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Creative Pressures id Software With Patents
Cryect writes "Earlier today it was announced by Creative that they would be adding in EAX 3D sound support to Doom 3, and that they had come to an 'agreement relating to Creative's patented shadowing technique [also known as Carmack's Reverse in some coding circles] and id's cutting-edge 3D graphics DOOM 3 engine.' This seemed somewhat suspicious, almost as if id was being pressured, and a quick email to John Carmack from Reverend @ Beyond3d got this reply: 'The patent situation well and truly sucks... It was tempting to take a stand and say that our products were never going to use any advanced Creative/3DLabs products because of their position on patenting gaming software algorithms, but that would only have hurt the users...' There's also some possible prior art [PPT link] to Creative Labs' patent, from a 1999 talk by Nvidia's Sim Dietrich."
It's called market dominance - AKA: a Monopoly. While Creative's hold over the market is as strong as Microsoft's, the truth is that they have a lot of power in the industry. Think of them as Nvidia pre-ATI dominance.
Seems like creative makes a practice outta this. http://us.creative.com/corporate/investor/releases .asp?pid=6197
Creative Technology Ltd. (NASDAQ: CREAF), and wholly-owned subsidiary EMU, today announced a mixed jury verdict in the case against Aureal Semiconductor.
I would just put a little bit of code to detect if a Creative card was installed, and if so, maybe cap the FPS at 10 or so. And also provide a splash screen that explains in tech-jargon "Doom 3 is not optimized for Creative products. Please try a Hercules or Santa Cruz Card." That could signifigantly hurt Creative's business.
This is a perfect example of why I really hate software patents. Company X will talk about something, hype it up, not mention a bloody patent, then when someone uses it, the company waits around until the opportune moment, then BAM!!!! pulls some patent infringment BS out of their bum.
It is not right. I understand the importance of patents outside of the software industry, I really do. I think that if someone comes up with a clever idea and makes a prototype and intends to sell said object, then they should have a grace period of how long they can be the only ones. I'm up for debate on how long this period should be, but still. In software this just does not happen. You have these companies that are entirely setup with a bunch of patents and they just sue other companies to make money. Talk about shaddy business.
Patent a way to click a button, or how a shadow is rendered, or something just as rediculous is wrong and should not be possible. It hurts the industry more then it helps anyone. It will be aweful to see the rest of the world pass us by because we are unable to innovate because of all the legal mess we have. We have no one to blame but ourselves though.
I hope all of this mess does not affect Doom 3 release date, and it is almost a shame ID did not stick it to Creative. It is nice to see a company care about the user for once to though.
Brendan
And the reason no games are released on time is that I hold the worldwide patent to releasing games on time.
How long after the game is released before a WAD is released that replaces the monsters with Creative execs?
"The DOOM 3 engine ushers in a new rendering paradigm that allows id and our licensees to bring cinema quality visuals to game players in real time," said Todd Hollenshead, CEO of id Software. "We look forward to further enhancing players' audio experience by working with Creative to leverage their EAX ADVANCED HD audio technology in the DOOM 3 engine."
"Working together with id Software, an industry icon, provides Creative with an exciting opportunity to enhance one of the hottest game engines around," said Hock Leow, CTO of Creative Technology. "We look forward to the challenge of implementing EAX ADVANCED HD Multi-Environment technology within the Doom 3 engine, and subsequently working with id to make these enhancements available to their licensees. We are also pleased with the agreement relating to Creative's patented shadowing technique and id's cutting-edge 3D graphics DOOM 3 engine."
Hmm, this press release seems rather pleasant in tone. I don't get the impression that they were coerced into anything. When I check id's website though I don't find the press release on the front page, nor do I see Creative listed in their "Friends of id" section. Perhaps they are just a bit behind on updating their website while working to release Doom 3 on time?
and i quote from PC Gamer:
(pg.79) Sept. 2004
"(8) Is it true that Doom 3's audio engine is entirely CPU-dependent, thus negating the benefits of high-end sound cards? If so, what are the benefits? What are the drawbacks?
[bla, bla, bla]
PC Gamer's take: Much to Creative Labs' chagrin, Doom 3 should sound exactly the same (and perform equally well) on your motherboard's built-in audio processor as it will on a high-end Audigy 2 ZS sound card."
so much for that!
You know. Considering the amount of new crap i have to buy to play this game in the first place, what's another fifty bucks on a new soundcard?
$50 and a chance to tell Creative to go fuck themselves? Sign me up!
Sadly, if Mr. Carmack won't take a stand against evil software patents, I doubt anybody will, or will at least do so successfully.
Think about it. John Carmack has influence and money. People will continue to buy the games id makes, whether or not they use this patented technology. Sure, they might be slightly slower, but considering all the other optimizations id is famous for, it's unlikely anybody would notice.
If a free software project wanted to challenge a patent like this, it wouldn't stand a chance. With no money, it couldn't defend itself. From the other side, the companies that have more power than id simply don't care to take a stand on issues like this.
I can't help but feel that Mr. Carmack wimped out of this fight. Saying that it hurts gameply is just an easy out. Would people really have noticed?
Maybe it's not too late. Maybe if enough people speak up about this, either id will decide to reverse their decision, or Creative will back down and make their patent available royalty-free.
hmm the legal way of emulating a mob..
We have the patent, put us into the engine or we sue for the other patent.
Dont worry that US will be left behind - soon the rest of the world will also have the same stupid patent and DMCA-style laws that will stifle innovation and maybe seriously harm free software.
This because of different trade agreements where the US is a part (NAFTA, WTO, etc). (using trade as leverage). And also thanks to big companies doing massive lobbying for these kind of laws. We really dont have a good democracy anywhere in the world, since it is money = power.
I recommend everyone to see this movie:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379225/
Hmm, this press release seems rather pleasant in tone.
Is a press release ever NOT pleasant in tone? Of course it's pleasant; if id is being legally pursued by Creative they wouldn't print a press release saying, "Creative can blow." That kind of talk is saved for plan files, not press releases.
