Nvidia users, immediate testing required

[mazex]

Originally posted by Cameroon:

Just a point, there's no way that the 8800 is the most popular card - it's far too expensive to be that. It may be the fastest card and the best card, but not most popular.

Otherwise, you've shot yourself in the foot with this argument:

Don't go blaming that you have more advanced AI than WiC etc as CMSF clearly runs OK on older cards etc.

If it isn't drivers, then it wouldn't run faster on older hardware. On top of that, on the 8800 based machines that they have they can't reproduce the horrid framerates. Whether it's a bug in the drivers - which it appears to be from those two facts alone - or it's a bug in the game, until they figure out why - they can't work around it.

Comparing it to other OpenGL games just isn't as useful. It's a valid point to say that the 8800 can chew up and spit out OpenGL or DirectX; but there is obviously some combination of factors in its use in CMSF that can trigger a massive bug in either the card or the OpenGL drivers for that card.

I've also been (and am on my own time) a software developer, remember, it doesn't do this on all the 8800s. It's a huge bug (whatever and wherever it is), but fixing or working around something that you can't reproduce on your end is not exactly easy.

Well, I'm not saying that it isn't a driver issue. What I'm saying is that during the beta phase you have to try out the most popular cards out there in different combinations (GPU/CPU/Chipset etc) to make sure that your code runs well on most of them. In many cases you find out that some cards don't work as fast as they should and when you hunt down those bugs you often realize that you had done something in a sub optimal way. Thus the fix increases the performance for the older cards too. Been there, done that! As ALL other games run fine on my rig, I think it's a bit tough to blame the drivers. I see that ATI gets their share of blame in other threads here too. Really weird - the CMSF renderer is written in an optimal way and for some reason that other developer don't run into the game gets a lot of unexpected driver issues. As both Nvidia and Ati gets blamed, which cards where used during development and testing? Matrox?

Sure, this seems to be one of the bugs that is not immediately reproduceable on all 8800 cards as there seems to be some other hardware/software combination that casues it. Still - it seems like many customers are experiencing it and it should not be impossible to track down. Does the Open GL game Quake Wars run on single digit FPS on my rid with ALL custom sliders in the bottom + 16 aniso and 16 AA? Nope, NEVER drops below 30 fps. But I'm fairly sure that during many phases of the development it would have!

Looking on the list of sticky threads here it's rather clear that this is not an isolated bug in the 8800 drivers. Fixes for ATI, 7xxx etc.

/Mazex

[Battlefront.com]

Mazex,

What I'm saying is that during the beta phase you have to try out the most popular cards out there in different combinations (GPU/CPU/Chipset etc) to make sure that your code runs well on most of them.

We did, but unfortunately our ATI and nVidia equipped systems (which included 8800s) didn't have problems. The difference between Beta and a general release is comparing the hardware of a couple dozen people to that of tens of thousands of people. Kinda hard to get a meaningful sample of the customer base.

Looking on the list of sticky threads here it's rather clear that this is not an isolated bug in the 8800 drivers. Fixes for ATI, 7xxx etc.

You're correct... all video card drivers are buggy This has been true since the dawn of time. I remember a really funny bug in one crad driver back when Charles was on his own doing his flight games. The bug drew bitmaps to the screen backwards. Which meant you saw your plane flying backwards and shooting out the rear. Funny, unless you had that card

Now, for those who claim that no other games have problems with nVidia cards... kindly explain why they keep releasing new drivers every few weeks with fix lists like this:

*Supports GeForce 6, 7, and 8 series GPUs

Improved compatibility and performance for NVIDIA SLI™ technology on DirectX 9, DirectX 10, and OpenGL applications.

*Improved compatibility for The Way It’s Meant To Be Played™ game titles: BioShock, Crysis, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Hellgate: London, and World in Conflict.

*Added HD video post-processing for H.264, VC-1 and MPEG-2 HD content on the GeForce 8500 and 8600 series GPUs.

*Numerous game and application compatibility fixes. Please read the release notes for more information on product support, features, driver fixes and known compatibility issues.

If you would like to be notified of upcoming drivers for Windows Vista, please subscribe to the

This is what is so irritating about people insisting that we're to blame and that their drivers work perfectly well. It is factually incorrect and nVidia itself proves it. I keep pointing this out over and over again, but it seems like some people just can't grasp the fact that the drivers are buggy and, for whatever reason, CM:SF is getting bit by this more than other games on an individual's specific system.

BTW, the above quote is for a new set of nVidia drivers released today. Hopefully it will fix some problems with CM:SF.

