Interesting article about DX11 and Civ 5 at Anandtech

[bryanw1995]

here's the post:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=31520674&postcount=28

It's funny to me that civ5 is STILL the only game to implement a large variety of DX11 features. Good thing for us, it can't hurt interest in the franchise to have so many people still talking about it. I bought oblivion back in the day solely because I got tired of reading gpu reviews that just assumed you had played it.

Here's the entire thread for anyone interested:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2155665

 

[tokala]

Interesting does not even come close to describe this.

In conclusion this means that a lot of firaxis' money (and probably nVidias, too) went into creating the technologically most advanced graphics engine up to this point in time. For a TBS game.
That only yields benefits for the user if
- you have a multicore system
- you have a high-end DX11 card
- you use Windows 7
- it is supported by the graphics driver (which wasn't the case at release, and is still not the case for AMD cards)

So that "outstanding collaboration" with nVidia meant Civ5 was in part developed as a testbed for advancing the state of the art in computer game graphics, with some users playing guinea pig
And probably some 90% of Civ5 players never benefitting from it

At least that explains some seemingly nonsensical benchmark results on release. And why a selected few people reported seeing proper multi-core usage, while most did not.

 

[deanej]

And people thought I was crazy for suggesting that civ5 went off the deep end with graphics in the DX11 thread.

 

[Sjru]

That only yields benefits for the user if
- you have a multicore system
- you have a high-end DX11 card
- you use Windows 7
- it is supported by the graphics driver (which wasn't the case at release, and is still not the case for AMD cards)

So that "outstanding collaboration" with nVidia meant Civ5 was in part developed as a testbed for advancing the state of the art in computer game graphics, with some users playing guinea pig
And probably some 90% of Civ5 players never benefitting from it

At least that explains some seemingly nonsensical benchmark results on release. And why a selected few people reported seeing proper multi-core usage, while most did not.

I agree, that must be why I often suffer scrolling crashes (I got an AMD processor) and seriously consider to buy extra 2 gb RAM to upgrade to 7 (for DX11, Vista&7 games requires more RAM since those OS chew more of it)

 

[Louis XXIV]

Still, in spite of the complaints from users (which, even though I don't have a high end system, so I don't benefit from these changes, I at least have had only one crash ever, so I have nothing to complain about either), it does show that Civ5 could be seen as a highly influential game from a developer's perspective.

 

[Quintillus]

That is indeed interesting.

I'd been under the (apparently mistaken) impression that when Firaxis said Civ5 could scale to 12 threads, they meant the AI could scale to 12 threads. Thus I was surprised when early reports were that the AI turn times didn't benefit from multiple threads. Now it makes sense that Firaxis was being accurate about Civ5 using 12 threads... just not in the area that (IMO) would be most useful.

Interesting, but not practical for me even if I bought Civ5, as I run DX10 hardware on a DX9 operating system.

 

[basta]

Interesting does not even come close to describe this.

In conclusion this means that a lot of firaxis' money (and probably nVidias, too) went into creating the technologically most advanced graphics engine up to this point in time. For a TBS game.
That only yields benefits for the user if
- you have a multicore system
- you have a high-end DX11 card
- you use Windows 7
- it is supported by the graphics driver (which wasn't the case at release, and is still not the case for AMD cards)

So that "outstanding collaboration" with nVidia meant Civ5 was in part developed as a testbed for advancing the state of the art in computer game graphics, with some users playing guinea pig
And probably some 90% of Civ5 players never benefitting from it

I'm in the 10% who do, having just rebuilt my system, and I must say CiV runs beautifully and looks beautiful. No lags, no crashes, fantastic graphics. Obviously they invested a great deal of time and care and it shows.

CiV really is visually stunning at moments, whatever you think of gameplay and the faults with the UI. It's one of the main reasons I can't go back to IV, it just looks so dated now.

Almost every game I'm still impressed by some aspect of the visual aspects of the game, and also the sound. The sounds btw are small masterpieces that operate on a mostly subconscious level. Who and however that person came up with the worker's sound, for example, still amazes me. So kudos to the designers for this aspect, they really hit it out of the park.

 

[PinkRose]

To continue your baseball analogy.
One Home Run that travels 550 feet is impressive and record breaking.
But you still lose the game if you have 3 walks, 7 errors by the infield and 4 unearned runs.

Less time on the graphics, more time on the AI, and no one would have complained.
Well, someone would have but that's what fanatics do.

 

[pi-r8]

I'm in the 10% who do, having just rebuilt my system, and I must say CiV runs beautifully and looks beautiful. No lags, no crashes, fantastic graphics. Obviously they invested a great deal of time and care and it shows.

CiV really is visually stunning at moments, whatever you think of gameplay and the faults with the UI. It's one of the main reasons I can't go back to IV, it just looks so dated now.

Almost every game I'm still impressed by some aspect of the visual aspects of the game, and also the sound. The sounds btw are small masterpieces that operate on a mostly subconscious level. Who and however that person came up with the worker's sound, for example, still amazes me. So kudos to the designers for this aspect, they really hit it out of the park.

10%? yeah right. I would guess that not even 1% of civ V buyers have the necessary video card and system specs to take advantage of this technology. What on earth were they thinking? For a small fraction of the budget, they could have made a lower-tech game which runs properly on all systems. My computer is less than a year old and has a fairly good video card, but it still lags at least 10 seconds on each turn.

 

[Smokeybear]

To continue your baseball analogy.
One Home Run that travels 550 feet is impressive and record breaking.
But you still lose the game if you have 3 walks, 7 errors by the infield and 4 unearned runs.

Less time on the graphics, more time on the AI, and no one would have complained.
Well, someone would have but that's what fanatics do.

