does tessellation matter?

afaik the only games out now that support tessellation are AVP2 and dirt2.
in these games, does it make a big difference in graphics quality when tesselation is on?
also, do you guys think that with the consoles lording it over the industry, tesselation (which is not supported in consoles) will get major support from gaming companies, especially in those titles that are cross platform?

 

I don't think so. I think Nvidia's marketing over tessellation is blown way out of proportion.

When it's used in games that will be played among the mainstream, it will be for smoothing things out, like making circles, circles etc.

DX11 is a lot more than just tessellation and still think DirectCompute will play a bigger part, especially with physics.

I get an average of 45 FPS in Dirt 2 in Ultra settings btw. So I don't think tessellation is really that big of a deal in Dirt 2. And I've seen footage of AvP in DX11 being played with smooth framerate in AvP also. Metro 2033 shouldn't even be considered since it runs garbage on even Nvidia when it seems to be essentially a Nvidia benchmarking marketing tool anyhow.

 

I would expect tessellation to be heavily used in DX11 games in the future, at least as extra feature, simply because of how easy it is to implement.

For ported games, not likely, but it's already about time new consoles are showing up, and I would think that the new consoles would be tessellation heavy as well.

Nvidia used to say how crap dx11 is that's why their 360M etc are still using dx10.1, but seeing ATI's success with dx11 and tessellation they were enlightened that dx11 and tessellation is something big, and thus rushed out their fermi.

 

so youre saying that tesselation has not been implemented well in dirt2 and avp2?
i believe anti aliasing is more for smoothing things out and i thought tesselation would give more geometric detail to a model?
but i agree however with your assessment of direct x11. tesselation could just be a side note and direct compute could be its major, game changing feature so to speak.

 

i also feel that tesselation could only be heavily implemented when the consoles get a new refresh.
well i believe the real reason nvidia rushed fermi, according to the statement they released to stakeholders last jan, was that they lost bigtime in their gamble with the tegra mobile chip and their netbook cpus and have decided to pour all resources on their core business of manufacturing gpus.

 

Anti-Aliasing only removes jagged lines (so while lines are smooth, it's still a hexagon). I'm talking about how wheels, or or say a gun barrel is never truly round. Because tessellation will increase the number of triangles substantially, you can smooth that out to be a circle.

Using benchmarks that allow you to turn on and turn off tessellation on the fly, you realize how little difference tessellation makes when you are moving. It's only nice and really noticeable when you stop and stare at it. If you are panning and scanning and moving like you do in a game, it will make little to zero differences.

That's why FrostBite 2 from DICE will use tessellation but not to the extent that Nvidia probably hoping, because FrostBite 2 like Frostbite 1 will give an edge to ATi for price to performance substantially as there will be more emphasis on DirectCompute and possibly physics, modified Havok which is being implemented to work off GPGPU.

 

From what I remember, consoles aren't due for a resfresh untill at least 2012 so chances are tesselation might catch on to the PC market a bit by then. Also, the Xenos GPU in the 360 does support tesselation, just doesn't use it. Tesselation has been around since the ati 3000 series iirc and there were demos, the chips even have the capability to do it, just for some reason it was never supported.

 

This from 2010. I don't think so, not for very long time. There has been a lot of statements about PS3 having a 10 year lifespan from Sony. And same for the 360. Nintendo also said no plans to replace the Wii. Console gaming is not changing for a long long time IMO. DX9 games look just fine on console and I would have to agree. PC game developers are just bunch of morons incapable of really taking advantage of PC hardware is the problem.

 

well that could be bad news for tesselation then since the only way i see it being implemented heavily is if consoles use it too.

 

Hmm, I'd have thought console gamers would be getting a bit fed up by now given that there are PC's out there with over 20 times the graphics power.

If they only think it's 30% through its life so far then I actually find that kinda funny, by the time they replace it it'll be (by my calculations) 2019, by which time comparing it to a PC would be like comparing a phone to what we have now.

 

but the real question is will game developers make use of this pc power and added eyecandy.
i dont know how difficult it would be to add tesselation or direct compute to handle a games graphics, but would developers, wiyh most of them focused on the console version even care?
the main use of all that pc power now is multi monitor gaming. but there is no game i know of that has added eyecandy, or grapical enhancements that a console couldnt at least emulate.
so maybe at best we could get something like tesselated flags in dirt2 or minor tesselation in character models you would even hardly notice like AVP2.
im thinking that unless the developer is making a pc-only game, then he would not make use of all this power, let alone take dx10 to its full potential, whatever that is.

 

Instead of DX11 tessellation, would be nicer if PC Game development actually provide games that are specific to PC gaming... I don't have a console because I have little or no interest in console games. So why do I want console ports?

My suggestion I suppose is to start focusing on Indie games rather than triple A games that are focused on profit. And for these publishers, profit is console.

Honestly in the last few years, I haven't been excited about any games. The only one I like to see updates for occasionally is Diablo 3, but that's about it.

 

And thats the complete opposite of indie. I do agree with you though, consoles are taking over and the big guys (except Blizzard, so far) are more interested in features compatible with them.

 

I'd say valve are still primarily PC based, and I'm pretty sure unreal are still more toward the PC end of things.

 

Valve yes, Unreal no. Epic Games is a joke these days. Gears of War and UT3 ringing any bells?

 

i totally agree with supporting idie game developers.
though i love games like torchlight machinarium, the path and others these games hardly push the graphics envelope and can usually b played in a MBP.
and i feel thats the irony of it all. we as pc gamers have all these powerful gaming machines (especially on the desktop side) and yet support for these new features are marginal at best.
on the brighter side however, it makes your hardware last longer gaming wise.
but the question still is, is it worth getting tessealation and dx11 knowing that support for such features could be marginal?