Steve

[Cpl Steiner]

mazex,

Good post. I too am a bit cheesed off constantly hearing BFC bitching about drivers and graphics hardware. I didn't pay nVidia for CM:SF, I paid BFC. If there is a problem with how the game runs on nVidia graphics cards I expect them to sort it out with nVidia before the game is released - by doing sufficient testing and finding appropriate workarounds. Game development is a combination of coding and testing. BFC seem fixated on the coding side and just blame everyone else when their totally perfect standards-compliant OpenGL code throws a wobbler.

In an ideal world, standards compliant code would work 100% as intended on every graphics card and every driver, but we all know that this is just pie in the sky. Adequate testing is the only sure-fire way to create code that runs well on the vast majority of PCs. CM:SF just wasn't tested properly. There is no getting away from this - and that is BFC's fault, not nVidia's or ATI's.

Sorry BFC but being arsey with paying customers even when they are irritating is not the way to do good business, especially when this could have all been avoided by doing more testing.

Having said that I hope BFC can resolve the problems that were missed before release as soon as possible, and I will continue to support CM:SF in the hope that it is eventually the "gold standard for computer wargames" that it promised to be.

[mazex]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

You're correct... all video card drivers are buggy This has been true since the dawn of time. I remember a really funny bug in one crad driver back when Charles was on his own doing his flight games. The bug drew bitmaps to the screen backwards. Which meant you saw your plane flying backwards and shooting out the rear. Funny, unless you had that card

FC2? Great game. Those where the days... Played it recently and it runs like a charm on the 8800GTX

/Mazex

[Sekra]

One thing you guys should remember that it is a know fact that the drivers are buggy when related to the texture memory management and I'm 99% sure that is the main reason for low fps on my 8800GTS 640mb. It looks more like hardware that isnt functioning like its supposed to and thats a bit hard to fix. One of the main reasons I did start poking around with all that OpenGL stuff in the first place was to find out if the problems were in the game or the drivers. And I'm convinced that its the drivers that are causing 99% of the problems.

[The DesertFox]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

This is what is so irritating about people insisting that we're to blame and that their drivers work perfectly well. It is factually incorrect and nVidia itself proves it. I keep pointing this out over and over again, but it seems like some people just can't grasp the fact that the drivers are buggy and, for whatever reason, CM:SF is getting bit by this more than other games on an individual's specific system.

Steve

I think from a consumer point of view this is completely irrelevant. If I pay money for something, I want it to function properly. This is the main responsibility of the guys who produced the product I bought. If the game developer blames everything in the world for his partly non-funktioning product instead of producing a working patch, this leaves a very bad taste to the customer and certainly word of mouth will spread this around.

Especially if this developer aims this not properly functioning engine to be his core-engine for upcoming future products I see a few problems creeping up on the horizon in the not so distant future.

Do you plan to completely rely your future product functionality on a company which either doesn´t care about your problems or simply is ignoring them, because they seem to have taken the stance that THEY set the market standard ?

cheers

Helge

P.S.: Don´t get me wrong, I found the compromise to play with balanced settings quite acceptable for me personally, but this can´t be the final solution for your engine.

[Rocky Balboa]

Originally posted by Cpl Steiner:

mazex,

Good post. I too am a bit cheesed off constantly hearing BFC bitching about drivers and graphics hardware. I didn't pay nVidia for CM:SF, I paid BFC. If there is a problem with how the game runs on nVidia graphics cards I expect them to sort it out with nVidia before the game is released - by doing sufficient testing and finding appropriate workarounds. Game development is a combination of coding and testing. BFC seem fixated on the coding side and just blame everyone else when their totally perfect standards-compliant OpenGL code throws a wobbler.

don't understand why people go out and buy the latest graphics card as soon as it hits the self and then want to complain when everything doesn't work perfectly. That's why its called the bleeding edge and if players cant be patient while problems are sorted out then don't buy a graphics card that hasn't been thoroughly tested. BFC doesn't have the budget or the staff to do the type of testing that you suggest. I'm sorry for those that are experiencing problems but this is the price you pay when buying bleeding edge technology. Next time don't purchase the newest card but get one that's been in the field for a while and leave yourself an upgrade path for the newer cards after they have been tested.

[Dirtweasle]

Which card is that? The 8800 is about a year old.

[Rocky Balboa]

Originally posted by Dirtweasle:

Which card is that? The 8800 is about a year old.

Yep ..... That's the one and its still NVIDIA's top of the line (newest) series card .... which means they are still tweaking the drivers that go with it. Personally I wont even think of buying an 8 Series until they come out with the 9 Series because for me its not worth paying a premium price for the latest GPU and still having to deal with compatibility problems not only with new applications but my older applications as well.

[Dirtweasle]

I usually go with the something like the second best if you will, and since the price came down on the 8800's they offer about the best bang for the buck.

I can't see how you'd realistically call the 8800 GTS bleeding edge. The premium for the GTX is a little steep but the GTS is a good value and for whatever it's worth I have not had a single problem with anything else.

