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RAGE-What we know, crumbs and morsels on id's hybrid racer/shooter(56k is RAGIN)
- Thread starter WHOAguitarninja
- Start date
Finally got my hands on the Edge preview...predictably reporting on it on the web was a complete hatchet job.
First of all it's very clear that when talking about the '20-30 fps' PS3 version, they're talking about the current state of development. Here's some other insights on the current status - the PC version has 'heavy screen tearing', and the in the 360 version 'textures on many surfaces flick visibly between resolutions'. All these things were mentioned together in the article alongside the PS3 framerate as an illustration of where development stands currently across the platforms. Anyone who takes this to be a comment on the expected outcome of the games needs some very basic lessons in comprehension.
Also, the comment from Carmack about "The work remaining is getting it locked so there's never a dropped frame or a tear" was in response to the observation about the tearing in the PC version, not a comment meant to reassure about the PS3 version or about locking the PS3 version at 30fps as some took it to mean.
If anyone wants additional tech tidbits from the preview:
- the mac version 'is a first class citizen' in development; two of the programmers use it as their main development system (Willits & Duffy)
- Single textures range up to 128000x128000, weighing in at 120GB each uncompressed. The game currently weighs in at 'probably a couple of terabytes' according to Carmack.
- The sweet spot would be 1 50GB Blu-ray and 4 8.5GB DVDs, and Doom 4 may wind up as that, but that wasn't indicating what Rage will ship on as reported by CV&G. Just the 'ideal'.
- Every version starts with the same base data and then is compressed to suit each host's medium in a process that takes a couple of days.
- Carmack says they have the 'option' of providing a higher quality dataset with less compression for PS3 if they don't mind doing that process seperately for PS3. Similarly they could do a 'super platinum' PC edition with an 'incredibly rich' dataset if someone doesn't mind assigning 60+ GB for it.
- A lot of id Tech 5's lighting effects are prebaked into the textures. It doesn't handle global dynamic lighting. Edge notes differences between the dynamic lighting and shadows of the say the torch in a NPC's hand, and the subtler higher quality shadows thrown by static objects in the scene, and the irony of the departure from the 'no smoke and mirrors' approach of the Doom3 engine. They don't see it as an issue for Rage itself, but they point out that it might make it a less easy fit for other developers.
That's most of the techy stuff from the 'under the bonnet' aside in the article.
The shots look pretty great mostly, IMO. Some look surprisingly run-of-the-mill also, but others like the character shots etc. are right up there with the state of the art.
First of all it's very clear that when talking about the '20-30 fps' PS3 version, they're talking about the current state of development. Here's some other insights on the current status - the PC version has 'heavy screen tearing', and the in the 360 version 'textures on many surfaces flick visibly between resolutions'. All these things were mentioned together in the article alongside the PS3 framerate as an illustration of where development stands currently across the platforms. Anyone who takes this to be a comment on the expected outcome of the games needs some very basic lessons in comprehension.
Also, the comment from Carmack about "The work remaining is getting it locked so there's never a dropped frame or a tear" was in response to the observation about the tearing in the PC version, not a comment meant to reassure about the PS3 version or about locking the PS3 version at 30fps as some took it to mean.
If anyone wants additional tech tidbits from the preview:
- the mac version 'is a first class citizen' in development; two of the programmers use it as their main development system (Willits & Duffy)
- Single textures range up to 128000x128000, weighing in at 120GB each uncompressed. The game currently weighs in at 'probably a couple of terabytes' according to Carmack.
- The sweet spot would be 1 50GB Blu-ray and 4 8.5GB DVDs, and Doom 4 may wind up as that, but that wasn't indicating what Rage will ship on as reported by CV&G. Just the 'ideal'.
- Every version starts with the same base data and then is compressed to suit each host's medium in a process that takes a couple of days.
- Carmack says they have the 'option' of providing a higher quality dataset with less compression for PS3 if they don't mind doing that process seperately for PS3. Similarly they could do a 'super platinum' PC edition with an 'incredibly rich' dataset if someone doesn't mind assigning 60+ GB for it.
