Published in Graphics

Industry loves TWIMTBP says Nvidia

by on16 October 2007

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Part two:
more than 400 games and exciting effects DX10 games in 2008


We promised you the second part of an interview with Nvidia’s Vice president for Content Relations, Roy Taylor, and in case you missed part one, you can read it here

Fudzilla
: Is Nvidia happy with the developers/publishers attention that TWIMTBP has generated?


Roy Taylor - Nvidia:
Absolutely! We’re extremely proud of the fact that more than 400 games have participated in the program since its inception six years ago. This is a huge endorsement for the program and a testament to the hard work of our engineering and software team. The reaction from the gaming industry to TWIMTBP is wonderful. They see it as having been instrumental in moving the PC platform forward as the leading platform for video gaming.

Fudzilla:
What does Nvidia expect from games in 2008?

Roy Taylor - Nvidia:
We expect that the promise of DirectX 10 will begin to be more fully realized in 2008. In 2007, we have just begun to see what’s possible with the new API.  In fact until now we have seen DX 10 applied mostly as ‘post processing’ effects. Next year we will see the first games designed for DX 10 only, and these benefit hugely from being the best they can be. Having to scale a game backwards for older hardware and APIs is the biggest barrier to delivering the best possible PC gaming experience.

Next year we will see not just better graphics but graphics incorporated into the game play in a much deeper way. This is exciting. More than that we will also see graphics used to improve genres which so far have had to make do with rudimentary, older style 3D. So in 2008 we can expect to see MMOG’s in DX10, and we will see further effects in RTS and RPG games, and toward the end of 2008 there will be more genre blending. It’s going to be an exciting year.

Fudzilla:
What does Nvidia want to achieve with TWIMTBP in the future?

Roy Taylor - Nvidia:
We have great ambitions for the future. First of all, we want to see artists and story tellers have greater freedom to express themselves with fewer constraints. Some publishers want games to scale back to support legacy integrated graphics, which is hindering progress. With the installed base of GeForce users becoming so large we are starting to achieve this.

Second, we plan to work harder on developing features that gamers, journalists and publishers can relate to.
HDR+AA doesn’t mean much to most people, but simulated lights rays do.  So we are working on producing effects for our SDK and DirectX 10 that people can more easily understand and which will be desired for future games.

Third, we plan to keep investing in our tools to make it easier to implement those effects and then tune them for maximum performance. Our tools are in many ways our not so secret weapons. They are very powerful and have done much to allow us to get DX
10 content to market so much faster than in previous generations.

Last, we want gamers to be able to see the TWIMTBP logo and recognize is as a badge of excellence for PC games. The program has evolved from “This means the game works and plays best with GeForce,” to “This game will reward you for your GeForce purchase with a superior gaming experience.” Making that a reality is our greatest on-going ambition.

We would like to thank Roy Taylor and Ken Brown for the opportunity.



Last modified on 19 October 2007
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