HL2 Traptown Vid

[T|2i|34L]

nVidia and ATI both cheat on benchmarking tests - so as far as game performance goes - it seems that equivalent cards from both companies perform almost equally. I think MPC discovered this little trade secret hook in both nVidia and ATI drivers that looks for the benchmark .exe running and if reconfigures the card to perform better for the benchmarks. It's a pretty lame way to win benchmark comparisons, but everybody's doing it.



I'll stick with my nVidia stuff - they are workhorses for me. I've had 2 ATI cards break in the last 3 years. Boo.



I think with either card - honestly - this game is going to look phenomenal.

[-:Nighthawk:-]

Edited by [user="26841"] @ [time="1059509699"]

Helkite wrote..

Just wondering, (sorry for this VERY off-topic comment, this can be deleted if deemed fit by a mod) what happened to Nighthawk? I rarely see him posting comments nowadays... I loved to read his opinions...

Nice to be missed. :)



(belatedly) I'm still kind of around. I've been waaay too busy with real-life stuff over the summer, between work and hanging out with my friends before their lives are consumed with homework once more. I've still got lots coming up during August, but usually things slow down by September.



So yeah, there's that, and the fact that I've switched from being a moderator to just focusing on keeping the SotD reviews going smoothly. The end result is I don't have quite that same feeling of needing to read every comment on the site, heh, though I enjoy browsing some of the discussions at times still. The forums are just plain out for me, though.



Oh yeah, I should probably mention the traptown vid and all that. Okay, so in reality I haven't even had time to get Steam working since all my computer woes the last couple of weeks. I saw the whole Gamespy vid a while back though, so that counts, right? :)



Argh, one more thing. Some clarification in necessary on this "you see at blah fps" crap. Most of you don't seem to understand the processes behind vision. Your eyes don't work like a camera, and don't even have a constant refresh rate, for that matter. Your eyes update to your brain slower in the center of the retina, but with better color perception and resolution. On the outer edges, you gain update speed (better for noticing quick movement in your peripheral vision) but inferior information. You have different types of receptors which also update at different speeds and are meant for different conditions.



The point is, your eye is not directly comparable to a monitor, a video camera, or any other form of imagery that we've created to capture or display images. With a camera the shutter closes in-between shots, giving you a time between every shot where nothing is processed. Your eyes are different from this, more like a continual exposure that updates fluidly. Persistance of vision (images remaining in your vision long after the light from them no longer exists) also impacts things.



Here's an example of why this "1/200th of a second" business is BS. If I take a regular video camera updating at 30fps, and flash a light in front of it for 1/200th of a second, there's a decent chance that the light will have happened while the shutter was open. The extreme example of this is a manual camera taking pictures of fireworks. You set it on a stand in a very dark location, point it at the sky, and leave the shutter open. As the fireworks go up, you'll see the entire event. They were only in each individual position for an extremely small amount of time, yet you've got it all recorded on your film. That's at like .05 FPS. Recognition of extremely quick events has NO relation to visual FPS, but simply rather to optical sensitivity, which one would expect to be high in fighter pilots, duh.



I don't feel like going off at the moment about all the different aspects that make comparisons of what your eyes can see and FPS to be completely stupid, even with what I've already said up there. The end result is that higher FPS in a game gives you better response, and minimizes eye strain. Most of us can definitely notice the difference between 60fps and 100fps, both in the look and the responsiveness. I don't think it makes the difference for in-game performance in most situations, though.



Anyway, yeah. Sorry for the rant. :) Just don't go off spouting off random "eye FPS" numbers you heard from your grandma's second-cousin's friend that he saw on Bobby-Sue's "1337 3Y3 homepage" and all that crap. It just confuses the issue, and makes you look dumb. Pharlap's comments were fairly good, though... not that there's nothing intelligent ever said, just too much ignorant stuff mixed in.



Good luck with the FSAA probs, heh. I couldn't use it on my rig anyway, and I'm too poor to upgrade, so I'll be playing low-res with lots of jagged edges, like with most newer game. And you know what? I'm going to enjoy every damn minute of it. :)

[Pharlap]

abysmal wrote..

