Nvidia Beta Drivers adds AO to games

mLichy · Apr 2009

I found this out today, and tried it myself, and it's quite cool. If you have the 200 series Nvidia card, you're in luck.

This is the Vista 64 bit download

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x64_185.66_beta.html

http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_ambientocclusion_home.html

Joshua Stubbles · Apr 2009

Subtle but pretty damn slick from a driver update of all things.

Thegodzero · Apr 2009

Very cool

Jeremy Lindstrom · Apr 2009

hrmm pretty cool, wonder how you get more games in there...

vik · Apr 2009

sweeet, wonder how it works and how costly it is

mLichy · Apr 2009

I tried it on Left 4 Dead and FEAR 2, and it works quite well. Didn't notice any kind of performance hit either!

Rob Galanakis · Apr 2009

If this is done entirely through the driver, it is probably very cheap (but I could be wrong and a noob). Awesome, I wonder how they do it.

pior · Apr 2009

Yeaaaah!

I'm wondering how far this approach could go? Unloading tech features off the game developers and letting the cards driver take care of it.

I remember how we were supposed to have improved (rubbery) characters thanks to video cards tessellation years ago i the TombRaider2 days but it never happened because it basically looked like shit haha. Now this is different!

glib · Apr 2009

Now all we need is some drivers to automatically texture our stuff too. Wait no, cancel that.

Anybody know if this will work on a GTS 250? It's a 200 series card, but it's really just a rebadged 9800GTX, so if it works on former, then it should work on the latter too right? Or maybe they're software restricting it to just the 250 hte same way they do the Quadro drivers. I'm interested to try them out, but I've had some really bad experiences updating nvidia drivers in the past and I can't afford any downtime in the next week or so.

cman2k · Apr 2009

I can't take advantage of this, but that is pretty damn cool.

Yozora · Apr 2009

glib wrote: »

Anybody know if this will work on a GTS 250?

click on "products supported";

GeForce GTX 295
GeForce GTX 285
GeForce GTX 280
GeForce GTX 275
GeForce GTX 260
GeForce GTS 250
GeForce GT 140
GeForce GT 130
GeForce GT 120
GeForce 9800 GX2
GeForce 9800 GTX+
GeForce 9800 GTX
GeForce 9800 GT
GeForce 9600 GT
GeForce 9600 GS
GeForce 9600 GSO
GeForce 9500 GT
GeForce 9500 GS
GeForce 9400 GT
GeForce 9400
GeForce 9300 GS
GeForce 9300 GE
GeForce 9300
GeForce 9200

But if you cant afford any down time next week then I wouldnt change anything at all until its safe to, not like you need this asap.

I wonder will this eventually negate AO baking/AO maps for artists in the future

fast1 · Apr 2009

wow cool, thanks for the link

JostVice · Apr 2009

Agh damn, its only for the 200 series or the 9, 100 and 200? it says so in the website. $:\$

There is really no performance hit?

Anyway, I'm on a 8800GT, so no fun for me

neolith · Apr 2009

Awesome! Time to switch my 4850 for a new nvidia card I think.

ParoXum · Apr 2009

Shame it doesn't work with the latest beta patch of UT3

(9600GT)

If someone managed to make it work under patch 5 beta 3, share

ColinR · Apr 2009

Damn awesome. I just got a GTX 260 delivered this morning.

Davision3D · Apr 2009

Yea thats pretty awesome! Too bad i have a 4870x2.

Is it really that heavy, like in the half life screenshot? The compressed gifs look a bit suspicious to me.

JordanW · Apr 2009

The idea is neat but graphics are probably moving away from this in the future (the idea of larrabee (Sp?) and multicore computing) to a -way- more generalized code approach more so than HLSL, let alone coding in specific Post process passes.

I played left4dead with it turned on and it looked cool. It did show it's limitations, since it wasn't implemented by the dev it wasn't been composited in at the correct time. It was multiplying the AO over top all of the fog which looked really incorrect especially in areas where the background would fade to solid light color.

It's cool but I'd rather see dev's implement it themselves. Now if they added it as a function call that the dev could execute that would be nice.

jerry · Apr 2009

Some games actually have this. Crysis and StarcraftII are the ones i know of. They use a shader trick called screen space ambient occlusion.

ScoobyDoofus · Apr 2009

Grrr. Probably cant use this with my Quadro CX, despite it being based on the 200 series GPU.

Xenobond · Apr 2009

Does it only work with those listed games, or are you able to add it to custom game profiles? Makes me think about finally getting a new video card. Haven't any problems so far with my NV 86k.

Super · Apr 2009

Does this mean AO in Maya, Max, Mudbox (yes I know it has it), Zbrush?

mLichy · Apr 2009

Well to answer some questions. Each game can have its own profile, ON or OFF. I don't think it works in Max though... At least not yet.

I know it's not perfect, but again this is a Beta driver for one thing, and it can only get better, right?

Crysis does have AO, and it looks very nice. But for this being implemented in a driver, that's pretty damn cool I think.

Like I said, at least from what I experienced, there wasn't a performance hit. I'm running:

Vista 64 bit ultimate
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 2.66GHz
Asus Nvidia x260 TOP 896mb
8GB (2x4GB) DDR2 1066mhz Ram
2x250GB Seagate HDD Sata in Raid 0
Asus P5Q Pro motherboard... I believe..

I run FEAR 2 on Max settings at 1680x1050 with 4xAA with the AO and it runs fine.

danr · Apr 2009

looks nice in CoD4

if the driver update hadn't utterly fucked the display of HL2 - Ep1 which i'm playing through currently, i'd probably be quite pleased with it

MoP · Apr 2009

Super, I highly doubt it'd work in ZBrush since it probably uses OpenGL or Direct3D depth buffers of some sort, and ZBrush doesn't use either afaik. Anything else, I guess it should be possible.

warby · Apr 2009

awesome that this can be done via a driver ... wonder if this will work with the unity indie demo

Jeremy Lindstrom · Apr 2009

afaik, only 22 games supported at the moment. You cannot create a profile currently. Just says not supported in the control panel.

Ryno · Apr 2009

Can anyone verify if it also does AO self shadowing for object? Or is it only on an object-to-object basis. If I never have to bake another AO map, it will be a glorious day.

Thegodzero · Apr 2009

Sorry ryno, Its AO on the polys not the normal map. You will still have to render AO for the props/objects hipoly details, it just saves you the lowpoly AO bake.

Ged · Apr 2009

aww I just had to buy a ati 4850 today because of all the crashes my pc was having with nvidia vista64 drivers

Geezus · Apr 2009

Tried these drivers out last night. They don't seem very stable. I turned the AO on Globally, and didn't notice the AO in TF2. I did have screen flickering from time to time, and a minor lag issue.

Vista64, Dual GTX 260's

So yeah, not so stable for me.

Ryno · Apr 2009

Godzero, I thought that would be the case with normal maps. But what I am wondering about is self shadowing of irregularly shaped object casting shadows onto themselves. Think of a statue on a pedestal, where it is all one object. Will the statue self-shadow the pedestal that it stands on, even though it is all the same model? Or must the statue be a separate model from the pedestal, which would be its own object.

It's difficult to see from the demo images if they are just casting object to other independent object, or if they are casting onto themselves. The models seem pretty simple for the most part, and mostly seem to be separate objects (walls and floor, props and walls),