[Cpl Steiner]

My card is a 7600GT and it has problems too so don't go telling me its because I bought bleeding edge technology.

[mazex]

Beeing evil by nature, I could not resist this... If it's the drivers fault then have a look at these two screenshots I captured today using my 8800GTX of two recent games with M1A1:s and T72:s fighting it out (Fraps FPS in yellow in the top right corner):

Nvidias latest 163.69 drivers at 1280x1024

CMSF paused before start - balanced models, better textures, 10 fps

World in Conflict, battle going on with smoke and helicopters etc - all settings at max, 72 fps

Which one looks best and who has used the crappy drivers in the best way is up to you

/Mazex

[Cpl Steiner]

mazex,

A picture paints a thousand words, as they say. I whole heartedly agree. BFC can't just keep passing the buck. Its time they woke up and recognized some harsh realities.

[Cameroon]

Cap/Mazex - so you're suggesting that a tiny development house is going to have the resources to devote to eye-candy that a big dev house has? That's just silly.

If the implication is that WiC shows a lot more on screen while still maintaining high FPS, they're also using DirectX which gets the lions-share of improvements and testing by ATI/NVIDIA. And, again, they have a big development team.

If instead it's that OpenGL on the 8800 has some series flaw(s), then obviously yes. My 7950GT churns through CMSF and WiC with similar FPS, but with 16x AF and 8xS AA in CMSF.

I'm not being an apologist, but it's like every post is a re-hash of "the problem lies in CMSF" when if it's just CMSF - as you seem to claim - then how come a lower-end nvidia card is performing better than a higher end nvidia card with the same settings? That just would not make a single bit of sense.

They've already said that it's entirely possible that something about the way that CMSF does its rendering could be making the G80 cards (in particular) significantly underperform, but that doesn't make it any less a problem with the driver that they have to work around.

So if they can't reproduce the horrid performance in the "lab" (lab being the 8800 equipped machine that they have), how are they supposed to work around it?

Personally I think they should buy someone's 8800 rig that's having the problem

[Cpl Steiner]

Originally posted by Cameroon:

Personally I think they should buy someone's 8800 rig that's having the problem

That's the best idea I've heard yet. They could even just loan it for a while and compensate the owner accordingly.

There are loads of people happy to help BFC out. I would even appeal to any other games developers who might be browsing this forum to lend a hand if they know of any workarounds to improve performance and get rid of some of the ugly stuff like crappy self-shadowing.

I know BFC is a small company and cannot compete with the likes of "World In Conflict" in terms of eye-candy but performance issues are another matter. It should be possible to get better performance - and I bet it probably will in some future patch.

I really want CM:SF to be a success. I am just being honest because that is the only way things are going to improve.

P.S. - I used to have "Steel Beasts" installed on my previous computer, which portrayed modern mechanized warfare at the same sort of scale as CM:SF. That computer was a pile of junk compared to the one I have now but Steel Beasts had a great frame-rate, even though it was software-rendered by design. It didn't even attempt to use 3D acceleration hardware. It was an OpenGL game just like CM:SF. I say again, I want CM:SF to be a success but it won't be unless it gets up to the standard of even 5 year old games, never mind todays games.

[ September 18, 2007, 03:43 PM: Message edited by: Cpl Steiner ]

[Dirtweasle]

Originally posted by Cpl Steiner:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Cameroon:

Personally I think they should buy someone's 8800 rig that's having the problem

That's the best idea I've heard yet. They could even just loan it for a while and compensate the owner accordingly. </font>

[peleprodigy]

On a positive note, I too purchased World in Conflict, and am looking forward to some >40fps maxed out 37" widescreen gaming. Directx, opengl, why do I care? it works, and it's beautiful.

[Dirtweasle]

Have you tried the demo? It looks a little "twitchy" to me. Aside from looking real nice does it offer something resembling real world tactics and so on? Maybe you should start a thread in the GF to discuss your impressions of the game. Just don;t post direct links or screen shots and I think you'll be within the rules.

[Cameroon]

Dirtweasle, it's not a real world combat simulator at all. It's, believe it or not, a faster paced RTS.

[Dirtweasle]

Gotcha. I prefer turn based games but RT like Harpoon is also fun, the gameplay from what I can tell looks a little too gamey. Finding that sweet spot is different for everyone. Realism v Playability.

[Cameroon]

Edit because it was way off topic. Lots of WiC info is available elsewhere

[Battlefront.com]

Guys...

