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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."
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.
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.
"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!
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.
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
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
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!
Yeah. They're the good guys.
'It was tempting to take a stand...but that would only have hurt the users...'
Mom says my
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.
There's a difference between joint marketing ("The Way It's Meant To Be Played") and blackmail.
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
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.
Using someone else's code?
I can write all the code I want and it's mine... however if I do things with the code which violate existing patents I can get into trouble, even though the code it's self is mine.
That is often the problem with software patents, that a patent is granted in the loose steps of doing something, there are many ways code can be written to do the same thing, but many are covered by the patent, regardless of who writes the code or for what.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
New for nerds, from the future.
========
CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
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.
Yes, but the majority of Doom 3 users are not going to accept hardware that won't run their game. Look at how many of us ran out and bought new hardware just so we could play it. Creative would be hurt by this far more than Doom 3 would, even if Creative has greater market share.
Agreed. I'm building a new system for this, and other upcoming games. I know a lot of people that are doing the same. Creative just lost my money.
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.
Creative *doesn't* have greater market share. How many people use the built-in AC 97 motherboard sound? How many computers have Creative built-in? Hell, I haven't used anything Creative Labs has put out in years, my motherboard sound is good enough. Moreover, that nVidia-based motherboard I've got in my current system supports 5.1 surround. Why would I even bother with CL?
Now, if Gravis updated the Ultrasound card, I might give that a look...
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
In addition, let's say you have an onboard sound chip that is creative, that you have turned on in the bios to use something akin to TeamSpeak, but use a Santa Cruz for the game.
You'd have to check which card you're using, not just blindly screwing people who have a Creative chip hooked up to their PCI bus....
All in all, more problems than it solves.
Karnal
...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.
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'm no longer buying creative products, neither will i recommend it to any of my computer illiterate friends who bother me with "what hw should i buy for this and that" type questions.
and belive me, I have many of them*
(*just because I'm reading slashdot does not mean I have no friends - thought the statistical corelation of slashdot reading and friend starvation are fascinating)
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.
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
yea, serisouly. I feel bad having a creative card right now. Well, if i need a new machine to play DOOM 3, or whenever I need a new machine, creative's not getting my money. When companies use patents in assinine ways, they should be challenged. I kind of hope this pushes back the release date so that Creative suffers the wrath of DOOM {fans}.
done
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."
And if Microsoft got caught adding code to hinder compatibility with third party programs (I don't really know if they actually did this), everyone on /. would get up in arms. No double standard here. I think Mr. Carmack is a little more mature than that.
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 $150 for a sound card that doesn't really give me anything new, plays havoc with my hardware, and installs 80 varieries of spamware on my PC before crashing it.. Gee, let me think.... I'll skip the SCO.. I mean, Creative, hardware.
What? Carmack doesn't work for you...he isn't somehow responsible to fight the fight that you would. Why should he suffer losses because *you* think it's right to not ship Doom 3? You should just upgrade as planned and NOT buy a creative card. As was said earlier...don't get this backwards: Creative did the wrong thing, and Mr. Carmack is the good guy.
Lara_Vacante@creativelabs.com (public relations)
I'm just writing to inform you that you will not receive anymore of my business regarding your position on gaming software algorithms patents. I have canceled my order for the Maximum-power 6.1 sound system and will take my business elsewhere. I have supported Creative since I first got my computer, but I do not approve of this disregard for gamers and I'm quite saddened by your position.
Having spent far too long fighting with Creative's drivers, and [i]still[/i] not getting hardware sound to work in half my games, I wasn't that enthused with their crap to begin with. Now to see that they're blackmailing via patents...well, fuck 'em.
I'm upgrading my rig for Doom III. I'll purposely choose an audio solution from somewhere other than Creative. I love the irony.
--LordPixie
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
I know little to nothing about sound cards, but I just got a new system that has 5.1 channel (and a digital out) right onboard.
+ 50$ 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.
I said greater market share then Doom 3 (which only a select few people actually have at the moment ;))
But agree about using onboard audio, if my motherboards 5.1 wasnt flaky I wouldnt have bought a creative sound card.
========
CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
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.
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.
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
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]
the statistical corelation of slashdot reading and friend starvation are fascinating
Do your friends a favor for gosh sake, stop reading slashdot!!!
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
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
...while Sierra rakes in the cash from sales of Half-Life 2. Smart move.
First, I can't find evidence that Sierra has confirmed using EAX sound. If you could provide that, I'd appreciate it {I am actually interested!}. Second, I didn't mean push the release back very far. HL2's release hasn't even been announced, EAX shouldn't delay DOOM 3 that long.
Also, your smart move remark wasn't necessary.
done
i had a problem in battlefield when it first came out, that made the game run at 0.5 FPS with hardware accelerated audio enabled on my nVidia SoundStorm. i wouldnt be suprised if it was on purpose, considering, i got around 60+ FPS with the acceleration DISABLED.
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!
