inCrysis and NVIDIA are pleased to give you the opportunity to chat with Cevat Yerli, CEO of Crytek and Roy Taylor, Vice President of Content Relations at NVIDIA. Cevat and Roy will be taking questions for a whole hour on the 15th of November starting at 4pm PST (12am 16th November GMT).

UPDATE: Transcript added. Answers to SSE4 support, GPU physics and more. First patch in 7-14 days!

The Q&A chat will be held on IRC again. You'll either need an IRC client (mIRC is good) or use our web-browser version. For those using a client, connect to "irc.gamesurge.net" and join #inCrysis, or just click here to join the channel.

So start thinking up some good questions - related to both Crysis and GPU/hardware. We look forward to seeing you there!

The transcript

2007.11.15

irc://irc.gamesurge.net/incrysis
http://www.steppingstonesmod.com/pjirc/index.php

matthew: Hi everyone and welcome to Q&A chat. Today, inCrysis and NVIDIA are pleased to welcome Roy Taylor, Vice President of Content Relations at NVIDIA. Cevat Yerli, CEO of Crytek will be arriving shortly. Cevat and Roy are taking questions for the next hour!

AyeAye: I have a question for Roy, can we expect to see more performance gains in Crysis with releases of new drivers?

NVIDIA_Roy: Yes, we definitely can. Performance will improve, almost with every single driver drop and patch of the game. Literally every day and week we keep working on the drivers we can see improvements. There are many reasons for this, but it's important to remember that Crysis contains a million lines of code and 1GB of texture data and 85000 shaders. Even though it's a game it's a complex product and worthy of respect as a sophisticated software product.

M_A_X: Why have many been experiencing better performance with Crysis under XP than in Vista?

NVIDIA_Roy: Simply put - DX10 can do two tasks: 1, is reproduce existing effects more simply, 2 produce more sophisticated effects. DX10 is complex, new and we are at the beginning of our learning curve with it. Please remember that it took 2 years from the introduction of DX9 to the first game, Far Cry by the way. It's been just 1 year since DX10 was introduced. So, as we get more familiar with it we will see both performance increases and better and deeper use of features. Right now we are pleased that people are noticing the DX10 improvements.

Luigi: Roy: When will we start seeing the new top-of-the-line hardware to replace the 8800 Ultra and GTX?

NVIDIA_Roy: Well you are going to hate this but of course I am going to say that we can't comment on unannounced products (sorry). But I can say that we absolutely are not resting on our laurels and all of our engineers are working hard on an exciting future roadmap for you.

Stinger35: How easy is the Crysis engine to work with when working to improve the new drivers?

NVIDIA_Roy: CryEngine 2 is fantastic, it represents the apex right now of PC gaming engines and it's VERY scaleable. Cevat has promised me that he will keep stretching our GPU's for some time to come.

But to answer the question directly... our engineers have found the engine to be well designed and structured and so working with the Crytek team on the engineers has been a relatively straight forward task. As straight forward as an engine of this complexity can be, that is.

matthew: Hey guys, we have Cevat on the phone - his answers are being relayed through BrianNV.

cw: Why is it that 'Very High' features can be enabled in DX9 through a 'hack' of sorts, yet are unavailable normally?

Cevat: The game was in the earliest days before we could ship DX10 hardware obviously developed around DX9. So, during the development process some of the DX10 effects were simulated in DX9. So what some users are seeing is some of the material used to develop the DX10 effects but these are NOT DX10. Only by running the game in Vista and using the DX10 API can you get the true maximum experience and of course we have no guarantees for the game's stability if it's hacked.

cw: There has been some confusion about whether the shaders used in the 'jungle fight' comparison video are the same shaders Crysis retail is running, was that level rendering a whole island while being played? And were the 'advanced' shaders to be released at a later date?

Cevat: The original demo was constructed using DX10, and although we have greatly improved the shaders thru the development process, yes it's basically the same in the final version.

cw: So the visual effects we saw in that particular demo are possible with the release shaders?

Cevat: We assume that you mean the scene with the gattling gun? Yes, everything that was there is in the game, how you enjoy it and experience it is up to you!

Robersdee: The Single Player Portion of the game (without saying too much) ends rather abruptly, originally was it planned to carry on at that point but cut due to time constraints?

Cevat: The game is designed as a trilogy, so you have two more installments to come and the ending is planned deliberately. But I cannot answer any more questions here please as we want to keep some surprises for you all.

Jonoman39: I would really like Cevat to answer the question regarding if Crysis supports SSE4 instructions, as that is the primary feature in Intel's new Penryn CPUs. And will there be a performance increase? Thanks!

Cevat: The game doesn't currently support SSE4 but it will do so in a future patch.

Ap0C: Is Crytek's priority to get full SLI support, or are they working on getting support for ALL multi-GPU setups?

Cevat: Right now the priority is SLI but we will support other solutions too in the future.

MadBoris: Where does the specific GPU bottleneck reside? When it's obviously not fillrate due to high resolutions, where is the next bottleneck? Is it shaders? Or is it mainly geometry and fillrate?

