InCrysis fielded questions from the community a few months back which were to be answered by an Nvidia rep. The selected questions along with their answers have now been published. Obviously, there's a fair bit of self-promotion by Nvidia, but besides that, some pretty good questions were asked considering.
A couple of months ago, inCrysis fielded questions from the community for NVIDIA and their relationship with Crysis/Crytek. Roy Taylor, Vice President of Content Relations at NVIDIA has very kindly answered these questions for us.
inCrysis would like to thank Roy and everyone at NVIDIA that made this possible!
1) NVIDIA engineers have been working with Crytek for some time now. Can you tell us a little more about this relationship? Has there been anything particularly interesting they have encountered while working on Crysis?
Roy Taylor: We first met Crytek at E3 in 2000, when they showed us a demo of Dinosaur Island. We were so impressed that we began working with them right away, and that collaboration led to Far Cry.
Before Far Cry shipped, Crytek invited us to help with their next project, Crysis. We helped Crytek incorporate new DX 10 features, while improving their core shadowing system, terrain rendering, and water rendering for better quality and performance. We’ve had programmers in Crytek’s offices working on the game for more than a year. In all, more than a dozen NVIDIA programmers have devoted more than 5000 man-hours to the game.
One interesting fact is that Crytek’s advances in visual quality from Dinosaur Island to Crysis roughly parallel NVIDIA’s advances in graphics capabilities. Crysis is about 150 times more complex than Dino Island, and our 8-series GPUs are also about 150 times more powerful than our GPUs back in 2001.
2) Crysis is in NVIDIA’s “The Way Its Meant To Be Played program.” What can Crysis players using NVIDIA graphics cards expect as a result of this?
RT: Crysis players with GeForce graphics cards can quite literally expect the game to look good and play well out of the box, for starters. We rigorously test all games in The Way Its Meant To Be Played on hundreds of PC configurations with every GeForce 6, 7, and 8 graphics processor. We want every GeForce owner to have a great experience.
Not all users will have the same experience, because GeForce 6 cards aren’t as fast as GeForce 7 GPUs; and only GeForce 8 cards support DirectX 10 graphics features. So if you play Crysis on a three year old PC with a GeForce 6800, you will have to make compromises in resolution or visual quality. Gamers with GeForce 8800 cards in SLI will enjoy fast frame rates in high resolution with all of the options maxed—the way it was meant to be played!
3) Are there any specific graphical features in Crysis which are exclusive to NVIDIA's cards? If so, what are they?
RT: Only NVIDIA owners will be able to get coverage sampling anti-aliasing (CSAA), which is a higher quality AA algorithm that offers better image quality. Aside from that, the big advantage for NVIDIA owners is that Crysis will run faster on NVIDIA GPUs.
Of course, Crysis will have DirectX 10 features which you’ll only be able to see using a DX 10 graphics card. If you have a larger display and want to experience Crysis in all its glory with every option maxxed, you’ll be best prepared to do that with an NVIDIA SLI system because we have tested that configuration and tuned our drivers to support it.
4) What performance differences and other graphical enhancements will we see between DX9 and DX10?
RT: Very good question. The game isn’t finished yet, and we need to defer to Crytek and Electronic Arts on this question because after all it’s their game. However Crytek provided several DX 9 vs DX 10 comparison screenshots which we’re providing to inCrysis (link), and they show more realistic lighting, better water effects, more realistic terrain, and greater overall detail.
Crytek has demonstrated a few of the differences, including weather effects like rain, day/night cycles, and “battle dust.” This is a great DX10 effect that produces the dust and grime you would expect to see in a war environment that adds a great deal to the feel of the game. There are others coming but we won’t spoil the surprises!
In terms of performance, you’ll find similar performance in DX 9 and DX 10 when you enable the same effects. But you’ll have more graphics options you can enable with DX 10.
5) What are the key benefits of having NVIDIA graphics technology over competitor offerings?
