for those who dont believe most gamers have decent video cards

the latest poll on the gamedev newsletter:

Q: What shader model does your video card support?

None------------------24----|||----------------------------------2.33%
SM 1.0----------------15----||-----------------------------------1.46%
SM 2.0----------------115---|||||||||||||------------------------11.1%
SM 3.0----------------336---||||||||||||||||||||||||||||---------32.7%
SM 4.0----------------377---|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||----36.7%
I've got no idea...---160---|||||||||||||||----------------------15.5%

Total Votes: 1027

as you can see most have 3.0 or higher, and almost none have 1.0 or less, so i dont understand why people keep saying we should design games not have shaders, and not be optimised for around shader 2.0 generation or higher cards.

because geamedev is a relatively small community (1024 votes...) and not representative.

valve's hardware survey is much more interesting,
http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html
even though that's only the steam community. i expect the percentage on fx5200 and intel x3100/iGMA chips to be much higher.

top 10 of used video cards:

How is a gamer defined for each survey?
Is there a generally accepted definition for term gamer?
If so, how many surveys used it?
Was the survey limited to a certain group of gamers?
(representative ref -> broozar)
What group performed the survey?
If the actual root group for the survey can be determined (a big if, maybe), are there any motivating factors or interests which might affect the results?
(NVIDIA did not perform that survey.)
assumption: As a party taking a stance on the matter, do you have any conflicting interests, or is truth and debate settling / sparking your only aim?
To what degree do surveys across domains conflict?
What do surveys for users of the 3D Gamestudio product and the forums of that product suggest about user made products, target demographics and gamers as defined, if consistently / typically defined?
Is there a generally accepted definition for 3DGS user?
If so, and / or not so, why is that conveniently irrelevant?

Never mind.
I am convinced.
(Although, some machines here are not used by gamers per se, and those machines have cards which support shader model 3+, and those cards are not listed strongly with good frequency.)
Well done.
The point is well-received.
Thank you.

this survey counts me and othe geforce 9 series users as (and many others) "other".

... that only prooves that a gf9, despite common belief here at the forum, is much less commonly used than the intel GMA chips, the exotic via/s3 unichrome chip or the old GF4.

OMG... I had NO idea we were all the way up to 4.0!!!! :P

While both survey pretty much give us a "d'uh" result (gamers have gear... wow... really?), I trust Valve's card reference more than Gamedev's shader reference merely based on my own ignorance. I know exactly which card I have but honestly, not a clue on which shaders it supports. The way I find our shader support has always been the same: buy game, install game, see how pretty it looks, and if it doesn't "look", Upgrade!

I suspect that the hardcore gamers (about 20% of the market) ARE the ones that will know exactly when 4.1 comes out and in some sense are represented by the gamedev data. The other 80% (casual and softcore) are likely represented by the valve data as they know their hardware better than their shader version.

I still think this is a "d'uh" result, but thanks for sharing!

"I still think this is a "d'uh" result, but thanks for sharing!"

you'd think, but apparently not to a lot of people on this forum. I remember lots of arguments over that very subject.

I have an easier way to find out... *googles*, 3.0! Usually the shader model is in the minimum requirements of the game.

The polls from Steam prove it again and again. Hardcore gamers have the latest graphic cards. They have better hardware than most of you developers.

But if you don't want to address hardcore but casual gamers then it can look a bit different. I don't know of any poll asking the usual pc owner about this. And this poll would not work anyway. My parents cannot tell you what hardware they have except they look into the invoice and spell it from that paper

But if my parents buy a new pc then it will have one of the latest graphic cards (but probably not an expensive version of it). You cannot buy something with shader 1.0 in Germany

yeah in america if you buy something new its almost impossible to get something under 2.0, and its difficult to find something under 3.0 since even cheap $300-$400 pcs come with integrated nvidia 6100 or 6150 cards.

I purposely develop on a machine that most real gamers would scoff at. I would like the average player with a four or five year old pc or a decent laptop to be able to meet the requirements.

Google Analytics is a good method to see what your game audience is. There is a lot of info about who, where, OS, screen res, etc., for the daily downloads from your site. And its free.

Not only
It is a comunity of Game developers rather than of game players

"Game developers" many hobbiest game devs dont have up to date cards, just check and see how many people on this forum are running pre nvidia 6 series/ pre ati x300 series cards. definately too many. also, as in most surveys you cant have everyone vote, so you take a sample, thats how surveys work.