Prior art from a talk on the technique
Reply Quoting This MessageEdit Message SimmerD Member since: 1/5/2003
Posted - 9/21/2003 6:50:03 PM
Don't worry about it fellas. I described this technique publicly a few months before they filed the patent - hence Prior Art. Ironically, it was at a Creative Labs developer's forum.
During my stencil buffer talk, I described doing shadow volumes the 'reverse' way. At the time, I didn't realize the major reason why the z fail method is better than the z pass method, although I did realize they were logically equivalent, which is why it's now known as 'Carmack's Reverse' and not 'Dietrich's Reverse'!
- sigs are for wimps.
Companies that hang on to valuable IP just to make money off of infringing companies don't just exist in the software world. They exist in all industries and what they do is completely legal. I once had it explained to me in a way that made it seem ethically sound! Now, I don't see the distinction. Why is this practice abhorrent in software but fine elsewhere?
"I've got to stop masturbating! It makes me too lazy! Stop it, Albert. Stop it." -- Albert Einstein
They thought they could make a good show by pretending their technology helped Doom3, even though the technology didnt really came from them ... but came from independent invention.
... they probably thought that everyone would agree with them, but then suits tend to be morons about stuff like that. What a PR blunder, they should have kept their mouths shut about their little blackmail campaign.
... now they are claiming rights to what they didnt even invent first, and are still morally bankrupt.
... just revoke the patent and apologize, you fucked JC man! What the fuck were you thinking?
To suits independent invention falling under patents is a perfectly natural and just thing
Sim Dietrich's prior art will especially bite them in the ass here, while without it they might at least have been legally in the clear and morally bankrupt
If anyone from Creative Labs is reading this, dont try to safe face
they don't put out games, but the've pwned the soundcard market well over a decade you moron.
I seriously think that software patents need some sort of statute of limitation placed upon them. It looks like in some parts of the world, this exists! In China, the statute of limitation for patent infringement is:
2 years from the date on which the patentee or any interested party obtains or should have obtained knowledge of the infringing act
If this were in force in the USA, then the Unisys GIF debacle (and countless others) could have been avoided.
Unisys KNEW that GIFs were ALL OVER the web, for years, and they didn't attempt to enforce their patent. They'd have to have been in a hole, to not notice. Therefore, a statute of limitations would have prevented them from allowing the world to become addicted to GIFs before springing their trap.
Visit the Game Programming Wiki!
id Software has faithfully released the full source code to each of their titles once the game is a couple generations old.
I wonder if this will affect the release of the Doom 3 source a few years from now? Can patented code be released under the GPL?
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
-truth
I had a steady B+ in my AI class until I failed the Turing test...
"would only have hurt the users..."
...
/. croud, but I hear you John. My next rig will have no Creative products in it.
Creatives drivers for SB (Live or whatever) always caused only headache on multiprocessor machines. I realized how limited (and poorly writen) their drivers are after switched to kX drivers. Now marketing dep @ creative reached total lows
I dunno about rest of the
They tend to be pretty substantial too. The extra barrier to entry patents represent are not really relevant to us normal folks without a billion to invest. It is all well over the horizon.
To get into software commercially takes the same kind of money as starting a small company though, and non commercially all it takes is some of your time (open source). So here people see patents for what they are, a royal pain in the ass.
Does slashdot have a patent on "a method of buring the retinas of web site viewers with godawful color schemes"?
This color scheme is worse than the IT section's!
The best way to fight this would be to support the game through sales, but don't buy Creative's hardware. There are other sound card vendors out there inclucing nVidia's nForce and Turtle Beach, so Creative isn't the only option. The more people that buy the other sound cards, more games will support specifications and not vendors. The same rule applies to video cards. If one game company likes to put a "way it's meant to be played" clip in each one of their games, don't buy the game. Support other game companies that write for any card and not one specific company. I await my Score 0 now.
Yeah. They're the good guys.
The EAX environmental audio is lame compared to the Aureal environmental audio. So naturally the worst standard won in the marketplace and the best standard was purchased and buried.
Creative Labs sucks. Their sound cards have stability problems and EAX buring Aureal really pisses me off.
Todays question is -- How Important is Creative?
/. is intense it is also generally short lived. But ditching creative products is not a difficult proposition. And ever since I heard about how they bragged that they could keep costs down by holding back innovation (this was back in the aureal days) I've always kinda thought they were a bunch of dickheads.
My own take: Not very. They're about the only game in town when it comes to fancy-pants gaming sound cards. The thing is that a fancy pants gaming soundcard is not very important to me. Don't get me wrong I'm a pretty big gamer, but who really wants a computer desk coverd with a dozen speakers and the attendant wires? I haven't had a creative soundcard since the early soundblaster days. Creative products apart from soundcards? They just re-badge other people's stuff. I'd consider the RIO mp-3 players, but rio isn't creative anymore, right? I haven't had anything from creative in years, and I haven't missed it. Even as a computer gamer. The $20-$30 econo soundboard has been fine for me for as long as I can remember. I think my 486 might have had a creative board. Maybe.
What do you guys think? When you're putting together a setup what do you think about when it comes to soundboards? Do you have to have the best one? How much do you usually spend? Do you really love the 3d sound? Have you GOTTA have the latest pimptastic creative soundboard for like $250? Some people need super awsome soundboards because they make computer music, but then the creative boards aren't the ones you want anyway, right?
While the fury of
The irony in a company named Creative holding a software patent from which they have never created anything is just amazing.
e ldona.htm
Anyhow, there is precedent for this type of stupidity. Believe it or not the American car manufacturers at one time paid a patent holding company for every car they sold. Ford challenged the patent and the court ordered the holding company to build the car for which they held the patent on. Needless to say the car was a dismal failure and the patent was overturned in 1911.
http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aacarss
burnin
I think you might be confusing your agenda with John Carmack's. I'm not saying you're wrong or that I disagree with you, but you make it sound like because he didn't make fight your battle for you that he may have done something wrong. I don't think people have an obligation, social or otherwise, to do this.
