It might be possible. I cannot get the game to run past the main menu without crashing, so I put it aside. I’d have to get the game running before I can even see what needs to be done to use Special K in it 
Sometimes the UWP system just behaves like some unstable temporal dimension that just can’t quite exist in this one and users have to go through all kinds of rites to get it to be at least still enough to where the summon process (Installation.) just won’t outright end up in a infinite black hole somewhere.
Even when that appears to work the thing can still be finicky and crash prone for any number of reasons and validating the files or retrying often becomes a full re-download plus the file system and install path can be very sensitive along with OS compatibility if you aren’t on the latest version of Win10 or even some upcoming insider channel plus there’s no real release notes so store updates like the one from earlier today or underlying apps like the various XBox ones for account validation and overlay functionality you never really know what changes.
(The store icon is different now that’s a thing. ~ )
It’s worked well enough but it’s it’s own weird strange thing that just doesn’t make much sense and it kinda works or doesn’t work a bit on it’s own volition to and from plus with the various sandbox and encryption bits and what not users can’t really configure or troubleshoot the downloaded apps or the core functionality at all.
No idea how overlay compatibility is or hooks either through Windows processes or app processes like the shell one (Application frame host and the shell experience host I think it was for some of these) but there are some tutorials and ways to hook into the render window including documentation but probably late enough to where some of the SpecialK D3D overrides won’t apply.
Game should get a D3D12 API update eventually and if they go with flip model presentation and flip discard and other tweaks the latency and frame pacing could improve along with more direct GPU and CPU control and general improvements to multi threading and such.
EDIT: Suppose the Unstable Windows Platform system still has a ways to go and improve on.
I am fairly certain that flip model is required by UWP. It’s been a requirement for all Windows Store apps since Windows 8, and UWP is kind of the next evolution of the Windows Store / Metro design language.
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I believe so as well – for actual UWP apps that is. The same rule does not apply for Win32 apps packaged as AppX packages and managed through the Microsoft Store.
Those titles can still (and often does) make use of bitblt.
Ah I was curious on that, think D3D12 makes it mandatory but the Windows Store also uses many programs or games that use D3D11 which until more recently hasn’t utilized flip although the store environment is a bit different than regular Win32 desktop and there isn’t any issues around backwards compatibility or Windows 7 in the same way.
Although software released across multiple systems like Steam, GOG, Windows Store is probably just packed and compiled with smaller differences for what’s needed and a few extras perhaps.
(Steam’s API, GOG and it’s Galaxy client and how this Windows store works.)
Might not be that different for developers though now that it also does Win32 so it does not need to be in the UWP container system or how it worked again.
Microsoft is changing things around a bit too, DCH driver model is being updated a bit as well and some of the existing functionality is being moved into this app structure too.
But I don’t know how the store itself and it’s functionality or requirements could change, interesting to hear about mandating a flip model present interval / vsync mode though and since Windows 8 (8.1?) even.
EDIT: Eh the entire OS is changed up every half a year to a year I suppose with the current development plans and the roadmap for Windows 10 itself although with some tweaking for the users participating in the insider testing so it’s dev, beta and preview now instead of fast, slow and preview.
Less full builds on the beta branch for now too plus 20H2 ended up being a cumulative update and enablement package again but it’s nice not having to reconfigure the entire OS and settings for the full install and build distributions at least.
(Well that will probably change when 21H1 is branched off and goes into something like a beta stage before full distribution.)
Hi guys, has anyone tried SpecialK framework on Euro Truck Sim 2 or American Truck Sim 2? (I assume if it works on the one, it would work on the other). Also, in a game like this, i.e. online but not PVE/PVP, is there still a possibility of getting a ban for injecting SpecialK?
AppX is the container system that UWP (and Win32 apps on the MS Store) makes use of.
On an unrelated note, there’s technically nothing that prevents other digital distribution platforms from adding support for distributing and making use of AppX packages as well. All it would require (if I remember it correctly) was that they installed a certificate on users’ machines that was then used to validate the packages signed and distributed by the platform.
This was also Microsoft’s rebuttal a couple of years ago when Epic/Tim Sweeney complained about the “closed platform” that MS was supposedly turning Windows into – it wasn’t closed; and third-party developers were free to set up their own platforms that distributed AppX packages as well.
We’re lucky, however, that no other store have felt the need to add support for those packages as they’re infuriatingly locked down from an end users’ perspective – to a devastating degree.