Yes, and doom 3 will take a PC 3x more powerful than HL2 will to run. HL2 could have been much prettier, but after viewing the masses of computer specs submitted through that speakeasy/valve thing in the Half-Life patch installer, they decided that they would lose too much of an audience if they made the system that nice.



AA isn't an issue, your forgetting that its a video and that no matter if YOUR card can do it or not, it will still be jaggy. And btw, theres nothing wrong with AA in ATI cards, its the platform the game was made on. Nvidia cards can't do the AA shaders properly, its simply a hardware issue on Nvidia systems, and even new drivers won't fix that, only a reprogrammed shader system on source would fix it (Which isn't going to happen this close to the release of HL2). Fact is, Nvidia users see this masses of times anyway, small little white artifacts in wall corners and stuff, it isn't the first time its happened, it pretty much happens in at least 3/4 of games out there.



Its no big deal at the end of the day.



And gameshot don't give this whole 60fps eye thing a blast, Pharlap is totally right on this. It isn't even 60fps anyway :)



What it is, is more or less how smooth the game runs, now if you can't notice a difference between 60fps and 100fps, you need your eyes/head fixed.

well valve did say that their source engine will be fully scalabe so that means it will look amazing if u really want it to, and can also look crap, if u want it to. and with additional patches with valves excellent support, we can expect the game graphics to improve and improve as time goes by...

-:Nighthawk:- wrote..loads of stuff...

Argh, one more thing. Some clarification in necessary on this "you see at blah fps" crap. Most of you don't seem to understand the processes behind vision. Your eyes don't work like a camera, and don't even have a constant refresh rate, for that matter. Your eyes update to your brain slower in the center of the retina, but with better color perception and resolution. On the outer edges, you gain update speed (better for noticing quick movement in your peripheral vision) but inferior information. You have different types of receptors which also update at different speeds and are meant for different conditions.



The point is, your eye is not directly comparable to a monitor, a video camera, or any other form of imagery that we've created to capture or display images. With a camera the shutter closes in-between shots, giving you a time between every shot where nothing is processed. Your eyes are different from this, more like a continual exposure that updates fluidly. Persistance of vision (images remaining in your vision long after the light from them no longer exists) also impacts things.



Here's an example of why this "1/200th of a second" business is BS. If I take a regular video camera updating at 30fps, and flash a light in front of it for 1/200th of a second, there's a decent chance that the light will have happened while the shutter was open. The extreme example of this is a manual camera taking pictures of fireworks. You set it on a stand in a very dark location, point it at the sky, and leave the shutter open. As the fireworks go up, you'll see the entire event. They were only in each individual position for an extremely small amount of time, yet you've got it all recorded on your film. That's at like .05 FPS. Recognition of extremely quick events has NO relation to visual FPS, but simply rather to optical sensitivity, which one would expect to be high in fighter pilots, duh.



I don't feel like going off at the moment about all the different aspects that make comparisons of what your eyes can see and FPS to be completely stupid, even with what I've already said up there. The end result is that higher FPS in a game gives you better response, and minimizes eye strain. Most of us can definitely notice the difference between 60fps and 100fps, both in the look and the responsiveness. I don't think it makes the difference for in-game performance in most situations, though.



Anyway, yeah. Sorry for the rant. :) Just don't go off spouting off random "eye FPS" numbers you heard from your grandma's second-cousin's friend that he saw on Bobby-Sue's "1337 3Y3 homepage" and all that crap. It just confuses the issue, and makes you look dumb. Pharlap's comments were fairly good, though... not that there's nothing intelligent ever said, just too much ignorant stuff mixed in.



Good luck with the FSAA probs, heh. I couldn't use it on my rig anyway, and I'm too poor to upgrade, so I'll be playing low-res with lots of jagged edges, like with most newer game. And you know what? I'm going to enjoy every damn minute of it. :)

"just too much ignorant stuff mixed in."

:*(

yeah maybe i overdid it a little with the extra details and bits and bobs. if thats what u mean. if not, could you pls tell me where i went wrong :) kthx.

[-:Nighthawk:-]

No... I meant other people's posts had too much ignorant stuff mixed in. Yours was golden. <3

[pwnd]

ok, excuse me if i'm being dumb but how do u turn FSAA on in cs?

[Supersonic^]

LOL, the same way you do with most other games. Thru the driver.