- A lot of id Tech 5's lighting effects are prebaked into the textures. It doesn't handle global dynamic lighting. Edge notes differences between the dynamic lighting and shadows of the say the torch in a NPC's hand, and the subtler higher quality shadows thrown by static objects in the scene, and the irony of the departure from the 'no smoke and mirrors' approach of the Doom3 engine. They don't see it as an issue for Rage itself, but they point out that it might make it a less easy fit for other developers.
That's most of the techy stuff from the 'under the bonnet' aside in the article.
The shots look pretty great mostly, IMO. Some look surprisingly run-of-the-mill also, but others like the character shots etc. are right up there with the state of the art.
badcrumble
Member
Thanks as always gofreak. The lighting thing worries me a little bit - hopefully it wouldn't scare devs away from the open-world possibilities that idtech5 can open up for them.
I'm assuming unified lighting is not in idtech5 because it would inhibit the performance. Carmack said he felt he made a big mistake with Doom 3's lighting, because every individual light ended up taxing performance. That was also his reasoning for why there wasn't a permanent flashlight.
MrJollyLivesNextDoor
Member
jett said:
plenty of games have prebaked global illumination and it can look great when used right (mirrors edge being a great example), expecting GI in a dynamic environment like GTA4 where the sun is always moving is a bit unrealistic at this point - it's not impossible but most of the real time demo's i've seen of it arn't that great.
Thanks for the write up, gofreak! The lightning part has been known (at least to me) earlier, but it's still a bit sad to hear about, especially since I love the unified approach Doom 3 took. Perhaps the industry will return to that a couple of generations from now, or in select PC games.
In other news, there's been a presentation of Id Tech 5 with Rage resources at SigGraph, which is probably a very interesting read for programmers. Personally, I was satisfied with the included screenshots of the engine, presumably taken at maximum settings. Mainly environmental shots, I love the very first and last ones, others are of varying quality.
http://s09.idav.ucdavis.edu/talks/05-JP_id_Tech_5_Challenges.pdf
In other news, there's been a presentation of Id Tech 5 with Rage resources at SigGraph, which is probably a very interesting read for programmers. Personally, I was satisfied with the included screenshots of the engine, presumably taken at maximum settings. Mainly environmental shots, I love the very first and last ones, others are of varying quality.
http://s09.idav.ucdavis.edu/talks/05-JP_id_Tech_5_Challenges.pdf
lemon__fresh
Member
peakish said:
Would have been nice to have sat in on the talk. It's unfortunate that each engine has to be so tied to the underlying hardware(due to extreme platform differences), sounds like a huge undertaking.
RockmanWhore
Member
Wow, those screen look amazing. But isn't it a little stupid to choose use a desert as a setup when the engine main strengh is the crazy textures? I mean, a desert don't need much texture :lol
lemon__fresh
Member
I'm also surprised that they are going through all this trouble just to use super hi-res virtual textures. Other than that the engine seems comparable to others out there. Although if they get their proposed job model to work on all platforms it could be another big breakthrough.
does that first screen look weird to anyone else? its like some of the textures are just flat vertical walls rather than being mapped over the geometry or something. everything looks like you are directly above it looking down on it. second one looks a bit strange too.
it might be the kind of fish eye thing they are using though.
it might be the kind of fish eye thing they are using though.
lemon__fresh
Member
panda21 said:
I'm thinking its due to the increased texture resolution over standard resolution meshes.
fizzelopeguss
Banned
60 frames people.....
PikminHunter
Banned
I apologize to you as well for hurting your feelingsirfan said:
Truant said:
If only Fallout 3 could have skipped that green lightning filter, I love the blue skies in these screens.
panda21 said:
Which are you thinking of in the first, those on the rocks or in the sand? I think the sand and some other areas look weird. Although I'd guess these screens aren't taken from the actual game but rather from the engine, which means they probably have been pulled together by the programmer for the presentation. I'm sure an artist would make better work of it.
lemon__fresh said:
It's less about resolution, more about having 'uniqueness' everywhere in terms of texturing and giving artists freedom to texture things exactly how they want in every given case and not have to worry about the texture-budget.