I believe it is possible, but I’ve forgotten the details. Those games does some weird API switching or whatever at start that tend to confuse Special K.
I believe there were a thread on one of those games over on the old Steam Group, but I can’t locate it sadly. 
We have no idea nor ability to guarantee you anything what so ever. Only the game developers or anti-cheat service providers can tell you whether Special K is something they ban users for or not.
You’ll have to ask other players of those games that almost makes use of Special K whether they’ve had received a ban or not.
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Probably a one time manual api setting must be done in specialk.ini. But most important - first you launch the game by choosing the api from a dosens of variants, next time just hit first one - play the game. DX11 works fine, OpenGL has a bug with steam overlay popups.
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That’s already 2x 12-pin basically If there is a KINGPIN edition for the 3090, it’ll probably use 4x the new NVIDIA connector, lol.
Hopefully if there is one, it doesn’t have a micro USB port on the inside of the card. That’s 1 more micro USB port than any computer should have. </#KillMicroUSB>
Yeah sounds like a method for saving a bit of space comparably to using multiple 8-pins after some reading and looking at the images a bit more. 12-pin is a bit thinner so 2x of those would be slimmer on the GPU side rather than 4x 8-pins.
Bigger PSU’s tend to be single rail or it’s a toggle but not a true multi-rail internally so the amperage and current protection including over current protection shouldn’t trip up either.
(Although since the power draw is identical and it’s going through 2x 8’s on the PSU side maybe that’s less of a problem anyway.)
EDIT: Now let’s see AMD’s answer to that with the 16-pin cable. 
Well no idea what’s next maybe a redesign of the 24-pin ATX for motherboards lose the separate CPU cables.
Short of wireless transmission - not that it’s feasible. - it doesn’t really matter there’s always going to be a mess in there of cabling on all but the most dedicated system builders for avoiding that bundle of wires going everywhere.
(Just hide it behind the back plating of the case much as can be it’ll do. Hah.)
lol, I don’t think AMD’s in any position to invent new non-standard standards. That’s the kind of thing only NVIDIA gets away with.
I’m really hoping that RDNA2 performs comparably to the RTX 3xxx series. I’d upgrade my RTX 2080 Ti KINGPIN to a Big Navi card even if it’s only a marginal increase in performance because I haven’t been supporting AMD users as much as I’d like to with hardware monitoring features.
I’m kinda lazy when it comes to supporting hardware I don’t actually use I bought an RX 5700 XT with the intention of improving AMD support, but since that machine’s only used for testing I never got around to updating SK’s AMD GPU sensor code. That’ll only happen when I have an AMD GPU as my primary GPU.
They’re in a good position at least but I do expect them to be around the level of the 3070 - 3080 though things could change.
The 5700(XT) is more of a mid-range card in terms of hardware surpassing the 580 but the changes through RDNA instead of the GCN instruction set and capabilities removed or reduced some of the limitations and scaling issues AMD had so instead the card almost surpassed the Radeon VII though software issues have been a ongoing problem along with regressions for Polaris, Vega including the Radeon VII and Navi1x cards.
Assuming AMD can deliver a big Navi GPU and get cards out for low, mid and high end plus whatever the flagship enthusiast model will be and if they improve some of the RDNA1 issues and Navi hardware and software/driver problems they could be in a good position.
Performance scaling has a chance to reach the older Terascale results (Which I think was almost 80%) instead of another 30% gain at most possibly even more if the hardware scales well enough and they get some higher clock speeds as well plus memory total and bandwidth resolving that bottleneck as well.
NVIDIA’s going to be a tough one though, even if the gains are maybe a bit less than rumored they are working on a die shrink and the Ampere architecture so there’s gains from the die shrink and what this will be utilized for and gains from the architecture improvements both.
Flagship model of 3000 Titan or the 3090 looks to be going all out too even if it’s also going to cost more and then I assume a 3070 and 3080 will be part of the lineup with room for a 3060 and depending on possible competition from AMD and room between these products they could slot in a 3070 and 3080 Ti variant I’m not 100% on how it was suggested NVIDIA position their products and their performance this time but I think the idea was that the 3080 is akin to the Ti and the 3090 is the Titan so almost a full A100 GPU die or how it’s called rather than the scaled down A102 or however it’ll be named this time around.