I'm with JazzDude, I want to actually sell my games to a wide audience...

and I'm not Einstein, but it doesnt take a brain to realize what folly it is to compete against the AAA developers who do use high level shaders like the ps vs 100.3 or whatever.

If your indie games with your ultra high level shaders can compete with the AAA titles out there, have at it!

But we havn't even seen anything like that here at GS. I think I'll stick to desirable themes and fun gameplay instead of worrying about top notch eye candy.

Keep in mind also, we still don't even have a reliable, low FPS and fully functional normalmapping shader for GS, and if we do, it's only for A7 which not everyone has yet.

So I don't even know what all the hoopla is about in the first place :P

I wanted to try normalmapping in the next couple projects... but not when it doesnt work well.

- Jason

well the question is more whether or not cards with lower than shader 1.0 are a necessity to support, not whether or not to try and make "uber graphics". personally i dont mind fallbacks, and lod, and optimizations etc... but there is a margin to it like there is a margin to everything, if i make a detail slider that will allow my game to be optimized for both pc's made in 2000, and pc's made yesterday, but my game takes 15 years to release, whats the point?

I don't have much faith in polls. I think hardcore gamers have good cards and people who buy new systems have decent setups for gaming. Maybe not ideal, but better than nothing. Your average joe that plays games is not going to invest money in a video card on any kind of regular basis. They might not care or they may be uneducated and not even realize what a 3D card even is. They may not be able to afford it, etc.

Anyway, real gamers will upgrade, but I don't think your average user will do so every time Company A releases the latest greatest; thus that's why you should not shoot for the moon when you create something and why I have no faith in polls with a tiny 1000 hits (there are millions upon millions of PCs of all kinds out there....1000 hits doesn't represent anything). There are a LOT of old systems out there with owners that are not replacing their cards and probably never will until they buy a new system, and that doesn't happen too often either.

A lot of us on here live in a bubble. We upgrade because we are gamers and/or developers. We think because it's normal for us to do it that EVERYONE is doing it or at least most. I simply don't think that is the case.

"thus that's why you should not shoot for the moon"

again tho, thats not whats Im questioning, im just wondering why people get upset when you put a requirement of shader 1.4/2 on a game.. thats not even close to shooting for the moon.

who cares if they get upset. Make your game your way and let them adapt to you. Instead of making their game their way. Thats my opinion. I know that it is a lot easier said than done but in the end you just need to get your product done, and let all us hardcore gamers play it.

Nobody makes games that can run on an old Atari anymore (well, perhaps, except our beloved ex- forum member Ulillillia :D).
It will take only a few years until nobody makes games with shader 1.0 anymore either.

So, it's fine if you want to create a game with 1.0 shader support... it merely means you're a dying species anyway.

Oh btw, how many of us can produce a good working (not to mention good looking) 3.0 shader at all?
... I stick at developping non-shader games .

what's wrong with ps/vs 2.0? just make sure it can be run on a radeon 9600/x3100/gf8200 in middle/low quality mode.

nothing, that was my point. I agree that the ati 9600 should be supported, at low detail of course (that card is 5 years old already.... wow, doesnt seem that long).

lol I have via/s3g unichrome pro IGP which sucks

I have an ATI Radeon 9800 on my PC. It will run shader 2.0 but ungodly slow so it's not even worth turning on.

But my dad's fairly new PC has an NVIDEA GeForce 7300 LE, and he lets me use his PC for gaming! (he doesn't really do anything sugnificant on his desktop so he though it'd be a waste to not have any new games on it)

Which is equally as strange as all those people that still argue that games aren't ready for quad cores or visa versa.

http://blogs.unity3d.com/

they also have collected interesting data.

wow. those are some hopelessly hopeless specs

not that i've ever completed a project, but i've often thought it wouldn't be too hard to make a game with some nice adjustable effects and nice details for the people who want to use their pc as a heater, and then a "crap-mode" with details that a really crappy (which is way too common) pc can handle easily, perhaps using a 2-3 year old laptop with integrated graphics as a standard.

of course, some things aren't as scalable, like physics simulation that's integral to the gameplay. if your application is physics intense, no need to accommodate for that much rubbish.

julz