Mike Scanlon
I find it funny that it was the first doom that
they said they would never use someone else's
code (sound in this case) because it screwed up
their source release
while they are not using someone else's code
this time (just a patent thing), the conviction
seems to be gone a little bit
I have owned SB Sound cards and only SB Sound Cards back since my first SB Pro and have only used SB cards in every machine I have ever specced or built for anyone. I even used Creative graphics cards a bit as they were reasonably priced and from a brand I knew.
Oh well there goes another vendor onto my bastards list. Never buying another creative product again. (Shame too as I had about £400 to spend on a new card for a machine to put vinyl onto CD)
In "Masters of Doom" Carmack stated, either naively or bravely, that he refuses to file patents for his work as such information should not be locked away but should be free.
Now that he's been burned, I wonder if he'll start filing them as preemptive measures. I hate software patents, but I would if I were him.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Although I could have done without Derek Smart spouting off. Claiming that .gif is dead is like him claiming that he is a phd.....
New for nerds, from the future.
Carmack usually allows access to the source code of his games after their markets have dried up. I wonder how this patent will effect that? Time will tell.
Man, it'd suck spending years writing a game engine from scratch, then having some numb-nut lawyer tell me that someone else owns a part of it.
And I am a numb-nut lawyer!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
- The legal system biases "justice" toward those with money more than those with creative skills.
- Patents depend on the legal system.
Ergo those with creative skills are deprived of the money needed to pursue, not only their rights to more money, but are deprived of the money needed to pursue creations that require money (since the people expert at acquiring money rarely possess the insight necessary to understand the distinction between genuinely creative enterprise and some sort of false inspiration).W. D. Hamilton wrote of this sort of thing as being the down-fall of civilizations:
Seastead this.
Could this be an attempt to stay competitive now that Intel's High Definition Audio is coming?
With this advanced audio appearing on most of Intel's new boards, it would seem to me that Creative's market is disappearing.
Shadowing is just the start, taken to it's logical conclusion patents are going to be filed covering every aspect of a game - from it's graphics through to it's gameplay and UI.
In the end an independent developer is going to be unable to work without spending more money on lawyers and licenses than on creating the game itself. The horror...the horror...
$2B OR NOT $2B = $FF
their products are shoddy and their performance poor. EAX has always been a DOG of a performer and truly hoses simple echo sounding.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
What is company in this day and age to do when faced with a much smaller competitor who with superior technology to their own. Go back to the drawing board and design better products for your customers? Perhaps reduce your prices or launch an advertising campaign? No, the answer is of course to sue them.
This is exactly what Creative did to Aureal. A3D 3.0 was to be a revolution in positional audio. Creative knew they were a threat and also knew that they did not have the means to survive a drawn out legal battle. They also put pressure on soundcard makers not to produce Vortex 2 cards under the suggestion that they might be liable for patent infrigement (does all of this sound familiar?). After Aureal's demise Creative bought their IP and now A3D 3.0 lies dormant in Craptive's vaults and will never see the light of day, instead we're left with the glorified reverb engine that is EAX.
So these latest shenanigans by Craptive don't surprise me one bit.
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
...and it is almost a shame ID did not stick it to Creative...
Have to agree, I would love to see iD remove support for Creative soundcards, or at least offer enhanced sound support for any other brand. Maybe then the asshats over at CL will see what happens when you bite the hand that feeds.
I wonder which boardroom genius decided to threaten the company behind the most eagerly awaited game of all time, when game players are one of the biggest buyers of your products. Fuck Creative; I was looking to buy a new Audigy card this month, absolutely no chance now, I'm looking elsewhere...
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
You buy a sblive because it has things like EAX (or EAX platinum extra pro), wtf is going on?
I hate Creative as a company. A few years back it decided not to host any drivers or software on its US servers. It stated, believe it or not, that in fairness to those without broadband access, it was better to charge EVERYONE to buy and mail CDs with the latest drivers.
That ploy didn't work as everyone simply used servers in Europe or Asia to download the drivers and software.
But still to this day you need the original driver off the CD that came with your hardware. If you try to use the latest downloaded drivers, they'll tell you that there is no Creative hardware installed.
What purpose does this serve? I've bought the hardware, they have my money, why be stingy with the drivers? Every other hardware manufacture lets me simply use the latest drivers WITHOUT installing the old drivers first.
Why do I still use Creative's audio cards? Normalization. It's a feature buried in Creative's EAX, but it makes all MP3s (actually all sound files) the same volume. Thus, every computer in my house has a Creative card in it so I can access my MP3 collection from any where in the house.
Does any other sound card maker have a feature similar to Creative's normalization? Or did Creative patent that too?
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
I think Doom 3 is going to drive many many pc upgrades. If I were in a vindictive mood (which I obviously am right now), I would leave creative completely out of the game- no support at all, ever. Everyone would suffer, but I think in this case creative would suffer the most.
I wish that id HAD taken a stand. They said that they didn't want to hurt gamers and the industry, but to me, this seems to hurt more. This helps establish that what Creative did was okay as it worked out for them. If id had refused to use their patent, then Creative gains nothing from it, and might be discouraged from trying this BS tactic in the future.
WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?
(Smash amp, burn guitar, take home the groupies)
Hell, nevermind what A3D 3.0 might or might not have been, A3D 2.0 was lightyears better than anything up to and including Creative's current product line... in 1999. If the driver situation weren't so abysmal right now, I'd still be using my Diamond MX300. (And why is the driver situation abysmal? Oh right, because Creative bought Aureal's assets and then promptly buried the source code in the deepest vault they could find.)
System Shock 2 on the MX300, with good headphones and the lights turned down, was probably the single most terrifying experience of my life.