Cevat & NVIDIA_Roy: The game is designed to be balanced between the CPU and the GPU almost equally. If one or the other are out of kilter then it will create a bottleneck. The game really uses all you have!

geekboi: Msg to Roy: Who is paying the phonebill?

NVIDIA_Roy: LOL, Cevat and me both, the calls are on mobiles.

warfjm: When can we expect the first patch to release?

Cevat: We are collecting up all the user feedback now and planning patches that will address as much as possible as fast as possible. The first patch will be out in 7-14 days.

Q: Can you shed any light why Crysis was released early? It was available in some countries up to 5 days earlier than this.

Cevat: In a perfect world we would like to see everyone get it at exactly the same moment but distributing hundreds of thousands of copies of the game worldwide is just a logistics challenge that will never be perfectly solved.

Johnson: So I was on google after looking at the Far Cry game credits and Cevat thanking his girl friend, I search her name, I find a site using it, load it, it suddenly loads massive malware and crashes my system, takes me days to clean up... anyhow is he married yet, or is he still dating or what?

Cevat: I am single but have the most wonderful girlfriend on earth and I can't answer about your googling habits!

Fenrir: With the advent of multi-core processors with over 16 cores in the future, will real-time raytracing ever be implemented into the CryEngine 2 or future iterations?

Cevat: As for future products, I could tell you our plans but would then have to kill you all before you revealed them!

Johnson: Why was quad not used in the final build of the game, and when can we expect to see it utilized in the game?

Cevat: The game does use quad-core but you won't see the benefit without a good GPU.

Q: Cevat, what advice would you give for gamers wanting to get into game development?

Cevat: Good question, my advice is to start with maps and mods. If you have talent then this will show and people will see. It's a great way to get noticed and respected and the entry time/costs/issues involved are relatively low.

Q: What do you think about all the random posts made in the forums at inCrysis?

Cevat: The response has really touched myself and the team here, I am so pleased at how well the game has been recieved and I am very proud of what the team here has achieved. We do read the forums and it means a lot to see how people are enjoying the game so much - thank you.

geekboi: Why the name Nomad? Nomad is Damon "from behind", but did you have anything special in mind when creating the name behind the great "hero"?

Cevat: We wanted to have a name that was unusual and untypical. We also wanted something a little anonymous. Nomad just felt right.

matthew: Roy, could you please pass our congratulations through to Cevat from the entire inCrysis community for making such a killer game!

Cevat: Thanks guys, thats really great, it means a lot, more than you can know. These kind of comments and feedback keep myself and the team going and really motivate us to do more for you. Thank you guys, thanks very much indeed.

matthew: Cevat leaves us now as it's 2am where he is now!

matthew: Roy from NVIDIA will be staying here to answer a few more questions for us.

NVIDIA_Roy: OK, Cevat has left the building! (Elvis style) so it's just myself.

killuah: Crysis uses a developed physics system. There are attempts to calculate physics systems with the GPU. Are Crytek and NVIDIA going that way?

NVIDIA_Roy: Let me answer generally and then specifically.

Generally we believe that the GPU can stand by itself as a powerful processor more than capable of accelerating advanced physics for today's and future games. The GPU lends itself well to scaleable, violent or destructable physics. What we need is an industry standard API that developers and the community can get behind, that isn't proprietary. Ideally the developer can then select the GPU or other processor as they see fit. We don't have one today, and this is something we are looking into.

Specifically, with regard to CryEngine 2, we are in discussions with the team about this but can't add more right now.

Neoeyal: On which graphic card was Crysis developed, 8800 Ultra or 8800 GTX and triple SLI or dual?

NVIDIA_Roy: All of them! As part of the support for the team we armed them with every GPU we have and with every option we have. If we make it then Crytek has it! Seriously, they want to develop at different levels so they don't only use the most powerful GPUs available.

Jonathan: Why are some users getting slower performance in Crysis 64-bit mode than in 32-bit mode? Could any of that come from their drivers?

NVIDIA_Roy: 64-bit Windows has some memory advantages so we would expect better performance, generally with this version. We support 32-bit and 64-bit for all of our Vista drivers and have from the get go. But not all vendors are equally aggressive for both and this may effect some users.

matthew: Why should people use NVIDIA for playing Crysis?

NVIDIA_Roy: 1. Because the DX10 features and effects were designed using GeForce, they were specifically put in the game with GeForce users in mind.

2. Those effects run faster on GeForce so spec, $ for $ your $ are going to get a better return on your investment using GeForce.

3. If you want to scale up to SLI, the game supports SLI scaling right out of the box.

4. NVIDIA SLI motherboards and NVIDIA motherboard chipsets are the best and fastest for the game (and in general too).

5. Our game testing is the most advanced in the world, so Crysis is going to be stable on our hardware too.

matthew: Thanks Roy for answering these questions from the community. Your time and insight is hugely appreciated!

matthew: A big thank-you to all that attended. We apologise if your question wasn’t put forward.

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