RT: Here are the four key benefits:
#1 Performance: NVIDIA makes the world’s best graphics processors. If you want to play Crysis, you’ll want to make sure you get a great GPU for Vista and DX 10 games. PC Perspective just tested the latest cards and concluded that the GeForce 8800 GTX and GTS are the best options for playing DX 10 games with Vista:
“The NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX is our pick for anyone looking to play the likes of Bioshock, Company of Heroes, Call of Juarez, Lost Planet or World in Conflict in DX10 modes. The power of the G80 GPU and the time NVIDIA’s driver development team has put into Vista are evident in our benchmark and gaming experience results. “The NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB makes a great second option though for users with a slightly smaller budget. This card still does very well under Vista with the DX10 games and keeping another $150 in your pocket never hurt anyone.” Link
#2 SLI: One of the biggest benefits of having NVIDIA in your system is that you can always add a second NVIDIA GPU (if you have an SLI-ready motherboard) and immediately enjoy a 60-100% performance boost in your games. That’s the best bang for the buck you can get! Here’s what Firing Squad wrote about our SLI support:
“NVIDIA in particular has made tremendous strides with their latest Vista driver, SLI support is fully functional for all GeForce card owners and it scales well in most cases. Unfortunately, CrossFire compatibility is still an issue for AMD. New games like BioShock and World in Conflict don't support CrossFire at this time, and Lost Planet and Quake Wars have graphical glitches.” Link
#3 Image quality: Since the release of the GeForce 8800 in November of 2006, our image quality has consistently been superior to that of the competition.
#4 Noise and power consumption: GeForce graphics cards are quieter than the competition, and they use less power. If all things were equal, I would opt for a card that’s quieter and more efficient. But they aren’t equal. :)
6) Can you provide any basic ballparks on what the minimum graphics card required to play Crysis on low/medium/high graphic settings?
RT: I’ll have to defer to Electronic Arts and Crytek on this question. I do expect EA to announce minimum requirements very soon.
7) What has the experience of bringing Crysis to the new Direct3D 10 API been like? What challenges has NVIDIA encountered?
RT: For most of the past 18 months, Yury Uralsky and Miguel Sainz of NVIDIA have been living in Frankfurt and working at Crytek. It’s a tribute to their hard work and the support and collaboration of Douglas Binks, Martin Mittring, Carsten Wenzel and the rest of the amazing engineers at Crytek that we have achieved so much.
Miguel Sainz and Yury Uralsky: It has been a hell of a ride! Working with Crytek on this title has been a completely new experience for us. Just consider the singularity of this clash between a whole new OS (Vista), a great new GPU architecture (GeForce 8800), a completely new API (DX 10) and a game engine that pushes the technology like no others have done before. The level of commitment between the two companies is really extraordinary.
This collaboration has been challenging, humbling, eye-opening and rewarding in many ways. Challenging because we’ve had the daunting task of getting the application and drivers to work at their best together. Humbling because we have had the chance to collaborate with great engineers and learn from them. Eye-opening because we have had a lot of exposure to how the studio works, and we have been able to see the dynamics and inner interaction of such a great company. Most of all it has been rewarding to accomplish so much together.
Being exposed to all the inner details of the Crysis engine has been a great learning experience for us. Crysis is truly a next-generation engine and is designed to squeeze every single bit of performance from today's high-end hardware. Understanding how we can make it run as efficiently as possible on NVIDIA GPUs to provide the best gaming experience for users has been an exciting journey.
We hope that gamers will enjoy playing Crysis as much as we have enjoyed working on it.
8) It has been mentioned that computer hardware is approximately 2 years behind the true capabilities of Crysis and the engine it runs on. Can you tell us anything about what we can expect to see as the hardware catches up?
RT: It’s true that under Cevat’s direction the engine is very scaleable. He has promised me that he will keep our GPUs taxed for some time. We will see! But I can say that this is something that’s getting a lot of attention right now. This is one of the reasons I have advocated “Directors cuts” with special features for those with the right hardware.
9) It has been announced that Crysis will be released November 16. Is it at all likely that we may see the G90 series go retail before the games release date?
RT: Um, we can’t comment on unannounced products. Hypothetically, if we had a new killer DX 10 card for mainstream gamers, it sure would be nice to see it by the game’s release!
10) We are starting to see increased visual immersion (photorealism). What does the future hold for other FPS titles in terms of increased realism? What is the next big step in enhancing the level of immersion?
RT: There is so much still to do. As good as Crysis is it’s still a long way from where Cevat’s imagination and our ambitions are headed. For example, you couldn’t set the whole jungle on the island on fire and watch it burn realistically right now, it’s just too complex to recreate. Now imagine we did do that and then we wanted to put the fire out with an airplane dropping water onto the fire with huge steam clouds coming off the flames. That might be fun to play but we couldn’t do that right now either.
We are looking at how to create effects that add a deeper sense of immersion, and we are having fun asking questions like: how do we visually simulate claustrophobia? Or how can we create a sense of panic? Or heart-stopping suspension? In the future we are going to start thinking about the effects that we want to achieve, and then work on developing the technology to enable those.
Along with the Q&A are some DX9 vs DX10 comparisons. These are the first true comparisons of this type, and they sure go well with the recently released Low-to-Very High comparison.
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Source: Crysis-Online
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