"Creative" may be the single most inappropriately named company in history.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
Back in the middle of 1998, Creative had just released a "revolutionary" new sound card called the SoundBlaster Live! I remember I was heading off to college and wanted to built a computer that had only PCI slots with no ISA whatsoever. I ended up buying a dual processor slot 1 motherboard from Supermicro with on-board ultra2-wide scsi. The sound card I picked was the Live! for its PCI connectivity. To be honest, life was hell for me when it came to the Live! drivers. They could no run in a dual-processor environment like NT and the Win9x series didn't use my second processor. When I got an early copy of Win2k, life continued to be marred with constant driver related crashes on top of the usual Windows crashes. It took Creative months to release a real driver that was stable. Even today, 6 years later, that dual processor system is serving as my print, DNS, SMTP/POP, DHCP box but with the standard WinXP Live! driver with no creative specific add-on. Creative sucks and I have boycott them from any new equipment purchases since 1998. Recently, I bought a Audiotrak Prodigy 7.1 which is a great audiophile card that can output bit-perfect CD-Audio streams without the crappy upsampling creative cards do from 44.1Khz -> 48Khz.
Modern motherboards contain on-board sound -- many of which are 5.1 or greater with digital S/P DIF connectors. With all the hoopla over Doom 3 hardware requirements I couldn't find any major ([H]ardOCP, Tom's Hardware, etc.) sites listing audio benchmarks or quality comparisons pitting on-board sound and cards like the Creative Z2 series.
I'm not an audiophile, but for games like Doom 3 etc. if a motherboard already supports digital 5.1 (or greater) is it really necessary to go out and purchase a Creative card? Will said on-board audio provide sufficient quality for 5.1+ gaming? I'm building a gaming system to replace my aging first-generation Athlon and am not sure whether or not I should throw a sound card in the mix, too.
Thanks,
--
Matt
This reminds me of a story that floated around Creative while I was working there ('93-'96), and it was about how this little independant game developer had approached Creative for some development support with their sound cards. This was '91-'92 time frame. Anyways, the guy called up asking for some help, and pretty much got the shaft. He wasn't a licensed developer, and didn't want to pay the huge amount Creative was asking for at the time.
Some harsh words were exchanged, and the guy basically told Creative to go F themselves. Not long after the guy releases Doom and the rest is history.
Creative changed their policy shortly thereafter and created a developer support department to help out the small developers. A little too late, IMO.
But the real clincher was when Creative launched their new product at the time, the AWE32, with loadable Soundfont technology. iD was getting close to releasing Quake, and Creative really wanted to get iD to support their new technology.
But Carmack, remember how he was so fondly treated, and basically told Creative to suck it, again, and Quake was released without AWE32 support.
The AWE32 never really took off, and neither did their Soundfont technology.
So I am a bit suprised that Carmack agreed to use their technology, but it does show everyone where his alliances lie. To the fan and consumer.
Kudos to Carmack.
Anyways, goes on to prove, that the toes you step on today, may belong to the ass you have to kiss tomorrow.
Kind Herb
"Whether you suffer from glaucoma, or you just rented The Matrix,
medical marijuana can make things fabulous, medically!"
-- Homer J. Simpson
Well, I have some overpriced Creative products, but i can promise you - I'll never buy another one. You don't FSCK with ID software.
"Comedy's a dead art form. Now tragedy, that's funny."
I dislike Creative products. I used to like them, when the PC gaming world was new and their hardware worked. Nowdays, I have more problems with Creative than with anything else in my systems. The Creative cards cause the driver crashes. The Creative cards are the reason some games don't work. The Creative cards are the first things to fail in my systems. Why should I like them?
If the only reason they decided to do otherwise is because of a bogus patent, i'm not buying Creative hardware anymore. There are better quality (and cheaper) soundcards out there. Hell, even my integrated SiS audio sounds quite good.
He had to cave. Creative brought this so late in the game that Doom 3 would have been delayed, and that costs lots of money. It's extortion. Creative said, "Play my game, or you'll be late."
Everyone e-mail Creative's pr whore and tell her what you really think about this issue: Lara_Vacante@creativelabs.com
Yeah, yeah. The usual smoke-blowing.
But...
* Doom3 is about to ship. A LOT of people will be buying nice new high-profit-margin gaming kit right about now.
* There's a large overlap between the FPS-gaming set and the patent-hating Slashdot set. This isn't like GIFs, where 99.999% of end-users didn't give a damn about patent abuse.
Can anyone recommend any alternative sound cards for gaming and/or general use other than Creative's cards? Or perhaps a sound card review site?
All Carmack had to do was to add "Sorry, Doom 3 is cancelled because Creative Labs won't let us use their patented algorithims" to his .plan file.
:D
Of course, this would have constituted conspiracy to commit murder in some jurisdiction or other, because if he had done so he'd know damn well that every CL executive would have been found dead in their beds the next morning.
Messily dead too.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I installed my last creative card into a machine close to two years ago, and remembering the absolute HELL of installing their driver set, I vowed never to even insert another CD with the "creative" logo on it in a computer.
After installing a reasonably good Asus motherboard in my latest gaming rig, I figured I'd live with the on-board audio (which I assumed to be a piece of crap) because the extra $150 or so for an ub3r SB card would have stretched my toy budget.
Ya know what? The onboard 5.1 sound (by some quasi-generic manufacturer) works quite well, rendering the positional audio of games without killing the CPU, and it handles both stereo and surround sound nicely. I've got both digital and analog in/outs, headphone jack (without the trademark Creative crappy-ground-whining-noise)..
So I can live with a perfectly useable solution and spend the $150 on new clothes for the kids - or something *really* important - like a new Dremel.
Or, I can shell out $150 for a sound card that doesn't really give me anything new, plays havoc with my hardware, and installs 80 varieries of spamware on my PC before crashing it.. Gee, let me think.... I'll skip the SCO.. I mean, Creative, hardware.
What? Carmack doesn't work for you...he isn't somehow responsible to fight the fight that you would. Why should he suffer losses because *you* think it's right to not ship Doom 3? You should just upgrade as planned and NOT buy a creative card. As was said earlier...don't get this backwards: Creative did the wrong thing, and Mr. Carmack is the good guy.
Lara_Vacante@creativelabs.com (public relations)
I'm just writing to inform you that you will not receive anymore of my business regarding your position on gaming software algorithms patents. I have canceled my order for the Maximum-power 6.1 sound system and will take my business elsewhere. I have supported Creative since I first got my computer, but I do not approve of this disregard for gamers and I'm quite saddened by your position.
