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Killzone: Shadow Fall Multiplayer Runs at 960x1080 vertically interlaced

Gskyace

Member
I don't see any problem of this one.

Aaron Greenberg said Forza 5 and Ryse will be both 1080p @ 60fps once.

While look at these two games.
Ryse isn't obviously, and Crytek admitted before release. But Forza 5 is.
However compare the final build with the video announced on E3, which is recorded in game, big difference can be noticed easily.

So what to say? Sticking to 1080p@60fps, and close some effect, or remain the effect and lower the resolution? Just enjoy the game, even KZ:SF's MP's resolution is revealed, I still like to play it in the begining of the era.
 

coolasj19

Why are you reading my tag instead of the title of my post?
Geez, IGN is saying KZ:SF MP is running at 960p. :/ Idiots.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrSjCg0WclA
To be fair, the nice lady does say something along the lines of "It's rendered in 960p but isn't upscaled in the same way others are" and then they use Leadbetters quote that has all the words but without the explanation of those words. It's not like they lied or something, and as far as I'm concerned that's about as much news as you can get in about the topic in 30 seconds.
Just played the SP again and goddamn is this game gorgeous. The more I think back to some of their comments, the more this starts to seem like they really decided late in the game, after E3 most likely, to try for 60fps. In DF's original deep dive, they mentioned that they had higher quality AA but dropped it to get a slight of a performance boost. I guess they were scrambling to find performance bumps wherever they could. I bet if they had aimed for 60fps earlier on the results would have been better. I wish they had just stuck with 1080p/30 with better AA and maybe even improved the motion blur a bit. Would probably have turned out more consistent overall.

Another strange thing is that this method didn't really up the framerate all that much, unless it was truly abysmal in multiplayer at 1080p. You think that drastic of a res drop would be more than about a 10fps gain.
This is exactly why I can't think it was a last minute thing. Perhaps GG was trying to flex again and just kinda failed. The SP regularly hits 40fps+ and the MP regularly taps 50fps+. Where the hell is all those extra frames?
 

James Sawyer Ford

Gold Member
To be fair, the nice lady does say something along the lines of "It's rendered in 960p but isn't upscaled in the same way others are" and then they use Leadbetters quote that has all the words but without the explanation of those words. It's not like they lied or something, and as far as I'm concerned that's about as much news as you can get in about the topic in 30 seconds.

This is exactly why I can't think it was a last minute thing. Perhaps GG was trying to flex again and just kinda failed. The SP regularly hits 40fps+ and the MP regularly taps 50fps+. Where the hell is all those extra frames?

MP games are more demanding due to the chaotic nature, especially in something like Killzone where you have all these classes doing all sorts of shit all the time. I

In general, I appreciate the better framerate decision in MP -- it's well worth it, and generally quite stable for standard warzone.
 

Stallion Free

Cock Encumbered
I wasn't able to find any MP footage on Gamerysde besides the official vid GG put out shortly before launch. Is there any decent bit rate, 60 fps stuff available (as in not YouTube) from the game post release? I'm curious to see the effect in motion.
 

sono

Member
The really odd thing about this story is that Digital Foundry apparently learned from this technique back then when they visited Guerrilla for their Killzone tech article, yet they did not think that it was worthy of being mentioned in that article. At least we can be sure that Guerilla must have explained that technique to DF themselves, since the technique is quite unique and DF's description of it so specific. It is highly unlikely that DF did find this out alone.

If Guerilla wanted to "lie" as many here say, then why did they tell DF, and why did DF not report this info until now? That is really odd.

These are the questions I have too.

The DF article doesnt explain the source of its statements of how the framebuffer gets built up that way, there is no way they could deduce it.. i.e Guerilla told them..
 
I wasn't able to find any MP footage on Gamerysde besides the official vid GG put out shortly before launch. Is there any decent bit rate, 60 fps stuff available (as in not YouTube) from the game post release? I'm curious to see the effect in motion.

The difference is noticeable but only slightly which is why no one ever suspected that it wasn't 1080p native. I honestly wouldn't even waste time trying to find a download of it if i were you.
 
Yes some people did notice a graphical difference.but that does not negate the fact of a lot of boasting about the multiplayer being 1080p 60fps!

I downloaded the KZ mp vids from gamersyde and thought it looked great, you say KZ MP uses some unique method etc, which is my point resolution is not the most important thing.Look at forza 5 its 1080p but still has aliasing that I did not expect on a next gen system.
Holy shit, talk about moving the goal posts.

The argument went from "lolz ps4 owners didn't notice the lower resolution. Biased exposed!" To "Boasting something something" when the previous argument was disproven.
If trying to argue against "fanboys being fanboys", it helps not to act like one.
 
And then you remember that one has gigantic maps, vehicles, destructible environments and 64 players. BF4 is way more impressive.

