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ghost101

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Posts posted by ghost101

  1. Posted · Edited by ghost101

    [start rant]

    "let's dumb it down, make it easier for lazy people without patience, blah blah blah".

    No, let's not! Games for that type of person (unfortunately) dominate the gaming market. Personally, it's the relative and _necessary_ complexity of ArmA that attracts me to it. I enjoy a genuine challenge in my gaming (both in in terms of gameplay AND learning to play it)

    Here's an idea: let's make ArmA as complex as it needs to be to fulfil its objective (no more, no less). Its objective being a consumer military-simulator, not a shoot-em-up. k? sound good to you?

    Personally, I am hugely grateful to the few companies (such as Bohemia, Paradox Interactive and DigitalmindSoft) that dare to make games in various genres which are DIFFICULT and genuinely challenging to play. If it wasn't for them, I would have given up on gaming a long time ago.

    It kind of irritates me that on the forums for each of my favourite games (Men of War, Hearts of Iron, ArmA) you always have people moaning about their complexity and wanting the game dumbed down for the masses.

    What is it with the dumb masses? They have the lion's share of everything in this world. Popular culture, education, video games, movies - absolutely everything is geared towards the lowest common denominator. Yet the moment they see anything that a minority may enjoy which is not at their level of retardation, they want it normalized. "It's not fare, it's too complicated... I DEMAND IT BE DUMBED DOWN LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE!"

    Please, let us have our pleasures as you have yours.

    [end rant]

  2. Posted · Edited by ghost101

    You mean like Windows? When I first started gaming,MS was a small developer and you didn't need any additional OS to run games.

    Times have changed.

    Yes, times have changed. In "the old days", developers were forced to favour a limited hardware setup (usually a soundblaster audio card and a small number of gfx chips) out of practical necessity but the invention of hardware abstraction changed that (which Microsoft/Windows helped foster). Suddendly there was a multitude of hardware vendors creating audio and gfx cards. Prices plummeted and advances in the technology rapidly increased (because of the competition) You no longer have to bind your games to specific hardware, which is what NVidia are trying to encourage companies to do with PhysX.

    Granted, Windows is the dominating OS for games, but thanks to opensource APIs (such as OpenGL, Bass, OpenAL, etc) even the OS can be abstracted, companies are free to dev games which can be compiled for many different platforms (MacOS, Linux, Win32) and many games, mainly non-commercial, do just that.

    That is the future. Abstraction. So why would we want to take a step back in time and willfully accept the demands of a single hardware manufacture?

    THAT is stupidity.

  3. Posted

    DMarkwick: Personally, this "debate" extends far beyond whether just BIS use it in their game. If they did, you're right, it's not the end of the world - I could simply choose not to buy that particular game. However, if it became the "norm" for developers to use the PhysX system in their games, that would be a problem. For any single company to have even a near monopoly on such an intrinsic part of future gaming (physics) is something to keep an eagle eye on and voice your disapproval of if you see your favourite games beginning to use it.

    PhysX is not just a technology, it's a strategic business plan and, believe me, you would not be a happy-bunny consumer if NVidia were to ever totally dominate the gfx-card/physics processing market.

    It's very good for all of us that both NVidia and AMD are in healthy competition.

    Just use Havok, Bullet or any of the other OPEN SOURCE unbiased engines available and leave the business of attempting to dominate the market to the hardware manufacturers. It's not the business of software developers to enter that competition by helping one company or the other.

    AMD (particularly recently) have been making VERY good hardware which has been out performing NVidia both in terms of price-cvalue for customers AND performance. It's a bit cheap to NVidia to attempt to cull their progress by encouraging the use of proprietary software in games. They should focus on making better hardware at a price people are willing to pay instead.

    but yes, it's a dead-end topic for a forum thread. I just think people, generally, should think more strategically about their support certain products - for their own future benefit as a consumer. Short-term selfish ("well, I have an NVidia card so I'm ok") will turn around and bite you.

  4. Posted

    Well, if used, GPU enabled PhysX will certainly put NVidia A3 players at an advantage. Not because AMD/ATI cards are incapable of matching the performance of NVidia GPU based physics but simply because PhysX is a software strategy developed by NVidia to artificially put their cards at an advantage. It's basically BS.

    As to whether or not BIS will actually buy into NVidia's PhysX plan and enable GPU processing is speculation. I just do not see them resisting the temptation as once you use the PhysX SDK for software processing, it is but a small step to enable many GPU based enhancements for NVidia A3 players. And as someone else in this thread has already mentioned, there are "incentives" offered by NVidia to do just that.

    But we will see.

  5. Posted

    BI still has NOT confirmed that A3 will even use GPU acceleration for its physX implementation.

    You just flip the "enable GPU support for NVidia customers" switch in the PhysX SDK. Why would they NOT have GPU acceleration?

  6. Posted · Edited by ghost101

    Use the open source Bullet physics engine. That way *ALL* BIS ArmA 3 customers will benefit from GPU accelerated physics processing - not just NVidia owners.

    Why cripple and punish half of your loyal customers for not purchasing NVidia products? I don't understand how a company who is proud of its "independence" would even consider using PhysX. At the end of the day, the only people who benefit from that decision is NVidia, because half of BIS customers will be persuaded to ditch AMD and buy NVidia.

    Disregarding half of your user-base in this way will have subtle knock-on effects. Those of us who know that BIS could have saved us from having to buy NVidia will be less inclined to promote the game and praise it on game forums. I'm not happy to support a game that FORCES me to buy a £200 h/w product unnesasarily.

  7. Posted

    Well, I haven't read the entire thread but I guess it's still the case that the "support" will mean PhysX emulation using AMD card owner's CPU? Physics simulations are very processor intensive, so I guess my NVidia opponents will be very happy that I'm unable to target them effectively due to my system lagging while trying to process PhysX opcodes. :)

  9. Posted

    Shame that ArmA 3 will be one of the few games to allow itself to be tied to NVidia's proprietary (closed) PhysX technology. Good for NVidia, bad for BIS's AMD/ATI customers.

    I was really looking forward to ArmA 3 but this has deflated my enthusiasm quite a bit.

  10. Posted · Edited by ghost101

    Hi,

    Like OP, I'm a newb myself. However, instead of Combined Operations, I had to purchase Operation Arrowhead because I wanted a physical copy (not digital d/l) and for some reason no retail store in the UK sells CO.

    Anyway, can anyone tell me if OA was the correct one to buy? Is it a good starter? How does it differ from CO (which people seem to be recommending above) and what if anything am I missing? Do I need something else for the full experience?

    Sorry to be such a nub!

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