NVIDIA Introduces AndroidWorks For Android Game Developers

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• lamebot - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link

  " it is not limited to being used on NVIDIA devices."
  I bet it runs a lot better on Nvidia devices though. This is GameWorks after all;)

• ZeDestructor - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link

  So standard optimized code. Good to know. I mean, REALLY good to know that optimised code works better on the platform it was optimized for.
  
  /rant

• xthetenth - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link

  Standard optimized code generally isn't optimized to stress comparative weaknesses in competitors.

• testbug00 - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link

  I suspect not. they have a sub 1% marketshare last time I checked for their modern GPUs on their SoCs.
  
  Expect it to at least run decently on PowerVR and Adreno. Possibly Mali and the other two architectures that have 10%+ GPU marketshare whose names I forget.
  
  NVidia has no reason to cripple other companies SoCs. They themselves have practically no competitive final products, and, after the disaster of trying to push phones/tablets/etc having Tegra inside, I don't think they'll bet on that.
  
  This should hopefully be what Gameworks on the PC needs to be. Free to use/pay small licensing fee + runs well, adds cool effects. Please note Nvidia pays companies who use Gameworks in direct or rounda-bound ways.

• D. Lister - Saturday, May 30, 2015 - link

  "Please note Nvidia pays companies who use Gameworks in direct or rounda-bound ways."
  
  Of course, I mean they would have to, amiright? Otherwise what other incentive would developers have, that is, besides the tech support from a graphics technology leader, and access to their tools, which would allow the developer to add some bells and whistles to their product for free. /:|
  
  If only the AMD guys were evil enough to do something like this they wouldn't be getting destroyed in the stock market. That's AMD's problem: they're just too damn nice to survive in this evil world. Where monsters like Intel and Nvidia roam free, enticing customers with features they developed themselves. The sheer AUDACITY of it! lol.

• testbug00 - Saturday, May 30, 2015 - link

  Almost every single Gameworks or Nvidia sponsored game appears to have lots of things that just randomly happen to run badly on everything for the image quality increase. More on AMD's card, but, even more on NVidia's.
  
  Notice how the Titles that NVidia bundles are all Gamework's titles... "So, you put in Gameworks, we help you code it and other stuff (saving some money by helping with coding) and than we buy as many copies of the game as cards we sell" which certainly increases sales.
  
  And, even coding in a game, something Nvidia has said they've done in multiple games, is saving the developer money, or, allowing them to spend that money on more stuff. Effectively, saving the developer money.
  
  AMD has done similar things, but, the technologies they add in typically are minor performance hits (TressFX) or something that the developers really want and that pushes the game industry forwards (Mantle).
  
  And, of course, AMD does need to and should work on it's developer relations for making sure code runs fine in their game, they are behind NVidia. Thankfully, AMD has opened near all of it's GCN architecture, with a ton of information of how to code with it. NVidia *had* that, and, now, if you want that, it's typically only under NDA, or impossible to access. So, if you want to make sure your code runs well on NVidia's architectures, you better be willing to sign an NDA, or late NVidia write the code and trust it works okay on other architectures also.

• ET - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link

  TressFX didn't work well on NVIDIA cards initially, but AMD fixed that, and the current version of TressFX is open source.

• gamerk2 - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link

  And no one uses it, because TressFX is simply too limited compared to PhysX, or even Hairworks.
  
  NVIDIA put together an excellent development kit, and AMD has nothing to counter with. That, combined with NVIDIAs 80% market share on Desktop, is why AMD finds itself with tech that no one uses.

• testbug00 - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link

  Nvidia's desktop share is under 60%. Their laptop share is well over 80% I would guess, however.
  
  Total marketshare is under 70% for sure currently.
  
  Their current sales are 75-80% of the market. Give that 3-5 years and they'll have that 75-80% marketshare.

• testbug00 - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link

  er, AMD released TressFX code and Nvidia optimized for it ;)