I really can't agree with this. Ignoring the other circumstances of what the games are doing in multiplayer and resolution/framerate, even just visually, if you're describing the difference in those terms I don't know where you're coming from.

im talking about single player.

MP is obviously not directly comparable hence scale discrepancy.
 

maneil99

Member
I think this algerithm/technique actually takes alot of power, had killzone actually ran simply at that res it would easily be a constant 60fps. The amouth of variables and calculations it takes for the algerotithm to combine frames is stressing. Good news is this is a new idea ( Or new spin ) and can be improved code wise assuming it was created mid way through dev time
 

ElTorro

I wanted to dominate the living room. Then I took an ESRAM in the knee.
not trying to defend sony or gg but yeah they posted it like it was breaking news. seems convenient to report it now when it fits the narrative to some kind of message they are trying to push.

I don't want to suggest that there is some sort of conspiracy. On the contrary, if there was an "agenda", it wouldn't make any sense for DF to not report it as early as possible. Accusations of shilling or lying are generally used too liberally here, although we have had enough examples over the last months that don't leave much room for other conclusions; but in this case it just wouldn't make sense.

My point is that if GG wanted to be transparent and make their technique public, they would likely chose a channel like DF. The info isn't really important enough for any other channels, and the people interested in it are the same people in DF's target group. So it makes much sense that all they did (and all that was really necessary) was to tell DF. What remains is the oddity that DF didn't report it until now. Not that I want to defend developers in general and GG in particular for not being more transparent, I am just not comfortable with accusations of deliberate lying yet; it's somewhat hyperbolic at this point. We have always learned about such things through things like casual twitter feeds or pixel counting, so it doesn't seem like GG behaved much different than other developers here.

Wish developers would be generally more transparent, though, especially when the game is out on multiple platforms and consumers have a choice between multiple versions.
 

dark10x

Digital Foundry pixel pusher
The difference is noticeable but only slightly which is why no one ever suspected that it wasn't 1080p native. I honestly wouldn't even waste time trying to find a download of it if i were you.
I spent time running around in multi yesterday and it really is convincing. It looks like proper 1080p. There is something slightly strange about it in motion but it looks like a post processing effect more than anything. It's worlds beyond even 900p due to lack of upscaling blur.
 
Heh, I completely disagree with this. BF4 looks plain boring in comparison to the graphical wizardry going on with KZ:SF in multiplayer.

BF4 single player looks pretty decent but the multiplayer is really underwhelming and doesn't give off a next-gen impression. KZ:MP on the other hand totally does.

To each his own James, BF4's draw distance, weather effects, explosion effects, 64 player battles, vehicular warfare, levolution, destruction all gave me the next gen impact and beyond, imo BF4 on PS4/Xbox One is the definite multiplayer experience. KZ:S looks great too, but they are both unique and provide two distinct next gen experiences.
 

Kibbles

Member
To each his own James, BF4's draw distance, atmosphere effects, 64 player battles, vehicular warfare, levolution, destruction all gives the next gen impact and beyond. KZ:S looks great too, but they are both unique and provide two distinct next gen experiences.

Honestly I thought KZSF graphics were a bit overrated. But the multiplayer was boring as fuck and same with the Campaign so I sold it before I got very far. BF4 looks much better imo, especially with the larger scale battles going on.
 

Sean*O

Member
The really odd thing about this story is that Digital Foundry apparently learned from this technique back then when they visited Guerrilla for their Killzone tech article, yet they did not think that it was worthy of being mentioned in that article. At least we can be sure that Guerilla must have explained that technique to DF themselves, since the technique is quite unique and DF's description of it so specific. It is highly unlikely that DF did find this out alone.

If Guerilla wanted to "lie" as many here say, then why did they tell DF, and why did DF not report this info until now? That is really odd.

This is a good point. There is no way the DF guys just figured this out from looking at it. We have some of the best eyes on the internet at peeping pixels and figuring out tech shit here on GAF, and for months not one of them was able to figure this out. So GG clearly shared info with DF (99.9% certain) but they only brought it to light now. Why?
 
I spent time running around in multi yesterday and it really is convincing. It looks like proper 1080p. There is something slightly strange about it in motion but it looks like a post processing effect more than anything. It's worlds beyond even 900p due to lack of upscaling blur.

Yeah, there's definitely a blur in motion but the picture is still clear. I'm very sensible to resolution and killzone was the first console shooter I played à lot because of the clarity of native 1080p.

Like a lot of people said earlier, the issue with sub hd is the upscale artifacts who destroy details and clarity, this solution while not ideal is like you said worlds beyond just by virtue of keeping native res with static objects.

It's a shame every interesting tech talk is spoiled by sensationalist bullshitters who don't know what they are talking about and don't really care about the tech.

I'm glad some gafers delivered again and satisfied my curiosity.
 

