Battlefield 2: The Video Card Controversy Part 2

Following the feedback received from the initial article: Battlefield 2: The Video Card Controversy, it appears this issue is far from clear and understood. Battlefield 2 requires new hardware in order to even startup, while in the past games have required new hardware in order to run smoothly at higher detail and resolution levels. Besides the fact that the minimum supported hardware, a Radeon 8500 is slower then the non-supported GeForce 4 Ti. With the upcoming release of Battlefield Modern Combat on the Xbox making this all the more laughable. Battlefield Modern Combat will be the Battlefield 2 Xbox port. The Xbox uses a tweaked version of the GeForce 3 running PS 1.3 and is programmed for DirectX. This is clearly showing that DICE can make the Battlefield 2 engine run on GeForce 3/4 Ti hardware.

Upgrading
Many users attempted to respond by telling people to upgrade their video cards. Claiming the issue was no big deal and an upgrade was only $50. These people obviously do not grasp the situation nor understand the economics behind this ignorant response. GeForce 4 Ti owners, especially 4600 and 4800 owners paid over $375-$400 for their cards back in 2003. At the time this was the top of the line card. It played Battlefield 1942 and Battlefield Vietnam on the highest detail levels. Battlefield Vietnam was released only last year. GeForce 3/4 Ti owners completely understand that newer games will not be able to be played at the highest detail levels but being unable to even start the game is unacceptable.

AGP will be replaced with PCIe entirely. The latest GeForce 7800 is PCIe only and SLI can only be found on PCIe. When these owners upgrade they would obviously be going for a PCIe video card, requiring a new Mainboard, CPU and Memory. If they looked to run the game on the recommended hardware, this so-called "upgrade" is now pushing $1000. Not a $50 "fix" that would actually give them worse performance in other games.

How many owners have already upgraded from a high end GF4 to a low end GF5? How many know that they purchased a slower though more "compatible" card based on bad online advice? Instead of looking at the facts: A GeForce 4 4600 is faster then even a GeForce FX 5700, as well as a Radeon 9600.

Notebook users who have GeForce4 Go GPUs have absolutely no way to upgrade without replacing the entire notebook. Yet they can play games such as Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 without any problems. How are they supposed to "upgrade"?

Supported List
Battlefield 2 only supports the following video cards:
(minimum 128MB)

Radeon X700 (PCIe)
Radeon X600 (PCIe)
GeForce 6600 (PCIe)
GeForce PCX 5900 (PCIe)
GeForce 5800 Series (AGP)
ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition
ATI Radeon X800 PRO
ATI Radeon 9800 Series
ATI Radeon 9600 Series
ATI Radeon 9550 (RV350LX)
ATI Radeon 9500 / 9700 Series
ATI Radeon 8500 Series
ATI Radeon X300 Series
NVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra
NVidia GeForce 6800 GT
NVidia GeForce 6800
NVidia GeForce FX 5950 Series
NVidia GeForce FX 5900 Series
NVidia GeForce FX 5700 Series

Note: GeForce 4 MX users have to upgrade. The MX card is nothing more then a glorified GeForce 2 and does not have any pixel shader support. So even the Shader Mod cannot help you.

Response from a Game Developer
"I think this is a poor decision. Dropping support for the GF4MX series is justifiable (since they're really GF2s), although not the best business decision, but lack of support for GF3/4 is not. Yes there's the ps_1_3 limit in D3D and the NV_register_combiners issue in GL. Yes there's the 96 constant limit.

Both are not difficult to surmount - Cg can generate 'fp20' code which is equivalent to ps_1_3 on GL, and is basically a scripting tool for NV_register_combiners. nVidia even provide code to run that through GL.

The 96 constant limit is mainly an issue with hardware skinning, since bone matrices eat up constants for breakfast. Solutions include splitting the skeleton in half, or having the option to use a lower detail skeleton (which would be a good option for scalability anyway).

Neither of these issues are very hard. Material and skeleton systems should be designed to be scalable anyway. So this is one of 3 things:

1. Laziness
2. Technical snobbery
3. A crushing lack of time

I suspect the latter. But don't pretend this is a good technical decision - not only is this issue very solvable - it's run-of-the-mill. Locking out all the people with GF3/4's is not a good business decision either. Some people in here seem to think the only people who matter are those who are capable of pulling out cards and upgrading them every 2 years. That's very short-sighted, and rather arrogant and elitist - there are LOTs more ordinary PC users who don't do this, and excluding them just accelerates the move away from PC game playing to the simpler technical experience of consoles."