Don't be a dork.
/. (as if anyone cared) and then go out and buy it anyway.
Carmack should have stuck it to Creative, but he didn't. So burn a creative card. Send them some nasty email. Whatever.
But boycott Doom3? You're blaming the wrong guy for one. For another nobody else is gonna skip D3, nor should they. And finally, if you're a serious gamer YOU are not going to skip it either. You'll just make a big noise here on
Having spent far too long fighting with Creative's drivers, and [i]still[/i] not getting hardware sound to work in half my games, I wasn't that enthused with their crap to begin with. Now to see that they're blackmailing via patents...well, fuck 'em.
I'm upgrading my rig for Doom III. I'll purposely choose an audio solution from somewhere other than Creative. I love the irony.
--LordPixie
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
I know little to nothing about sound cards, but I just got a new system that has 5.1 channel (and a digital out) right onboard.
+ 50$ for some speakers and I am all set - I know it's not 6.1 but is there a realy big difference? Why should I shell out $$ for a sound card when out-of-the-box I get theater quality sound.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
Screw them. We will still buy your game.
Creative is crap. Crappy products, crappy drivers, crappy support. In fact, I've heard that some of their drivers aren't even downloadable anymore.
Please please please go back on your decision and go with your CPU based audio instead of their crap.
I pledge to buy two copies if you'll do this, otherwise I'm only buying one!
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
This is what really annoys me about this system and companies like Creative Labs (who haven't made an innovative product since the mid-90s). They simply buy up all sorts of technology (Aureal, Sensaura, EMU, Ensoniq, etc.) and slack off with their own products.
Hmmm, how about the Creative Nomad Jukebox 3? It's been out for quite a while, but there's still nothing from anyone else with a 40GB hard drive and the ability to record from an optical digital audio source directly to MP3 in real time, or as uncompressed WAV up to 48KHz, and then transfer it out over IEEE1394 or USB. It's starting to replace DAT in field recording applications all over the place, and it's only a few hundred dollars. A pro hard drive recorder would cost an order of magnitude more and hold an order of magnitude less. I'd say that is an innovative recent product from Creative that I and many other people are very happy with.
You are right to be annoyed with the system. Creative, however, is swimming in the same shark tank with everyone else and unless the system changes, it's kill or be killed. Like any other company with a legal department, they will have their jackass moments, but you really can't say they aren't creative.
Follow Carmack's advice : the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz is an excellent gaming sound card, with the Aureal technology.
s /compare/index.h tm
Other very good products come from Terratec.
And unlike the Creative products, which have mediocre audio performance, these products are decent for audio purposes too.
Here is a somewhat dated but a extensive comparison of sound cards, measured independently:
http://www.pcavtech.com/soundcard
One can easily see that Creative Labs products nearly all lie near the bottom of the list.
Just in case you RTFA and were confused, the link to the patent on the gamedev.net posting is wrong. The actual patent in question is here...
http://www.nintendo.com/newsarticle?articleid=02f7 3c08-f36d-403c-a017-ab1dc6fab277
I haven't done since i bought a CL PCI512 card about three years ago.
nice piece of hardware no doubt, but the people who write their drivers have less talent than a marrauding band of monkeys jumping up and down on a skip full of broken keyboards.
and then there was they way they suppressed A3d's superior 3D sound system........ after they bought out the IP!?!?
and then sensaura as well i believe?
the biggest laugh i had at CL's expense is when they thought they had buried the competition by buying out A3d intellectual property, not realising that nVidia had hired a lot of A3d's brilliant engineers. the result was nVidia Soundstorm, oh how i laughed as i bought my nForce2 motherboard, hopefully that amusement will continue when i buy an nForce4 motherboard this X-mas.
screw CL, i hope they (as a corporate entity) rot in hell for all time.
This was approved in 2002, but filed in 1999...that would make prior art difficult to find. It is quite specific, and mentions real-time shadows in a time before they were really around - certainly Doom 3 hadn't been acnnounced.
Don't get me wrong, I still hate Creative's tactics, and I wrote them an email telling them so. Why the hell does Creative have this patent, of all companies? I mean, nVidia, ATI, Intel even I could see, but Creative??
We need to banish software patents, or come up with something that works better than this mess.
I guess my Turtle Beach Santa Cruz is going to have to last a few more years. Scratch me buying anything from Creative Labs.
(Nevermind that I bought the Santa Cruz specifically because I think Creative Labs makes shitty products.)
Game... blouses.
given this (and the fact that creative drivers suck) I think my next rig (for the first time since my first ever PC way back when, who had an (original) sb card, don't even want to think how much I paid for it) will NOT have an SB sound card inside.
My requirements are simple
1- must not be a CPU hog in games (aka, must have hw mixing acceleration and DirectAudio hw support)
2- don't care about positional audio at all
3- and here's the kicker: must have some sort of easily available midi in-out connection
1 and 2 should not be too hard to find (most onboard audio have it I think), but 3 has been stumping me for a while (for example the m-audio 2496 has midi in/out but according to posts I've read is kind of a CPU hog for games). Maybe I should just use the onboard audio of whatever new mobo I get and buy a midi card?
-- the cake is a lie
Well I have to say that I strongly dislike atrongarm tactics like this and will never buy a Creative product again.
:)
I'm only too happy to mention that I just built myself a whole new gaming rig and it doesn't have one single Creative product in it.
And play 4h / day
Large native markets are easier to produce stuff for, hard for foreign markets to compete with the kind of revenues you can get domestically alone ... That said, the music scenes are relatively diverse, US music doesnt hold the dominance US movies do ... good thing musucians arent really in it for the money usually :)
... the UK loves US patent law, but then the UK isnt really part of Europe. More importantly the EU government isnt really part of Europe either. Somehow the EU managed to settle on a government over which we have no real democratic control, the national parliaments still have the power to contravene but they are too afraid of evoking anti-EU sentiments .... so they just keep hoping it will all get better in the end, allowing shadowy interests to push through laws in the meantime.
