GeForce FX And More From AGDC 2002 191
Mr.Tweak writes "We have posted some coverage from the Australian Game Developers Conference which was held over this past weekend at the Melbourne Convention Center. There you will find information on Sony's PS2 online gaming plans, Sony's PS2 Linux Development Kits, and videos and pictures of nVidia's GeForce FX in action as well as shots of the graphics card and other juicy details."
They make games in Australia? (Score:2, Interesting)
As a major first-world country, I'm sure they must have produced something noteworthy in the gaming arena. Could someone spare a link or two?
nVidia (Score:2, Interesting)
PS2 Linux Dev Kits? (Score:4, Interesting)
Incidently, PS2 dev kits are *very* cool to work with--much better than the NGC dev kits, and they lock up less than the XBOX dev kits (by this, I mean its harder to freeze them so that they can't be rebooted remotely). All in all a good experience to work with. However, they are also very expensive. By trying to make them more accessible, Sony will definitely lengthen the lifespan of the PS2.
Whoa! (Score:4, Interesting)
I heard from NVIDIA folks that the requirements for powering this monster were originally reported to be within AGP power budget but that's simply not true anymore. It was just confirmed that GeForce FX requires an auxiliary power supply such as ATI's 9700 Pro.
As if that's not enough, the GeForce FX also requires an extra slot.
But trust me, my friends/fans/foes -- I've played the latest games on this thing at a few private screenings with friends I have in the industry, and I assure you that this FX card simply will not dissappoint!
Another video (Score:5, Interesting)
Lag Lag Lag Lag LAG! (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, the first thing I did was to download some of the NVidia demos, so I could witness the awesome power of my new card. I was especially interested in the wolfman demo.
Well, it was spectacular. You could drive him around, make his hair longer or shorter, change the lighting, etc... And the characterization was lightyears beyond anything in Dungeon Siege, Warcraft III, or any other current game.
Then, I hit escape, and I was back to reality.
That was three or four months ago. Realistically, I imagine I'll have to wait until Doom III, maybe 5 or 6 months more, before I can actually play a game which will take advantage of a non-trivial part of my new GPU's power.
How long will it be before an FX board will be taxed by a new game?
If people will pay $399 for a state of the art card, I suggest that some game publisher consider developing a game at the $199 or $249 price point which will really take advantage of these cards.
Otherwise, the best we can hope for is a few more frames of the same ugly polygons.
From the trenches (Score:5, Interesting)
- sessions based on Sony's PS2 were about getting the most out of the hardware - Performace Analysers, better occulsion and culling techniques, utilising the vector processors in parallel etc. Sony were honest enough to admit that the effeciency of their compilers weren't that good when it came to parallelisation, and offered suggestions for workarounds - thats what you get from a company supporting a 3 year old product.
- Microsoft on the other hand, had an excellent promotional team advocating the Xbox. Lets face it, they have newer and better hardware, so they kept on advocating its superiority compared to other consoles. Better development tools, a simpler architecture for developers, better graphics, familiar API's, documentation written in English first, hard drive, 5.1 sound, Unified memory etc. The speakers were very convincing, and made Microsoft seem like your best friend.
- international speakers included Lars Gustavsson (sp), producer of Battlefield 1942 (he had excellent videos of the lifestyle of DICE developers), Doug Church (ex Ion Storm), Ray Muzyka (BioWare and NeverWinter Nights) and others.
- exhibitors included nVidia and their new GeForce FX (Hi Brian!! - apparently, saying that you're from nVidia isn't as great a pick up line as geeks might expect), Metrowerks, Intel, Alias, Auran, Sony etc.
Ofcourse, everyone attends these conferences for the social events afterwards - cocktail, dinner and nerf gun parties. Conferences are a great place to share a beer or two with fellow collegues. Sony handed out condoms shaped like PS2 buttons, Microforte organised an excellent outdoor party on a historic sail ship (though it was very cold and windy for a Melbourne summer night). Everyone had fun, and noone fell over drunk from the ship into the cold water.
The most striking fact from the conference was examining the behaviour of different programming houses. Infogrammes (Melbourne House) were so big, that they didn't care about anyone else, so they always clustered together. It took a bit of effort to isolate a few of their developers to have a serious 1-1 talk. Ratbag developers seemed like the most compotent of the lot - they know their stuff, and are hungry for success. Watch out for these guys. MicroForte were the loudest at the party, they know how to have a good time. I felt sorry for one of the houses (who I will not name), they were like 'we will code games for food, give us a project, any project'.
All in all, a very exciting 3 days. Hope to see you all next year in Melbourne.
The Lanfest was just scary (Score:5, Interesting)
the Lanfest was just scary. 1000 guys in sleeping bags locked in a room for 48 hours. Day 2 they were bouncing off the walls, mugging old ladies for Jolt cola and trying to make off with my 23" Cinema Display.
Either that or they were trying to make out with it. Sometimes I wasn't sure.
Noise and Slots (Score:3, Interesting)
And I definitely don't like the fact that it occupies two PCI slots. I knew this was coming sooner or later as most SGI video adapters are about as thick as two PCI slots. I'm talking about the video adapters in the MIPS workstations (Octane and such). I simply don't have room in my case for this card if it takes two PCI slots.
Hopefully someone will come up with an aftermarket watercooling solution for this card that would get rid of the noise and hopefully fit in one PCI slot.
Just my two cents.
A different suggestion: wait (Score:3, Interesting)
So? Now the question is, how long before most gamers realize this? Right now, he's correct, and it's probably Doom III (or some unknown game) will make this thing a requirement. But, it'll still need to play on older hardware. And either way, by the time that the game comes out, your Geforce will have dropped $100. I'll wait, personally.
I suggest that some game publisher consider developing a game at the $199 or $249 price point which will really take advantage of these cards.
Please. Just. Don't. Go. There.
However, here's a cool idea - pay one of the current "hot" developers to make a small game, something not too terribly difficult, not too terribly deep, but terribly pretty, and bundle it with the card. Make a version available online so people can play and see what their current system shows, along with pics from the Geforce X version. Big potential here, as well as a big potential for cheating - let's make every other non-NV card render it slow. But it could be cool, especially if it's a cool game.
Re:From the trenches (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes I'm serious. Take Halo as an example - the sound effects etc are in 4.1
Now try Sega GT
The center channel is silent.
It seems that pre-made AC3 streams are sent out ok, but when the Xbox is supposed to create 5.1 from discrete channels produced by the game, it fails.
(Do NOT answer and say I'm wrong until you've TRIED this