Agreed... honestly I've already pre-ordered Doom 3 anyway, but I would be really happy with id if they had taken a stand here. I disagree that it would hurt only the users; it would hurt id a bit, it would hurt creative more (lots of people would switch over to using their mobo audio or buy a new sound card).
In any case I will certainly never buy any Creative products again. I realize every tech company has patents and most of them have bad patents; it's the bad patent bullies I won't forgive.
WHBT. Looks like BigChigger is a known troll already, too. Lame attempt though.
Clever signature text goes here.
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?
I fail to see how it would hurt the users if he's already got a way to make it work... The game is capped at 60FPS even though most newer cards are capable of running it much faster. I'd think there would be room in there for the less-optimal shadowing implementation.
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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
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.
And if Microsoft got caught adding code to hinder compatibility with third party programs (I don't really know if they actually did this), everyone on /. would get up in arms.
IIRC Win 3.11 checked for the version of DOS it run on. If it detected DRDOS (not too sure, might be another vendor) it came up with an error message on startup. It was just FUD, since 3.11 ran fine on DRDOS. But even a useless warning message sometimes has influence on customer decisions.
I don't read replies by ACs.
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]
Not hindering. The original D3 engine was supossed to do all sound processing and mixing through the CPU; there's good techincal reasons for this (sound would be the same no matter your setup, with little impact on CPU usage). The game would sound as good with your onboard sound as it would on your brand new Audigy. Through this bogus patent, Creative has effectively blackmailed iD into adding support for their hardware.
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
...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.
Any delay in releasing Doom3 is not a smart move for Carmack. Doom3 has been described as a fairly literal re-make of Doom 1 and in the post Half-Life universe that may not be good enough.
Creative needs to be told "this sucks," and when I have more cash, I'll vote on another sound card then, but for now I suppose I fit into the category of user Carmack was thinking of when he backed down on "taking a stand."
Mom says my
Where did you hear that? Yes, it's a retelling of the Doom story more as it was originally intended, but it's not an exact remake with better graphics. Just from the trailers, you can tell that quite a bit is different.
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.
Precisely. I see several posts here lamenting the fact that Carmack has switched Doom 3's audio engine from software/CPU to EAX. This is not the case, the original engine remains, now you just have the option to utilise EAX should you want to.
"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
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!"
It happened back in the days of -Slashdot. I think it was running on Slash version -1.1.3 at the time. My user ID # back then was -5733.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
This hasn't got anything to do with sound...
Creative is asserting their [likely invalid] patent on a video technique to generate shadows.
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The suggestion was to have the game deliberately sandbag the performance if it detected a card made by Creative. I assumed the original poster meant sound cards not knowing CL makes video cards (I only found one on their site, doesn't look very impressive), so I guess I misunderstood completely. I guess it pays to RTEA.
(entire)
btw, is your nick a q3 reference? I have to confess I still play it.
Mom says my
True, but what I said about people who can't afford new hardware getting hosed still applies.
Mom says my
How?
The solution is not to cripple the game for only people with Creative cards, but to equally modify the way that the game engine draws shadows for everybody to avoid Creative's patent on the specific shadowing method, which (as I understand it,) Carmack himself popularized.
The whole thing is crap. Software patents really should not exist in their current form... At the very least place tighter limits and shorter expiration dates on them.
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No.
It is in reference to the Handspring Visor PDA. I have owned 5 of them (counting the exchanges).
I now own a Palm Tungsten|T3. I really should change my nickname, but I'm not motivated enough to do so... Perhaps I'll get to it this weekend and move over my friends list.
ModGuide: -1 Offtopic.
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I agree 100%. I was telling the original poster that crippling the game was a bad idea, which is what I thought he was saying Carmack should do. Re-reading it, I wasn't as clear as I thought I was. and if I had been aware Creative makes video, I'd have put a bit less unintentional fog into the mix.
My statement about people who can't afford new hardware only applies in the sense that intentionally crippling the game just when a Creative card is detected would hurt the users who can't afford a new one right now. Sorry about the cornfusion; I never meant to disrupt the legitimate portion of the discussion.
btw, I like the nick. Knowing what it stands for, I like it better. Don't let the q3 reference dissuade you from keeping it. ;)
Mom says my
And if Microsoft got caught adding code to hinder compatibility with third party programs (I don't really know if they actually did this), everyone on /. would get up in arms.
Others already mentioned it - /. got up in arms and I personally still believe that it was a pretty lame move by MS. However, they didn't do anything to prevent 3.11 from running on a competitor's OS - they just issued a warning message, which apparently convinced some people that there is something wrong about their (DRDOS) setup. That might be enough to suppress competition, because it certainly creates some FUD (by intention?). But 3.11 run perfectly under DRDOS. They haven't done anything to stop this OS from working.
I don't read replies by ACs.
Maybe you could sell your old account on eBay :-) It's a sub 550k UID...
No Creative at all! Fight the patent, design a new algorithm.
Whatever, just stick it to Creative next time.