do believe Nvidia has more RT horsepower but it won't be as bad as it looks on some older games running older dxr and not fully optimized for rdna.
 
I think one possible issue here is this part:
Update 11/19: After this article was posted, an Nvidia representative reached out to stress that Nvidia "is not pushing proprietary ray tracing features in any games." As I wrote above, AMD and Nvidia both have a history of introducing technology that exclusively works on their graphics cards. Right now, Nvidia is adamant that ray tracing won't follow that path:

"We support all industry standard APIs, including Microsoft DXR and the upcoming Vulkan RT, which is not yet released. The vast majority of games released with ray tracing support use the industry standard Microsoft DirectX Ray Tracing (DXR) API. Three exceptions we are aware of include Quake II RTX, Wolfenstein: Youngblood, and JX3, which use NVIDIA ray tracing extensions for Vulkan. But those extensions are necessary to get the standard released, and other venders can choose to support the NVIDIA extensions or not. They are not ‘proprietary’. Quake II RTX and Wolfenstein YB utilize our Vulkan extensions since Vulkan RT is not out yet. AMD could write extensions for Vulkan if they wanted to spend the resources doing so. Once Vulkan RT is publicly ready, we would have no reason to use extensions and we will move to Vulkan RT."

Sony PS5 isn't using either right ?

If you make Godfall for PS5 and turn around to adapt it for the PC, it could require a lot of work to make it work on non RDNA 2, even if they 100% support the DXR 12 ultimate standard.
 
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