/agree

And being the owner of a multicore, high-end Windows 7 system that just happens to run a great AMD 5870 DX11 card that they didn't bother to optimize their graphics for, all I can say is, thanks a lot for nuthin'.

Game developers who buy into proprietary deals (no doubt for lots of payola to do so) to optimize their graphics for just one video chip maker at the expense of gamers who don't use one of those chips, can kiss my left cheek.

The graphics look ok, but if I'm missing cool DX11 stuff just because I happen to use AMD instead of nVidia... lovely. And I've been plagued with tile texture anomalies (finally fixed with one of the latest patches), and frequent scrolling crashes.

I had hoped that the old BS of game devs selling out to one video chip maker at the expense of everyone else, was a thing of the past. Guess not.

 

[skallben]

They made the engine future proof so they can continue building on it and it most systems will benefit from it in the long run. That is a good thing, consider how many years IV ran on the same engine and then evaluate their choice of focusing on DX11.

 

[basta]

10%? yeah right. I would guess that not even 1% of civ V buyers have the necessary video card and system specs to take advantage of this technology. What on earth were they thinking? For a small fraction of the budget, they could have made a lower-tech game which runs properly on all systems. My computer is less than a year old and has a fairly good video card, but it still lags at least 10 seconds on each turn.

The 10% was just a citation from the post I quoted; don't get your panties in a knot over it.

As for "what on earth were they thinking?", I assume they were thinking, "We should make this game engine as technologically advanced as possible because the last one was around for 6 years and what does it serve us to spend all this time and money to create a brand new game that will be optimized today for yesterday's tech, which most people are now using, but which will be outdated in 2 years' time?" I assume they also took into consideration that gamers are rabid early-adopters of the latest tech and pretty much drive innovation in the computer industry.

But then again, I may be wrong.

 

[tokala]

10%? yeah right. I would guess that not even 1% of civ V buyers have the necessary video card and system specs to take advantage of this technology. What on earth were they thinking? For a small fraction of the budget, they could have made a lower-tech game which runs properly on all systems. My computer is less than a year old and has a fairly good video card, but it still lags at least 10 seconds on each turn.

That 10% guesstimation was meant to include the "future-proofing". For here and now it will indeed be much closer to 1%

I think it is rather simple. Nobody at 2K/firaxis could/would have financed the development of a brand-new, cutting-edge engine in a vacuum, it had to be piggy-backed onto a new game. As a lot of resources for development were consumed by the new engine, the result was a game light on the gameplay side, but in a shiny wrapping, which sold apparently very well regardless.
Now that it's done, payed (by us) and (mostly) working, they can start licensing it out/building more (and) better games on it.
At least they are still supporting the game, albeit rather slow-paced. But it could have been much worse.

Just look at CA and E:TW/N:TW/S:TW2. The first game on the new engine (Empire) was a mess, but sold well through a marketing blitz (and the new pretty little ships). Instead of properly fixing it, they abandoned it (and their customers ) and starting pumping out new (fullpriced) titles. At least those are reported to be of better quality.

 

[Beef Hammer]

I still know tons of people rocking XP and dx9 cards, PC gaming's giant flaw is they think they need to push the graphics of every damn new game. There's a reason older great games are still played by tons of people, (cs 1.6, starcraft1, daiblo2 etc.) graphics DO NOT make a game better.

 

[deanej]

What people use today is considered "yesterday's tech"? Also consider that it only works with nVidia. What of those of us who have another brand (I have ATI because Lenovo won't allow customers to choose the video card they want)?

 

[MoonFlare]

Huh...If someone is a huge Civ fan he's probably playing on an outdated PC

 

[V. Soma]

What of those of us who have another brand (I have ATI because Lenovo won't allow customers to choose the video card they want)?

ATI will hopefully catch up with the 11.4 driver update in this month...

 

[CTH]

I think that the reason why CiV has so much optimization that few can utilize is that they aim it to live a quite long life, in 2 years time, everyone will be able to use all the optimization of multithreading.

 

[SRG]

Interesting does not even come close to describe this.

In conclusion this means that a lot of firaxis' money (and probably nVidias, too) went into creating the technologically most advanced graphics engine up to this point in time. For a TBS game.
That only yields benefits for the user if
- you have a multicore system
- you have a high-end DX11 card
- you use Windows 7
- it is supported by the graphics driver (which wasn't the case at release, and is still not the case for AMD cards)

So that "outstanding collaboration" with nVidia meant Civ5 was in part developed as a testbed for advancing the state of the art in computer game graphics, with some users playing guinea pig
And probably some 90% of Civ5 players never benefitting from it

At least that explains some seemingly nonsensical benchmark results on release. And why a selected few people reported seeing proper multi-core usage, while most did not.

I meet all of these spec requirements, and I say Civ V is the best looking game I have ever played. Combined with a pretty awesome soundtrack, and I think this game is headed places. Just some little AI combat tweaks, some late game "fun" tweaks, and we are going to have an epic piece of Art to play.

It really is a gorgeous game running on my system. I also have never had a crash, and the lag on huge maps during the late game is maybe 20 seconds to 40 seconds before I can start my turn.

 

[The_Quasar]

I also tick all the boxes for the, so called, high end system...

I get great graphics from the game, and the end turns are not too long (unless I play epic/huge, which personally I find too long).

Judging by this thread so far, it's not 1% of folk with a "high end" system, not 10%, but getting on for 35% so far! In fact most people that have changed their system in the last year, and bought a machine for gaming. I can't understand why anyone interested in gaming WOULDN'T get a DX11 card! After all, it's going to be the future, many of them are no longer expensive, and it helps to future-proof your computer.

Thank you Fraxis, for having the foresight to develop in conjunction with nvidia.