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For those interested in what RAD Game Tools actually makes, as far as I understood from their website (http://www.radgametools.com/ http://www.radgametools.com/

For those interested in what RAD Game Tools actually makes, as far as I understood from their website (http://www.radgametools.com/ http://www.radgametools.com/): Bink 2 - video codec Oodle - data compression suite Telemetry - profiling toolkit Granny 3D - toolkit for building 3d games Miles Sound System 10 - sound authoring toolset in 2D and 3D

bluedino 6y ago
What’s amazing is they have made these same products for like...25 years?
- manfredo 6y ago
  Pretty much. Though they've periodically updated them to use new techniques like animation blending. I think there's also a lot of work in optimizing for different platforms. And perhaps more importantly, there's a lot of work in making the middle ware easy to integrate. Ease of integration is often more important than performance for a lot of middleware. I've seen their logo on tons of games. I never knew they were a local company (Kirkland, WA near Seattle).
  - sitkack 6y ago
    Not geezer splaining you, but they had a fairly heavy advert presence in gamdev magazine and dr dobbs. They are right behind Attachmate in being a big software outfit in Seattle.
scrollaway 6y ago
Really hoping epic takes the opportunity to give Bink a more open license, to be honest. Much as I appreciate how advanced Bink was at the time, i don't know any dev that still use it given that av1 and such are just Good Enough.
- medecau 6y ago
  shows up on cyberpunk 2077 splash screen
- Jasper_ 6y ago
  Bink isn't the codec, though that's good too, it's the software stack. How do you render AV1 on a PS4 or a Nintendo Switch, synchronize it with the audio stream? No, seriously, tell me. GStreamer with its ridiculous threading architecture and lock-heavy approach? You think that's going to run on a console CPU? ffmpeg / libavcodec? Yes, we can hook that up, have it crank out YUV buffers and display those on the GPU, or we can just use Bink. Yes, it costs a ton of money, but based on when I evaluated it last, it was almost twice as fast as libvpx on our target platforms, it was well-suited for games (worked well with custom allocation strategies, didn't start a bunch of threads by itself, integrated well into our renderer), was easy to integrate, the toolchain was lovely, and when we needed help with a bug, we got an email back the same day from Jeff. RAD's support is top-notch. Multimedia is not too big of a problem that a company like Epic can probably spend a few days integrating libvpx and opus to make a custom video solution, but big enough that most smaller studios with custom engines don't have time to spend on that, and those are the sort of problems that RAD likes to tackle.
  - zamadatix 6y ago
    PS4 and Switch both have hardware decoders (though neither would be using AV1 in particular due to age). I'm not sure about how it works on PS4 but on Switch games just use NVDEC like a PC with Nvidia hardware would and the functionality is exposed in the SDK. You can use h.264, h.265, VP8, and VP9 (the hardware supports more but it's not exposed). When Bink was released and the PS2 and Gamecube were on the horizon this kind of thinking was needed. When you get to PS4/Switch you're just running consumer PCs. The exact same Nvidia SoC used in the Switch is actually used by Nvidia for their Shield Android TV boxes whose literal purpose is to play audio/video streams - it's quite capable of doing so.
    - Jasper_ 6y ago
      I can't go into more detail because these platforms do not have any public documentation, but this is not true, you cannot use NVDEC. And it doesn't cover audio or synchronization.
jsheard 6y ago
It doesn't appear to be mentioned on the site, but they also collaborated with Sony to develop the hardware decompression unit in the Playstation 5
- steeeeeeve 6y ago
  Sony hardware engineers put in a herculean effort designing the awesome custam hardware decompression chip, but it was more or less just implementing the existing oodle algorithm, which they licensed. more like a translation of an existing book than writing a new work.
azornathogron 6y ago
Basically any game you've played that has any pre-rendered video (for cutscenes, logos, whatever) most likely uses Bink video for it. Their stuff is very well regarded and widely used. At least that is the impression I have got, watching from outside the industry. It's always possible that I've got a distorted view as an outsider.
- koala_man 6y ago
  > Basically any game you've played that has any pre-rendered video (for cutscenes, logos, whatever) most likely uses Bink video for it. Unless it was a DOS game from the 90s, in which case it may have used its 256 color predecessor Smacker. It's amazing how this tiny company has managed to stay relevant through decades of huge technological shifts.
libraryatnight 6y ago
Almost all of these logos show up at the beginnings of my games. Cyberpunk most recently comes to mind.
moonchild 6y ago
You need extra newlines. Reformatted: Bink 2 - video codec Oodle - data compression suite Telemetry - profiling toolkit Granny 3D - toolkit for building 3d games Miles Sound System 10 - sound authoring toolset in 2D and 3D

bluedino 6y ago

What’s amazing is they have made these same products for like...25 years?

