A bore is a man who, when you ask him how he is, tells you - Bert Leston Taylor
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Nvidia denies bribing developers
GRAPHICS CHIP DESIGNER Nvidia has denied accusations that it has been paying game developers for implementing GPU-accelerated processing of physics effects using its PhysX code.
The accusations were made by Nvidia's rival graphics vendor ATI, but it seems they are based on the fact that the Green Goblin has been helping out games developers.
Nvidia admits paying engineers or artists to help game developers to incorporate certain effects into their game titles, but said that this is not meant to influence their decision to utilize PhysX.
Ashutosh Rege, director of developer technology at Nvidia, said that there could be no deal under which the firm "would cash somebody in for using PhysX".
The physics engines of video games are developed along with the graphics, audio and other parts of the titles. Designers of games have to make their choices to use or not to use certain middleware well before any content of the title becomes apparent.
Rege pointed out that it hardly makes any sense to pay game developers to choose PhysX instead of Havok or other competing technologies. He added that it also does not make a lot of sense for game creators to take cash for picking a tool that does not meet their requirements. Also, Nvidia can't make a case to pay for the development of a game that will eventually fail on the market.
Rege told Xbit Labs that the reason developers were using PhysX was because it supports the Xbox360, PS3 and PC, and some developers are targeting Iphone and Wii.
Nvidia does admit that it supports such titles actively, however, it denies bribing the designers in any way. It just helps them with adding GPU PhysX features.
Rege said that Nvidia will help developers with engineering and even with artists, who also go on-site and spend a lot of time with their artists to help with creating content.
He said that adding GPU PhysX to a game is a lot different than adding just general physics effects. There is more work than just adding post-processing effects.
Nvidia said that it was hard to see why ATI is whingeing about its game developer support, since ATI does the same thing to support certain game developers.
Large game creators sometimes sign marketing deals with ATI or Nvidia about half a year or a little more before the launch of a game, in return for their work with designers to incorporate certain functionality into those titles. µ
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Getting audio to work via the nVidia HDMI out is problematic to very time consuming. If thats what you want to do I suggest researching ahead of time. Googling "nvidia+hdmi+audio+problem" would be a good start.
Of course you could just side step the whole problem by getting an ATI card which has its own built in HD-audio chip to pass audio through the HDMI connection. You just install the Catalyst driver suite and you're done.
Nvidia is NOTHING compared to the Grand-daddy of all palm-greasers, Microsoft, who for example:
- Gave away XP nearly for free to netbook manufactures who agreed not to sell Linux on their machines (and do not forget OLPC!).
- Greased palms world-wide to get MSOOXML approved as an ISO standard (including politicians, NGO's, and apparently some of the ISO officials themselves).
- Cuts secretive back-door deals with government agencies (such as the US government, the British Healthcare system, various boards of education, and so on) who agree to use nothing but Microsoft software.
(and so on ad nauseum).
I am not condoning bribery in any way (as it is most certainly an unethical and immoral practice). I am just observing that bribery -- particularly in the USA -- seems to be a government-approved practice. Why else would companies like Microsoft and Nvidia get away with barefaced bribery in their daily business dealings?
nVidia's been bribing developers for years. That's why you see so many nVidia logo commercials at the start of so many games. nVidia gives them tools, money, develoment staff, all kinds of things so that their GPU's work and others don't.
While the outcome is nice for a few, this disrupts free trade, and competition. Overall affect has been the increased price of graphics in the market place over the years. Aren't you glad nVidia made gaming MORE EXPENSIVE for you and me?
nVidia isn't bribing with cash, they're bribing with labour! "Help with engineering and sending their artists on-site to work with the other artists." Think about how much professional graphic artists and software engineers cost. Think about how many fewer man-hours the developer has to pay when nVidia just sends over a set for them to "borrow when they need it". Bribery comes in many forms and in this case, it's pretty slimy. Once the slime has been picked up, people can't help but notice that the slime is an nVidia-green colour! ;-)
Not New Breaking Item, yet District of Columbia Going down for 6 Milllion$$$ sq Foot:
first rent payment in July 2007 to the end of the StonebridgeCarras deal, the District will have spent more than $274 million to lease, buy, renovate and lease the building again. Operating costs for 345,120 rentable square feet will be in the $6 million-a-year range, adding $120 million to the price tag.
"I think we made the very best decision that we could
Bought by District, abandoned structure that loooks like parking garage with new windows, now leased & rebought, never occupied, agencies responible get whopping 8 million year & spent 400 million on defunct structure. Now Jens, wheres' money, thats GAME. People ARE That STUPID. ALL OVER WORLD.
Nvidia can deny it all they want, but remember a few titles that were branded with that "The Way its meant to be played" crap on it that shipped with DirectX 10.1 and in later patches got removed...?
Crysis being a nice example of that, oh we can't compete so lets force developers to remove technology.
Batman A.A.'s anti-aliasing is the obvious choice.
Nvidia bribed the dev to use a hardware check to disable a normal DirectX call.
If you remove the hardware check, it runs with AA on ATI cards without any trouble.
That is as low as NV could go and they went there.
He has a personal conflict with Jen-Hsun Huang as a former employee of nVIDIA. He does not praise Jen-Hsun Huang efforts to bring a can of whoop ass.
Of course they aren't paying people to use their phyzzy effects. Almost no one is using them. Why lock yourself into a system that a huge percentage of people can't use when you can either write your own or use something common that works everywhere? Crysis? nV has nothing there.
So the bribes is more likely to make special features work on nV cards and not work cross platform like they normally would. Holy Rusted Metal, you don't say Batman? Thats right chum.
GZ
...i'm almost in tears... poor nVidia beeing accused like that... bad bad AMD ! LOL
Instead of fighting with piracy, software should be free, but works only with newest hardware. So customers would buy 2000$ PC yearly and use any software they want.