As for why we are emulating your laws, not by the free choice of the majority of Europeans that is for sure
From what I know, the audio and this are two seperate issues. Or did The Carmack add support for Creative's EAX 3d super duper shit sound as a result of this.
If so, I've lost respect for The Carmack. I remember in the pc gamer article it even mentioned that since the sound in D3 was all in software it wouldn't matter jack if you had some uber audiogy wizz bang sound card or just on board cheapo. It would all sound the same.
So adding this now just so creative can slap d3 all over their ads is revolting and misleading to customers.
The Carmack, say it ain't so.
"With all the hoopla over Doom 3 hardware requirements I couldn't find any major ([H]ardOCP, Tom's Hardware, etc.) sites listing audio benchmarks or quality comparisons pitting on-board sound and cards like the Creative Z2 series."
And by software, I mean it doesn't utilize EAX, or any other random proprietary audio crud. While a seperate audio card takes a load off the CPU, it's insanely minor. Which is probably why Creative was so intent on getting their EAX worked in. Even if it doesn't really make any difference to your sound quality, that little 'EAX' checkbox in the game config makes you think you're missing out if you don't go Creative.
--LordPixie
no new product since the 90's? might even be brfore that. seems like the only thing they ever did was the 16 bit sound card. their rnd (retarded and downy) deparment has come up with monstrosities like the nomad, the 300$ audigy. now i know how they actually make any money. the patent racket. it all makes sense now because i havent seen a creative product (not that im really looking) that didnt suck, and/or was insanely over priced. they ar far worse than apple and i feel that nobody should buy them at all. personally, i'd rather play doom without any sound, and listen to my mp3's, if creative would just fuck off and die. mebbe the open surce community could come up with a solution to a 3d sound (insert name here) that would be original enough an free. hopefully a move like this would flush that smelly turd of a company and their toilet paper patents back to the sewer. this would be a very nice a la m$ strategy, find a company you dont like, and give away everything they sell & extort.
why do software companies use eax in the first place
there is a standard that works very well when implemented has superb postioning and has been around for years
its called dolby digital
what is causing the problems with dolby digital not being an accepted standard ?
in my opinon a dolby digital setup will always best creatives reverb crap and ill never understand why companies feel they have to include eax support in there games. when there is a better standard available
Music the Paint dancefloor the canvas your body the brush
Yes, it's difficult for me to justify patenting the intangible. I find it equally laborious equating copyright infringement with theft.
And for the sake of adding fuel to the fire, I present you this:
I'll think I'll allow some of you Linux guys handle that one for me as I'm, admittedly, more of a Windows dweeb.
Countdown to Derek Smart, Ph.D. responding to this post with expletives in 5...4...3...
[Insert pseudo-intellectual anti-Amerikan/pro-socialist sig here]
Then you should have plenty of options with quarter inch balanced outs and midi. As a musician there have been many many good sound cards out there for the last 5 years. I personally have cards from Echo audio, but others have cards from M-Audio, Lynx, RME, Terratec http://www.computermusic.co.uk/reviews/terratec/te rratec.asp, Creamware, Yamaha and the list goes on and on! Some outstanding stuff with multiple outs (I have 8 out channels out from my Echo Layla) so you have many options! Spread the word.
I didn't know such thing was possible. It seems software companies are patenting things left and right and it doesn't seem right. John Carmack and Id can't even stand up to guys like this. Come on John fight it. I'll wait and as a game fan support Id and others who stand up against such blatant greed. Just let us know how to help. I will not be buying stuff from Creative ever again to send a message.
Regards,
Ray
Bravo for you, big man?
I propose that when the game ships, someone should right an "audio optimization" patch that surgically removes the Creative code from the DOOM engine. I would really love to see something like this released as an official support patch: "DOOM3 update version x.x.x: ...resolves audio performance problems."
Knowing how id usually provides commands for disabling certain functions (no cd audio, no joystick, no lan, etc), I would expect them to offer an option to disable this.
id Software, if you're reading this, please offer a command line setting/console command to disable EAX support!
Intel has led the desktop market in shipments of graphics chipsets for over a year now.
m ain+stable/2100-1006_3-5205102.html
http://news.com.com/Intel%2C+AMD+market+shares+re
I'm suggesting that there should be a statute of limitation on the act of suing for patent infringement, once the infringing act has taken place.
I think the most despicable abuse of patents is when the patent holder KNOWS of an ongoing infringement, but holds off on filing suit for years and years while people become dependent on the technology.
If the patent holder only had 2 years to act once they were aware of an infringement (as is the case in China) this problem would be solved.
Visit the Game Programming Wiki!
WHBT. Looks like BigChigger is a known troll already, too. Lame attempt though.
Clever signature text goes here.
Patents are to protect an idea, "how" a job is done, not "what" is done. The problem with software patents is that they are patenting WHAT is done, which is where the problem lies. It they work out a really clever algorith to carry out a particular task, fair enough, patent it, like RSA, but you can't patent "the encryption of data to other users cannot view it".
In this case, if Creative did really talk about the idea before filing the patent, the patent is invalid. One of the golden rules for a valid patent is that only a limited number of controlled people are aware of it. Otherwise, you can't prove it's your idea, it's part of the prior art argument. I must admit, i dont think the British patent lawyers have many problems with software patents, like their american counterparts....
i think it bespeaks of glaring problems with us antitrust enforcement: creative buys out darn near any money making home user/gamer sound card company, and symantec (who already own ghost) is able to buy powerquest, maker of the other big package for companies to image windows OS running workstations for deployment.
Of course, this is not the same as saying they are the widest used graphics card or that they will sell a large amount of standalone cards but still.
Most people don't buy external sound cards any more but once upon a time everyone did. So those cheapo AC97 based things are ALL over the place - OK Intel don't make them all but they did come up with the AC97 codec.
Here's a Register story which mentions that Intel have 31.7% of the graphics card market.
I've talked to people of various importance who feel that in a certain number of years the graphics card market will go a similar way to the sound card market. The impression I was given was that only people wanting high end quality/speed will go for an extra card but most others will be satisfied by onboard.