We obviously understand that we have a responsibility to sort through the problems with a major card and to find solutions. We've been on top of this since Day One. We are working very hard to find out how we can work around this problem. But for Pete's sake, stop the idiotic "game x works fine on my computer so my drivers are perfect" line of illogic nonsense. The facts are completely, and utterly, indisputable. The drivers/hardware of the 8800 series of cards, in particular, are inherently defective. I've presented SO MUCH EVIDENCE of that it makes my head hurt to see people still with their heads buried in the sand about something that should be so obvious that even a child would not get confused by it.

Now, as I said we understand the argument from you, the customer, which goes along the lines of "I don't care what the problem is, fix it". As I've said over and over again, that is exactly what we are trying to do. But since the fundamental problem is that we're working with a buggy/broken API, it's not that simple to fix. We're not doing anything wrong, and the evidence is overwhelmingly on our side. If we were doing something wrong (i.e. not properly using the API) then ALL SYSTEMS WOULD BE RUNNING SLOW!. The fact that this is not happening CLEARLY indicates, without any room for questioning, that the problem lies with the card/driver. Again, you the pissed off customer might not give a crap about this, but please do not distort the facts. The 8800 card has a long history of being buggy, and it is still buggy. nVidia freely admits this so why some people are inventing an alternate reality is beyond me.

OK, so why the differing range of results on 8800 cards (in particular)? We have concluded that it is some sort of very low level interaction between the nVidia hardware, driver, and some bit of hardware on the motherboard. This would explain why two people, with fairly similar systems, see such wildly different results. There are so many sub systems at work here that it's impossible to pinpoint it. I mean, if nVidia apparently hasn't figured it out, and that's what they do for a living, how are we supposed to figure it out? All we can do is play around with things and try to determine what LEGITIMATE OpenGL calls we're making are for, whatever reason, not working correctly with particular nVidia calls. Usually this is pretty easy, but for whatever reason it is not obvious to us despite more f'n time spent on this one issue than any other hardware related issue in nearly 10 years of 3D development.

Usually the problem is fairly easy to isolate once it is noticed. This is an example from yesterday:

We just did a speed optimization that used standard OpenGL calls. Charles coded the optimization into the game and we all went to test it. nVidia testers were overjoyed, ATI users saw their performance drop by 100 times. That's right... from 30fps to 0.3fps. So after Charles got done banging his head against a wall he came to find out that this OpenGL call that is "supported" by ATI is only supported in software rendering mode, so the card "kindly" switched the entire drawing routine into software render mode.

This is a perfect example of piss-poor support by a card company for OpenGL. Yes, technically ATI does "support OpenGL", but it's like McDonalds saying that they "support healthy eating" when they are purposefully putting trans-fats into their food. Meaning, the label on the box and the bits of text on the website aren't being entirely truthful (they aren't lying, they just leaving out important bits of info).

Again, I do not expect you customers to be happy with the performance of CM:SF on your 8800 cards. I do not expect you to stop complaining about it until we get it fixed. What I do expect you to do, however, is cut us some slack and understand the basic facts without being dinks about it. The 8800 is buggy and we're doing our best to work around it. Those are the facts, please don't insult your own intelligence by disputing them.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Cpl Steiner,

A picture paints a thousand words, as they say. I whole heartedly agree. BFC can't just keep passing the buck. Its time they woke up and recognized some harsh realities.

We're wide awake and we're not passing the buck. Or can you point me to a post where I've said either of these things?

1. There is no problem with 8800 performance

2. There is a problem, but it isn't our problem

No, you can not find any instances of me saying that. So the obvious truth is that we are not asleap at the wheel and we are not passing the buck. But that doesn't mean we can snap our fingers and get this problem fixed. That's what I'm trying to get into certain very thick skulls here. The problem is inherently not ours and yet we've got to figure out a way to work around it, yet we still haven't even figured out what the problem is.

Oh, and Mazex posting a pictures of a DirectX game is rather lame. Might as well show a picture of a game on X-Box or Wii for all that it matters. Or how about I show a picture of what CM:SF looks like on my system compared to World in Conflict? So let's stop with the childish and utterly pointless posts like that, OK? It won't make us work any harder to find a solution, but it does make us think VERY poorly of the customer intelligence.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

BTW, we've determined that Charles' system is experiencing the problems, however he's one of the lucky ones and is getting generally good framerates most of the time. The thing is we have reason to believe that the framerates should be even better, so it's further indication that the inherent problem is there, it's just not as obvious as those of you who are getting in the 10fps range. The problem here is... he still hasn't figured out where the bottleneck is.

We'll get this thing fixed, but it would sure be nice if nVidia released a driver that worked correctly to fix whatever isn't happy with CM. That would make all the problems go away without another minute of time wasted.

Steve

[KNac]

The decission to go with OpenGL instead of DirectX was cause Mac support, right? And I think there is not a Mac version incoming? Now, that's a paradox.

A DirectX game qwould have made life easier for all, included BF.