NVIDIA-based Cards Will Have a Bug in Half-life2

[Xelotath]

NVIDIA-based Graphics Cards Will Have a Bug in Half-Life 2?

The highly-anticipated Half-Life 2 game will have a major bug with current DirectX 9.0 hardware resulting in impossibility in enabling Full-Scene Anti-Aliasing, a popular feature that dramatically improves image quality in games. Apparently, there is a limitation in DirectX 9.0 and/or DirectX 9.0-compliant hardware that will not allow the function to be enabled on certain graphics cards if the workaround is not found.

According a Valve officials quoted in forums at HalfLife2.net web-site, there are problems with the way that current hardware implements FSAA. If you enable it, you will see a lot of artifacts on polygon boundaries due to the way that current graphics processors sample texture subjects with FSAA enabled.

Valve continued that this is a problem for any application that packs small textures into larger textures. The small textures will bleed into each other if you have multi-sample FSAA enabled.

Currently both leading graphics chips designers use multi-sampling or hybrid multi-sampling + super-sampling methods to for FSAA.

The developers of the legendary Half-Life game said that drivers are not likely to solve the problem, however, it still can be solved for graphics cards based on VPUs from ATI Technologies, such as RADEON 9500-, 9600-, 9700- and 9800-series. As for NVIDIA GeForce and GeForce FX-series, there are practically no chances to find a workaround, according to Valve.

Some industry sources indicated that the problem with such FSAA is a known one and is to be addressed in DirectX 9.1 and next-generation graphics processors with Pixel Shaders 3.0 and Vertex Shaders 3.0, such as ATI Technologies’s code-named R420 and NVIDIA’s code-named NV40 VPUs and derivatives. Both next-generation products will come later than the Half-Life 2 that is expected to be available by October.

You can find the thread on the matter with quotes from Valve officials here.

Stay tuned with us because we are looking forward to bring you some comments from ATI Technologies and NVIDIA about the situation.

Source


oops, I messed the spelling on the title up.

[3RA1N1AC]

THERE'S A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BEING INCOMPATIBLE AND JUST NOT BEING ABLE TO USE FSAA. QUIT EXAGGERATING, K THANX.

[Xelotath]

wow... sorry... don't yell..

Isnt it pretty much incompatable though? if it will seriously affect gameplay and graphics (why many people are excited about HL2) then people will turn to Ati Cards.

[3RA1N1AC]

HL2 may be incompatible with Nvidia's FSAA, but that doesn't make it incompatible with Nvidia cards. if that's what you really believe (as the title of your thread says), then you're terribly confused about what "incompatible" means.

btw, i don't have any objection to what the article actually says. just that the title of this thread says something completely different and much worse.

[Xelotath]

er.. well, I guess it does. I wish there was a way to edit it.

[wienerschnitzel]

What about matrox cards? There built for dx 9

[Schmiggy_JK23]

I wrote an e-mail to Valve asking why they decided to keep AA off for the videos and here is what they had to say:

There are problems with the way that current hardware implements FSAA. If you enable it, you will see a lot of artifacts on polygon boundaries due to the way that they sample texture subrects with FSAA enabled. We are working with the harware companies and the DirectX team to make sure that future hardware doesn't have this problem.
Gary

you should get the full info from the valve thread...

Ok, I e-mailed Gary again and asked him if he was trying to say that Half-Life 2 would look bad with AA on, here is what he said:

At the present, you wouldn't want to run the game with AA enabled. . you'd see some pretty bad artifacts. We may come up with some way to work around the hardware problems in the future though so that you can use AA.
Gary

I hope they figure out a way around the hardware problems before Sept. 30.

should only be a temporary issue...

[Xelotath]

they said they could find a workaround for newer ATI cards easiy, but not for the Nvidea's becasue the way they work... I am not very technical but from what I read this is the case.

[CornerPocket]

Originally posted by Xelotath@22 July 2003 - 01:38
er.. well, I guess it does. I wish there was a way to edit it.

Topic edited to fit post.