nVidia: Batman: Arkham Asylum Enables AA Only on NVIDIA Hardware on PCs

[Fenix]

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Batman: Arkham Asylum Enables AA Only on NVIDIA Hardware on PCs .

Another cheap tactic from Green team

Anti-Aliasing has been one of the most basic image-quality enhancements available in today's games. PC graphics hardware manufacturers regard it as more of an industry standard, and game developers echo with them, by integrating anti-aliasing (AA) features in the game, as part of its engine. This allows the game to selectively implement AA in parts of the 3D scene, so even as the overall image quality of the scene is improved, so is performance, by making sure that not every object in the scene is given AA. It seems that in one of the most well marketed games of the year, Batman: Arkham Asylum, doesn't like to work with ATI Radeon graphics cards when it comes to its in-game AA implementation.

Developed under NVIDIA's The Way it's Meant to be Played program, and featuring NVIDIA's PhysX technology, the game's launcher disables in-game AA when it detects AMD's ATI Radeon graphics hardware. AMD's Ian McNaughton in his recent blog thread said that they had confirmed this by an experiment where they ran ATI Radeon hardware under changed device IDs. Says McNaughton: "Additionally, the in-game AA option was removed when ATI cards are detected. We were able to confirm this by changing the ids of ATI graphics cards in the Batman demo. By tricking the application, we were able to get in-game AA option where our performance was significantly enhanced." He further adds that the option is not available for the retail game as there is a secure-rom.

With no in-game AA available to ATI Radeon users, although the features do technically work on ATI Radeon hardware, the only way AA can be used is by forcing it in Catalyst Control Center. This causes the driver to use AA on every 3D object in the scene, reducing performance, compared to if the game's in-game AA engine is used.

"To fairly benchmark this application, please turn off all AA to assess the performance of the respective graphics cards. Also, we should point out that even at 2560×1600 with 4x AA and 8x AF we are still in the highly playable territory," McNaughton adds.

Choose with your wallets.

News Source : http://www.techpowerup.com/104868/Batman_Arkham_Asylum_Enables_AA_Only_on_NVIDIA_Har dware_on_PCs.html

[ViKiD]

Lolz....green guys going dirty!

[blufox]

Bad bad Nvidia.
I wish someone could slap their bums for acting like jerks.

[TheZenMaestro]

LOL This news is really taking rounds all across the web. I am seeing it for the third time on this forum itself

[thebanik]

Nvidia's PR statement regarding these claimed issue

A representative of AMD recently claimed that NVIDIA interfered with anti-aliasing (AA) support for Batman: Arkham Asylum on AMD cards. They also claimed that NVIDIA’s The Way It’s Meant to be Played Program prevents AMD from working with developers for those games. Both of these claims are NOT true. Batman is based on Unreal Engine 3, which does not natively support anti-aliasing. We worked closely with Eidos to add AA and QA the feature on GeForce. Nothing prevented AMD from doing the same thing. Games in The Way It’s Meant to be Played are not exclusive to NVIDIA. AMD can also contact developers and work with them. We are proud of the work we do in The Way It’s Meant to be Played. We work hard to deliver kickass, game-changing features in PC games like PhysX, AA, and 3D Vision for games like Batman. If AMD wants to deliver innovation for PC games then we encourage them to roll up their sleeves and do the same.

Though this is only a PR stunt by Nvidia IMO, and they did play dirty.....

[TheZenMaestro]

Wow ! I just hope the battle to intensify somehow :devil me:

[nish_higher]

Bah .this is just one more reason why developers would neglect PC platform and consider consoles

[KiD0M4N]

What is game developer set to gain by NOT cooperating with AMD? Kick backs from nVidia or to gain any sort of support from the GPU giant?

I believe Intel was doing this earlier on... forcing OEMs to exclusively use Intel CPU and giving discounts.

[ManISinJpr]

I say we ditch Nvidia altogether and choose ATI all the way. but when consumers can't decide between right and wrong then these companies play dirty as they know that there customers are toooo loyal to leave them.

[sohail99]

He he! I'll be able to enable AA and my bro wont!

btw I hate all these battles! maybe nvidia was afraid that ATi, even after enabling AA will be able to give better visuals/fps!?

[Jinu]

isnt there a lawsuit waiting to happen with such kind of tactics... Intel is still smarting from what they did so many years back

[rajan1311]

Originally Posted by Jinu isnt there a lawsuit waiting to happen with such kind of tactics... Intel is still smarting from what they did so many years back

y? there is nothing illegal here, its just that NV has a lot of $$ and ATI dont....they cant pay developers to optimize games for their hardware.

[dips0502]

But arent the game developers more to blame here..I am sure AMD would have done the same if they had a chance to..

[akS !]

We are proud of the work we do in The Way It’s Meant to be Played. We work hard to deliver kickass, game-changing features in PC games like PhysX, AA, and 3D Vision for games like Batman. If AMD wants to deliver innovation for PC games then we encourage them to roll up their sleeves and do the same.

Cocky much?

[RajaPraveen]