Xbox Yes PC No?
Battlefield Modern Combat is scheduled to be released in the fall of 2005 on the Xbox. Which is nothing more then a port of Battlefield 2 to the Xbox. Since the Xbox's graphic processor is a tweaked version of the GeForce 3 and the Xbox uses DirectX as an API, it is quite clear Battlefield 2 will and can support PS 1.3 and the GeForce 3/4 Ti line. If DICE/EA does not release a BF2 patch at the time of Modern Combat's release to support GeForce 3/4 Ti owners, it will clearly show DICE's development team to be hypocrites.

Update: I stand corrected on the BF2 Modern Combat Xbox port as it is using the RenderWare engine and not the BF2 Refractor 2 engine. The rest of my criticism stands.

Battlefield 2: The Video Card Controversy

As a PC Gamer you expect to upgrade, you expect that at some point your hardware will not run the latest games acceptably. Battlefield 2 does not even give you that option. It attempts to make all non DirectX 9 compatible video cards obsolete. Which means all GeForce 4 and older video cards will not run Battlefield 2. You cannot even start up the menu. Neither Electronic Arts nor the game's developer DICE have any plans to fix this. Even though the GeForce 4 line of video cards has enough horsepower to render the game it is not compatible with Pixel Shader 1.4. Emulation to Pixel Shader 1.3 would easily make the game playable on these cards but redundant texture checks make this difficult to implement.

The response from Electronic Arts on the Issue was:

"We've been talking to Benjamin Smith on the development team about this. There are no plans to implement GeForce 4 support in a patch. The engine was not built to run acceptably (performance or appearance-wise) on the GeForce 4 series of cards."

Then why does it run on slower cards such as the ATi Radeon 8500? The performance of this card is no better then the GeForce 4 line except for the inclusion of Pixel Shader 1.4 support.

Pixel Shader (Defined) - a program used to determine the final surface properties of an object or image that run on a graphics card, executed once for every pixel in a specified 3D mesh. They operate in the context of interactively rendering a 3D scene, usually using either the Direct3D or OpenGL API.

DirectX 8.1 or DirectX 9?
All GeForce 4 cards are DirectX 8.0 compatible and support up to Pixel Shader 1.3. Dice claims only DirectX 9 support but clearly shows support for a DirectX 8.1 video card, the ATi Radeon 8500. The major difference between DirectX 8.1 and 8.0 is Pixel Shader 1.4 support. When ATi introduced Pixel Shader 1.4 back in 2003, nVidia argued against it and failed to add it to the GeForce 4 line. Yet, here they did nothing to argue for support of video cards still capable of running the game? Even more insulting is the nVidia seal of approval on the box: "The Way It's Meant To Be Played" - I'm sure this is reassuring to all the nVidia GeForce 4 card owners who cannot play Battlefield 2.

Pixel Shader 1.3 vs. 1.4
The main difference is that Pixel Shader 1.4 lets graphics chips render up to six textures in a single pass instead of four. This is a performance difference. When Pixel Shader 1.4 is used, the ATi Radeon 8500 would take only one pass to render, as opposed to 2-3 on the GeForce 3/4 graphics chips. The performance argument is lost because in real world situations the GeForce 4 line easily beat out the Radeon 8500. Proving that (performance wise) the GeForce 4 line would be more then capable to run this game.

Other Games
Doom 3 supports at least a 64MB GeForce 3 and Half-Life 2 supports at least a 64MB GeForce 2. These are graphically superior to Battlefield 2 yet support older hardware. These are forward thinking developers who understand PC Gamers and the upgrade cycle. Valve's Half-Life 2 survey clearly shows over 20% of PC Gamers would not be able to run Battlefield 2. Where are the similar statistics from Electronic Arts or DICE?

PC Gamers expect older cards to run slower and at lower detail levels with newer titles. They clearly understand newer video cards will make games look and run better. But this is not the point. When games support older but capable hardware it gives the PC Gamer an incentive to upgrade because they can see the difference with their own eyes. That decision however should be up to the game buyer to make; it should not be forced upon them by the developer. No matter how innocent the developers intentions turn out to be, this comes off as a way to try and sell more video cards for nVidia.