Why doesn't one just test to see if the eye is in shadow, and if it is, add 1? Equivalently, one could have an extremely small region around the eye which is not in shadow, too small to affect anything else, but it should make the z-pass come out ok. Or am I missing something?
OpenAL is pushed by Creative and deals with standards that Creative set. It's more like the open-ness of DirectX pushed by Microsoft than OpenGL.
Phil O'Shaughnessy
Director of Corporate Communications
poshaughnessy@creativelabs.com
Lara B. Vacante
Public Relations Manager
Lara_Vacante@creativelabs.com
Jennifer Ellard
Senior Public Relations Specialist
Jennifer_Ellard@creativelabs.com
Katie Meyer
Public Relations Coordinator
Katie_Meyer@creativelabs.com
You missed the big part. They patented the method DooM 3 uses for handling shadows. Creative patented a graphical technique, and are now using that patent to force ID endorsement. This want a case of him caving-in to support them, he caved because he felt the game just wouldn't be the same if he had to take-out all the shadows in the game. Personally, I'd rather he said "See you in court then, bitches." and put a portion of the DooM3 take into a legal defense fund for whomping on Creative, but I won't fault him for trying to keep litigation down.
Unfortunately, other areas of audio have suffered. There is no "OpenGL" of 3D audio because Creative owns all of the patents from its acquisition of companies like Aureal and Sensaura. They will always have the one-up on 3D audio performance over their customers, and any improvements will be at their own pace.
This has become standard practice for technology companies over the past few years, since sometime in the nineties. Basically, large technology companies maintain a staff of researchers whose job it is to churn out patents related to their product -- not necessarily new or interesting technology, but to shotgun enough that at least some get through. They then cross-license with all other manufacturers in the arena that they are in. At that point, the patents stop having value for driving production of useful new technology, since any patent is simply immediately available to all competitors. Instead, they are solely used to prevent any new competitors from entering the arena -- they act as oligarchy maintainers. This means that the only competition each company has is the other existing companies in the arena -- as those are bought out or go out of business, the market is left more and more to the remaining players. It is an extremely damaging attack on free markets, and is a business practice that is now in widespread use. The hard drive companies (Seagate, IBM and friends) do it. The GPU companies (ATI, NVidia and friends) do it. The CPU manufacturers (AMD, Intel and friends) do it. As a result of this approach, most substantial improvements that could be used against a competitor are not patented, since this allows them to actually be useful competitive tools -- undermining the very reason for having patents in the first place.
Patents, in such situations, no longer serve their purpose at all -- the funding of the creation of useful new things. The only solution is really to eliminate software patents. I have yet to see particularly impressive research coming from such a situation -- I cannot see any reason to maintain the existence of software patents. I'd like to hear from *one* Slashdotter that does good research who is supported by patent royalties (or works in a lab and feels that their patents, rather than the existence of their work and the barriers established by time-to-reimplement, is where their primary value to their lab comes from).
May we never see th
iD has released the source code for their older generation games NOT the engine!
I'm not trying to troll here but can anyone clearly explain why we need expensive audio hardware to begin with? It seems that relative to the work that a CPU or GPU is doing processing audio is childs play. Why isn't 5.1 or 7.1 audio a commodity chip, like the 2D graphics chips that come on motherboards? I can understand continuing development on codecs but couldn't a company do that and then just license it to game creators? I don't get it, it seems Creative is pulling an "SCO"
http://www.webdog.org/plans/314/ I wonder if Justin Frankel was talking about Creative in this .plan??
June 27, 2004
It has been an interesting weekend.
Too much drinking for me, indeed, but feeling ok.
Friday night's conversations tended to that of jewelery making and politics, and taxes (estate, brackets, why we need them, bla bla bla).
But last night, due to the nature of meeting people you have multiple potential connections with (if that's not too obfuscated),I met someone who works for (and probably started or something) a company that I was familiar with, one that really has pissed me (and many people like me) off in the past. This is all a very drunken party context, but we had a conversation that dragged on,
him with his fifth of tequila and me with a small glass of scotch.
(keeping names out of this -- sir, you know who you are, and if you wish to rebutt and let it be known who you are, I will gladly give venue. mostly I'm just venting feelings here, so don't take
it personally. we just disagree on shit. oh, and I would also like to apologize to my new neighbor who had to hear most of this and was probably a buzzkill)
At the time the conversation was a little bit amusing, but in retrospect I get pissed off thinking about certain elements. Namely:
This company I speak of is one that is very patent-centric so we had much differences on the subject of patents. One line he used multiple
times in defending his stance (no doubt he had used it many times before, likely with more success):
"when you go and invent something, you'll understand" "you'll want to protect the things you invent, you won't want people to STEAL it from you".
I don't know how to write my response to this, having tried writing a big paragraph that just made me dizzy. So here are some thoughts:
1) The patent that this company was biggest on enforcing (as far as I could tell) was one that they didn't actually invent, they BOUGHT. So
yeah, they have to get return on investment. Fair enough.
2) I don't really consider myself to having invented anything, but I do realize that I could have patented things that I had developed. No
doubt. SO DONT FUCKING TELL ME I'LL UNDERSTAND IF I EVER INVENT SOMETHING.
3) Maybe I'm not enough of a capitalist, or maybe I'm too much of one, but I think that if you come up with some new idea, in this age, I think
the way to exploit it is by building it, not patenting it and preventing other people from building it.
4) Worrying about protecting patents and having other people STEAL them from you seems wrong. I mean, why make shit if you're just going to be
freaking out about what other people might be doing..
5) It seems to me that having an idea or technology that is unpatented will encourage more improvement on the underlying idea/technology, as well as competition and incentive for improvement (his response was something to the effect of "and we have the best of breed technology", and I'm like "best of breed because you'll sue anybody who competes?".)
If Intel had a completely valid all-encompassing patent on the microprocessor and anything like it, that doesn't seem like it would be healthy, nor does it seem like we'd be where we are today.
