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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."
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.
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.
The irony in a company named Creative holding a software patent from which they have never created anything is just amazing.
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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
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.
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. Creative hasn't done anything substantial with their soundcards since the Live series was released (even then it was sub-par in terms of quality), and has simply re-released the same DSP with some pumped-up driver hacks and better codecs. It's no wonder that companies like M-Audio and Turtle Beach have produced sonically superior products for the average consumer.
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. PC audio has been so stale over the last few years. It's sad to see that it's come down to this, but literally; PC audio has gone virtually nowhere because of patent issues like this. This issue with their (stealing) patenting of Carmack's Reverse really shows why we are probably set-back several years in terms of a truly awesome 3D audio experience.
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.
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