No info on AMD’s lineup either possibly even less than NVIDIA other than rumors and “leaked” driver code from the Linux kernel submissions and some patents and such, AMD and NVIDIA seem keen on trying to plug up early leaks and info but it’s not going too well.
(Seems NVIDIA was very much displeased by the earlier Ampere GPU spec leaks speaking of that.)
As a standard GPU user and normal totally screwed customer having to follow whatever the whims and pricing standards will be I do hope competition between AMD GPU and NVIDIA can pick up a bit even if it’s not going to be as it was between AMD CPU and Intel and that could change too once Intel gets back to it for 2021-2022 but that’s given AMD quite a bit of time to establish Ryzen and refine it further.
Consoles get some mention but it’s not the same developing for XBox Series X and it’s actual name for the XSX unit and the PS5 though working with the XBox and not-Windows and D3D12_2 XBox might have some similarities.
Hardware might be through AMD but it’s not really the same either so I don’t expect it to be much of a change over how it’s with the XBox One X and PS4 now well aside from starting a much higher baseline system requirement now that the lowest common denominator is back to being PC.
Windows 10 still hasn’t quit broken through and 12_2 and Vulkan 1.3 whatever won’t be the min anytime soon can’t just drop any pre-2021 GPU’s entirely and support after all.
Plus NVIDIA 970 being common almost everywhere although I think it’s slowly changing maybe if nothing else than for VRAM pushing up above 4 or even 6 GB as a recommended now.
EDIT: Hey look at that the 1060’s replaced it already on the earlier 2020 Steam survey data.
(Which isn’t perfect or anything but it’s a bit of a overview and insight into what’s in use.)
Most likely scenario, and what Nvidia is hoping, is that both the top two Nvidia cards will remain ahead of AMD. They don’t just want a lead, they want a significant lead where they remain the indisputable performance king.
The RTX 3090 is rumoured to cost $1400, which i think is their top GPU (unless they have a Titan above it), and then there’s the 3080 which i expect to just about beat the top Navi card. Pascal already did this, 1080 ti and 1080 were better than the Vega 64, and Pascal cards were a huge success.
It matters to have the best cards, to help sell the more profitable lower-end and mid-range lineup. In the past, a lot of consumers just went with whatever Nvidia card was available in their budget, to feel like a part of the winning Nvidia team basically. It is changing a bit now, since Zen 2 happened. Now more consumers are okay being associated with AMD products, but even so it matters to have the most powerful cards on the market.
I’d bet on Nvidia easily having the most powerful card, but we’ll have to see if they can manage two cards above. RDNA 2 should be a great architecture, the PS5 is somehow able to clock the GPU to around 2.1ghz on the core, and the 5700 XT was a super small die compared to the most comparable Nvidia part (2070 super). Even if you do the math and factor in the node difference, and tensor cores, the 5700 XT still seems to use a smaller die space than the 2070 super.
@Kaldaien, just FYI, https://special-k.info/ throws a certificate error:
This server couldn’t prove that it’s special-k.info ; its security certificate is from discourse.differentk.fyi .
Yeah, that’s why I don’t link to https://special-k.info, if you use http instead it will redirect to https://discourse.differentk.fyi without browsers complaining about the certificate.
There’s a way to get multiple domains onto the certificate, but the cert is generated by the discourse server config and I need to figure out how to change the build process to include special-k.info. Until I poke around in the discourse code, http://special-k.info is the only option.
Why is everyone falling for this? I actually watched it out of curiosity despite not downloading the game yet.
We don’t get true 1:1 before and after comparisons, or even an attempt to do so. Also, did you know lowering graphics settings and installing the recommended GPU drivers helps with performance? Just confusing to me and i have nothing against Jay, it’s just some of it is placebo he’s falling for himself, and the rest is common sense.
Unless the game in question is Horizon: Zero Dawn 
I had to rollback the driver to pre-GameReady release just to get the melted flesh monsters to go away.
Oh yeah, that game came to PC. I was considering trying it again after not getting into it on PS4, but i guess now i’ll be picking up Control.
I haven’t gotten into it either, but I ran out of Ambien 3 weeks ago, lol. That whole 1-year ban + Steam delisting fiasco made it nearly impossible to sleep. I am operating on auto-pilot when I do not sleep, memory sucks and attention span is comparable to a gold fish.
Should get a refill tomorrow if the stupid Doctor will answer his phone when the pharmacy calls. I swear medical marijuana is easier to get than Ambien.