manfredo 6y ago
Pretty much. Though they've periodically updated them to use new techniques like animation blending. I think there's also a lot of work in optimizing for different platforms. And perhaps more importantly, there's a lot of work in making the middle ware easy to integrate. Ease of integration is often more important than performance for a lot of middleware. I've seen their logo on tons of games. I never knew they were a local company (Kirkland, WA near Seattle).
- sitkack 6y ago
  Not geezer splaining you, but they had a fairly heavy advert presence in gamdev magazine and dr dobbs. They are right behind Attachmate in being a big software outfit in Seattle.

scrollaway 6y ago

Really hoping epic takes the opportunity to give Bink a more open license, to be honest. Much as I appreciate how advanced Bink was at the time, i don't know any dev that still use it given that av1 and such are just Good Enough.

medecau 6y ago
shows up on cyberpunk 2077 splash screen
Jasper_ 6y ago
Bink isn't the codec, though that's good too, it's the software stack. How do you render AV1 on a PS4 or a Nintendo Switch, synchronize it with the audio stream? No, seriously, tell me. GStreamer with its ridiculous threading architecture and lock-heavy approach? You think that's going to run on a console CPU? ffmpeg / libavcodec? Yes, we can hook that up, have it crank out YUV buffers and display those on the GPU, or we can just use Bink. Yes, it costs a ton of money, but based on when I evaluated it last, it was almost twice as fast as libvpx on our target platforms, it was well-suited for games (worked well with custom allocation strategies, didn't start a bunch of threads by itself, integrated well into our renderer), was easy to integrate, the toolchain was lovely, and when we needed help with a bug, we got an email back the same day from Jeff. RAD's support is top-notch. Multimedia is not too big of a problem that a company like Epic can probably spend a few days integrating libvpx and opus to make a custom video solution, but big enough that most smaller studios with custom engines don't have time to spend on that, and those are the sort of problems that RAD likes to tackle.
- zamadatix 6y ago
  PS4 and Switch both have hardware decoders (though neither would be using AV1 in particular due to age). I'm not sure about how it works on PS4 but on Switch games just use NVDEC like a PC with Nvidia hardware would and the functionality is exposed in the SDK. You can use h.264, h.265, VP8, and VP9 (the hardware supports more but it's not exposed). When Bink was released and the PS2 and Gamecube were on the horizon this kind of thinking was needed. When you get to PS4/Switch you're just running consumer PCs. The exact same Nvidia SoC used in the Switch is actually used by Nvidia for their Shield Android TV boxes whose literal purpose is to play audio/video streams - it's quite capable of doing so.
  - Jasper_ 6y ago
    I can't go into more detail because these platforms do not have any public documentation, but this is not true, you cannot use NVDEC. And it doesn't cover audio or synchronization.

jsheard 6y ago

It doesn't appear to be mentioned on the site, but they also collaborated with Sony to develop the hardware decompression unit in the Playstation 5

steeeeeeve 6y ago
Sony hardware engineers put in a herculean effort designing the awesome custam hardware decompression chip, but it was more or less just implementing the existing oodle algorithm, which they licensed. more like a translation of an existing book than writing a new work.

azornathogron 6y ago

Basically any game you've played that has any pre-rendered video (for cutscenes, logos, whatever) most likely uses Bink video for it. Their stuff is very well regarded and widely used. At least that is the impression I have got, watching from outside the industry. It's always possible that I've got a distorted view as an outsider.

koala_man 6y ago
> Basically any game you've played that has any pre-rendered video (for cutscenes, logos, whatever) most likely uses Bink video for it. Unless it was a DOS game from the 90s, in which case it may have used its 256 color predecessor Smacker. It's amazing how this tiny company has managed to stay relevant through decades of huge technological shifts.

libraryatnight 6y ago

Almost all of these logos show up at the beginnings of my games. Cyberpunk most recently comes to mind.

moonchild 6y ago

You need extra newlines. Reformatted: Bink 2 - video codec Oodle - data compression suite Telemetry - profiling toolkit Granny 3D - toolkit for building 3d games Miles Sound System 10 - sound authoring toolset in 2D and 3D