6) As someone who really enjoys writing code and making things, I feel like it's art. Being able to sit down, make something that's completely
new to me from scratch, and infringe on a patent owned by a huge multi-national corporation, that hoards patents as a leveraging tool for other huge multi-national corporations, who patent as much as possible, just sems like a really bad situation. I mean, it's been said before, but it's fucked up. Very.
That is about all. Maybe more later.
(edit: we did manage to agree on one thing, that a certain other company
that we both had experiences with sucked).
Also: I'm finding that "A Perfect Circle - 13th Step" is a quite good album.
What non-Creative alternatives are there to Creative SBLive! that are answer the following:
* must run in Linux/x86
* have native support in OpenAL (for 3D positioning)
* optionally have good wavetable synthesis
If there are other perks I'm missing, please suggest those as well.
for me to never buy a not so creative Creative product again, to add to the list, next to unstable, bloated drivers, crappy sounding, slow performance.
I try never to buy, sell, or build systems with parts from unethical companies. Creative just made the list.
The fact that, at least since Boas, people have had a very perverse understanding of human nature does nothing to change the fact that the human potential for civilization is part of the human potential -- and humans are unique in this capacity so far as we know. Make no mistake, Boas had his own ethnic axe to grind and grind it he did -- to the vast detriment of science. In any case, no one, not even Boas, has come close to "nurturing" other species pursue a neolithic revolution, centralization of grain stores, etc.
Now, you might try to claim that all substantial human capacities are uniformly distributed throughout the human "races" -- however you define that -- but W. D. Hamilton wasn't referring to a "race" when he spoke of "barbarian pastoralists". Moreover, something you should know about Hamilton -- his mathematics forms the core of accepted understanding of population genetic diversity and its impact on altruism. It is hard science, unlike Boas.
Just as reason was supplanted by faith when the Greek classic philosphers gave way to Christian theocracy, so we have gone through a transformation from an age of reason to a new theocracy -- and the high priests are the ones preaching "we're really all the same under the skin". To deny it -- regardless of how much evidence one brings to bear -- is to be branded with every moral denounciation available to the new theocrats -- and excommunication is frequently the consequence.
Seastead this.
I've been a purchaser of Creative Labs sound cards since the SoundBlaster16, with the exception of a foray into Diamond's Monster Sound 3D II MX300 due to A3D 2.0 and it's support in Half-Life.
I admire the folks at id Software, for all the usual reasons. I have no problem with any company contacting id Software and requesting that their proprietary technology is supported to improve a game. What I thoroughly dislike is the concept of software patents. What I dislike even more is the use of software patents as leverage. What frankly pisses me off is someone using software patents to threaten a company like id Software, who selflessly contribute a ridiculous amount to the development of computing, both directly in releasing unpatented software and indirectly by driving the take-up of new hardware and software technologies in their games. Doubly so when it's a distinctly uninnovative company like Creative Labs.
The only way a regular gamer like myself can punish a company is by refusing to buy it's products.
Are there any credible gamer-centric alternatives to Creative Labs' products?
I will be doing some research now, and if there are, CL will have just lost a customer. I have no problem with throwing a few hundred dollars in a different direction every year or three. Hell, I'd even be willing to donate money to id to have them say "see you in court" to the spineless worms.
** I will note I've not tried his game. From the descriptions it sounds like an updated and far more complex "Vega-Bound," in which case I might actually like it. But, that wouldn't change the fact that it's thoroughly derided...
[Insert pseudo-intellectual anti-Amerikan/pro-socialist sig here]
every manufacturer under the sun is the devil incarnate for not including drivers and support for linux (nevermind whether an economic proposition exists for supporting their products in linux),
but when it comes to patents, our beloved carmack should take a stand based on principle and
NOT SUPPORT HARDWARE?!?
heh. so no support for linux is heinous, but no support for everything is alright?
Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Project
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
mod parent up
Bahhh same old crap from slashdotters
go invent something of your own instead of being just end users.
...Dolby Digital is an encoding/compression method for multi-channel audio, it has nothing to do with generating the original source audio. Nor does it have anything to do with calculating audio effects such as position, reflection, or occlusion which is what Creative's EAX (and previously, Aureal's A3D) is all about.
As for its being an accepted standard (for gaming), there is no sense using up processing time compressing and encoding multi-channel audio into a Dolby Digital stream when you can simply output the digital audio as a raw PCM stream which most digital audio decoders are capable of handling directly. It would only be of use for pre-rendered cut scenes/FMV where all the audio would be the same each time.
Keith D.
Maybe id could stick it to them in an unsubtle manner. Sell an "Audio Special" with (say) an M-Audio Revolution 7.1 included. Add specific features to the game that aren't supported by the Creative version. Make it audibly better.
As another poster posted, there are better soundcard companies out there, so why not support them? Let the weekend geeks know about the better alternatives and maybe we'll see Creative get their ass into gear and produce better products with less drama.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
There is a 99% chance that the press release was completely written by Creative. Usually in licensing deals the company with the upper hand writes the press release, including the quotes. I have been in business situations where my company wrote quotes for the CEOs of another company with no oversight whatsoever. Noone really cares since noone reads press releases critically anyway.
----- 70% of all statistics are completely made up.
"In fact, in a decent onboard audio controller (like, say, nForce), the only real advantage you get from an audio card is a lower noise floor."
I use my Nforce through the SPDIF out to my Denon reciever. One simple digital hookup and lower noise floor than an analog setup.
If you look at CPU usage, the Nforce is neck and neck or better than the latest creative stuff as well.
Only if you are a positional audio junky and must have EAX3/HD do you need to pay your "Creative" tax.
In the midst of a game is it really going to matter if you have EAX 2 or 3????
Peter
or like this
And then you write your own futile, unfunny shit like this. Easy, huh?
Here's what they should do. Sell two versions, one that supports Creative cards, one that doesn't. Charge a little more (say $2) for the one that supports Creative cards. Make a very public explanation that the reason they had to do that is the Creative patent.
Thanks for explaining it...
"Hmm. I am to metaphor cheese as metaphor cheese is to transitive verb crackers!"
No Creative at all! Fight the patent, design a new algorithm.
Whatever, just stick it to Creative next time.