Hacking
If you can't count on the game developers, you can count on the community. Some faithful programmers have created a work in progress shader modification that gets the older cards to work. Download it and give it a try but remember this is far from finished and currently looks poor because all the shaders have not been converted yet. But it does give owners of "obsolete" video cards some hope.

Why the Xbox is for Suckers

I've been playing Video Games since the golden age, Atari 2600, Commodore 64 and of course the original Nintendo. At some point I've played every mainstream system. Including oddities like the Magnavox Odyssey 2, Collecovision, Atari Lynx (light years ahead of the Gameboy) and the TurboGraphx 16. With each successful generation I've evaluated and purchased what I considered to be the best and most versatile system. I'm not one to buy two or three of the mainstream gaming systems since I consider this a waste of money and completely unnecessary. A good gaming PC and one solid pure gaming console will satisfy just about everyone's gaming needs. Since each has it's advantages and disadvantages depending on the type and genre of game being played. The hybrid PC/Gaming console (Xbox) has managed to sucker in those who do not know any better.

Power vs. Price:
The argument about the power of gaming consoles to PCs by price is true on the initial release year of said console. If you have been following consoles and there roughly 5-6 year cycle per generation, you will see how quickly PCs have been able to eclipse the mightiest of them. Either way I am not denying this. Consoles have their place and I understand this and have owned one each generation. Just don't kid yourself on power; future proofing is a marketing gimmick. PC power will surpass any console within the first to second year of their release. Now looking at the specifications of all the new consoles (Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo) they ALL look to be powerful and feature filled. Specifications aside, the titles in the end will determine any consoles success. The wise decision would be to wait until you can evaluate the titles for each system instead of impulse buying based on something like a tri-level CPU core design and hoping the games takes advantage of it.

Controllers:
Nintendo introduced the first decent console controller with the NES. Sega included a solid one with the Genesis and Nintendo made an even better one with the SNES. The true breakthrough came with Sony's original Playstation controller, a design so successful that its dual shock hybrid only under went minor changes (pressure sensitive buttons) to carry on with the PS2. The Xbox however initially introduced a monstrous controller with horrendous button placement. Somehow systems were sold like this? Did anyone test this before buying the Xbox? Did even Microsoft spend more then $50 on controller design? The Xbox 360's controller looks to rectify that original bad decision by including a better-sized design with a slightly better layout. Regardless it doesn't look to hold a candle to Sony's comfortable design that has been upgraded to an even sleeker sexier one with the PS3. Sony out of the big 3 is the only one to, in my opinion, keep the more logical layout of D-pad and analog controllers, positioning the D-pad level with the main buttons and both analog controllers below them.

And the point of this is? Simple the original Playstation controller was the single biggest reason I purchased a PS1 after owning my SNES. (Well that and Sega's history of dumping console support midstream.) The moral is to test all the consoles controllers before making a decision.



Why I will never buy an Xbox:
To understand why, you have to understand what the Xbox is:

The Xbox is nothing more then a glorified PC running a proprietary Microsoft Operating System with proprietary PC game titles.

Games that for no other reason then some coding routines or copy protection could run easily on the PC. Especially since they are already! As if this was not insult enough Microsoft has the audacity to charge you a monthly subscription (Xbox Live) to play multiplayer games over your broadband connection you already pay for? Yet the same PC game title running on your PC would be free to play multiplayer. Do you see the problem here? Since the Xbox is a PC why can it not play PC titles and visa-versa? Why are you being charged extra for multiplayer features of a title that if run on a PC would be free? Why? Because Microsoft thinks you are suckers.

Update: The Xbox 360 looks to introduce a new feature parents need to take notice to. Xbox Live will include a Live "Marketplace" that will let players purchase add-ons to games such as new levels. Updates and new levels to games on a PC are downloaded free of charge. You can also purchase Demos? Please, how much of a sucker are you to pay directly just for game Demos? Demos are free to download on a PC I might add. Hum, so now little Johnny will be able to run his parents credit card up with payments added conveniently to the Xbox live monthly bill no doubt. I don't think so, sucker someone else Microsoft.