This won't guarantee 'high res textures' everywhere necessarily, but more 'unique texturing' everywhere.
peakish said:
i think the bit at the bottom of the first one looks kind of strange. but in the second one you can see from the car its got some weird lens going on so it may just be that.
the individual rocks you see on the vertical bits still look a bit strange to me though. maybe its too much texture and too little geometry or something. you can see its a flat texture and the mapping looks slightly off somehow (like before the figured out how to do z-correct texture mapping).
overall it looks amazing though, probably why those little imperfections stand out.
lemon__fresh
Member
gofreak said:
well in order to get that "uniqueness" you are going to have to use alot of textures or a few super hi res ones(megatextures) so i'd say they go hand in hand.
Now hopefully they have enough artist manpower to take advantage of it. Otherwise you are still gonna get procedural texturing popping up in places which isnt necessarily a bad thing, it just wont utilize the new engine features as much. Which makes they're choice of a desert setting particularly strange because it would be a perfect landscape for procedural textures, especially given the advances in noise generation(simplex,improved perlin.. etc).
brain_stew
Member
gofreak said:
Huh? No one at id heard of v-sync? You can add it to any PC game, it doesn't even need to be coded into the game engine, the driver takes care of it just fine.
I'll be playing RAGE with triple buffer v-sync thank you very much, no tearing and no compromised performance either.
gofreak said:
Very nice, ship it on a BD-rom and sign me the fuck up! My 1TB HDD is awaiting. Make it 100GB and two BDs if it means an appreciable increase in quality, and I'm ready and waiting, money in hand.
I hope they add at least 4x anisotropic filtering to the console versions. The insane texture resolution and detail is the most astonishing looking part of the game and it'll be a real shame if all that deatail is lost in a hideous smudged mess because there's no anisotropic filtering.
cyberheater
PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 Xbone PS4 PS4
mr_nothin said:
You should give up gaming for a couple of generations and then come back...
Broadbandito
Member
man those screens look awesome. Cant wait, have been psyched for this since it was announced
brain_stew
Member
baultista said:
There's a few, yes, though its not usually in high amounts, any amount is always appreciated, and I agree its a major eyesore when its missing. I don't play any PC games with anything less than 8xaf these days, the image quality improvement is beyond huge, and is only ever going to be even more masive in a game with such ludicrously detailed textures as RAGE.
Been having a quick read through that PDF and id expect to integrate CUDA, openCL and LRB support, which would be awesome.
brain_stew
Member
Zeliard said:
It could have been an observation from the interviewer, there's every reason to be running without vsync whilst in development but ofcourse you can get rid of that with a flick of a switch whenever you want.
Clearly the journalist isn't particularly up on graphics techology, it'd hardly be a surprise.
charlequin
Banned
gofreak said:
Thanks for this rad report. Screens look rad as expected. Totally blows away any and everything in texture detail. Nowhere else that you get rocks that look like that.
hukasmokincaterpillar
Member
gofreak said:
Thats one of the more compelling things about this tech. iD's approach now is practically a polar opposite from their previous credo. The results are cool as hell though. Have they talked about what their thinking was early on in the process? Must've been some lively R&D.
MvmntInGrn
Member
Textures looks great, but am I the only one who thinks it looks a little soft?
lemon__fresh
Member
brain_stew said:
According to the slides 4xaf is possible, I would assume we might see 2x on the consoles. Hopefully they do end up integrating OpenCL, it could make the engine highly marketable.
lemon__fresh
Member
Wollan said:
Texture trickery? By the looks of things you should also make sure you have a quad core as well.
Thunderbear
Mawio Gawaxy iz da Wheeson hee pways games
gofreak said:
Thank you. And some try to say people don't try to jump on the PS3 every chance they get, including every site that "reported" on this article.