ElTorro

I wanted to dominate the living room. Then I took an ESRAM in the knee.
NDA around specifics for exclusive access?

In this case it would have been odd for GG to tell them about this at all. If they are not supposed to report it, then why tell them in the first place.
 
Did no-one think it was odd that the MP supposedly ran at 1080p and a higher frame rate than the single player? I mean, I've been playing online shooters for a long time and I can't recall an instance of the MP having better visuals/performance than the SP. It always struck me as odd about KZ. I don't have the game though, so I didn't want to talk out of my backside.
 

FeiRR

Banned
I don't want to suggest that there is some sort of conspiracy. On the contrary, if there was an "agenda", it wouldn't make any sense for DF to not report it as early as possible. Accusations of shilling or lying are generally used too liberally here, although we have had enough examples over the last months that don't leave much room for other conclusions; but in this case it just wouldn't make sense.

Look at this thread. Those people driving by who stop only to shit on GG even though they don't understand how this rendering technique works and that the output frame is fullHD. They also don't comprehend that assets with lower-than-frame resolution or framerate in games are very common (water, reflections, shadows) and have been used on a daily basis in the last gen (and will be used likewise this gen). Even the title of this thread is still wrong and nobody cared to change it. People who work in gamedev know that optimization of an engine (especially for fixed hardware like consoles) usually means cheating on visuals, asset cutting, lowering IQ in comparison to the initial vision and many other things. If something looks nearly the same and runs better, it usually wins. This is reality, fantasy is $400 hardware performing like $1000 one, full quality games at launch and other impossible things.

DF is lost in my eyes and it's a great shame. I used to enjoy their technical pieces as the only popular site aimed at technicalities of realtime graphics rendering. I used to believe their judgement because it was based on facts. But something happened to them about a year ago and their stories became very biased and simply untrue (like the Thief analysis). Sometimes they skip important or even paramount facts like this case for unknown reason. It doesn't matter who shills, it's bad both sides, of course. I'm not happier if it's Sony. To the contrary, I'm less happy because Sony hardware and engines used on it are in my scope of interest. As I mentioned months earlier in some thread about their article, Microsoft is among their customers, along with many big publishers, Sony is not. Does it matter? I'll leave you the judgement as I have no insight in their relationships.
 

Thrakier

Member
The difference is noticeable but only slightly which is why no one ever suspected that it wasn't 1080p native. I honestly wouldn't even waste time trying to find a download of it if i were you.

That is bullshit. The difference is pretty staggering and probably everyone noticed a downgrade - since the game was "guaranteed" 1080p no one discussed that. They blamed it on other things, like extreme FXAA instead of MSAA and so on.
 

SappYoda

Member
That is bullshit. The difference is pretty staggering and probably everyone noticed a downgrade - since the game was "guaranteed" 1080p no one discussed that. They blamed it on other things, like extreme FXAA instead of MSAA and so on.

People are still when they look at graphics, and thats why probably no one noticed.
 

HTupolev

Member
People are still when they look at graphics
People are literally looking at graphics all the time when they play a game, obviously.

And what happens in action is just as big an aesthetic opportunity for games to impress people in the heat of things as still images, if not much moreso.

Even if I'm just staring at environments, I often do it with some slow walking and rotation.

thats why probably no one noticed.
Yet people did notice, at least relative to the image quality of the single player.
 

thelastword

Banned
The MP of shadowfall is definitely blurry, it could have been a close to launch decision to get this portion of the game to 60fps since the competition in battlefield and cod were both 60. Personally, I would have preferred full hd res with less effects at a locked 30 in mp.

A little note to the devs: Trying to make your game 60fps if it was never your intention in the first place can cause you to make compromises like this (unless you decide to delay the game to achieve that milestone). BF and COD next gen was developed based on 60 but it was a rushed afterthought in Shadowfall. Despite the dev's efforts to get the game at 60 like COD and BF4, many people are still not playing shadowfall mp, ( it's not like there were no popular 30fps mp shooters before, how about KZ2?). Go with your vision devs or at least stay within the confines of what your engine allows. There's no need to butcher IQ just to hit the 60 metric.
 

Toxa

Junior Member
The MP of shadowfall is definitely blurry, it could have been a close to launch decision to get this portion of the game to 60fps since the competition in battlefield and cod were both 60. Personally, I would have preferred full hd res with less effects at a locked 30 in mp.

A little note to the devs: Trying to make your game 60fps if it was never your intention in the first place can cause you to make compromises like this (unless you decide to delay the game to achieve that milestone). BF and COD next gen was developed based on 60 but it was a rushed afterthought in Shadowfall. Despite the dev's efforts to get the game at 60 like COD and BF4, many people are still not playing shadowfall mp, ( it's not like there were no popular 30fps mp shooters before, how about KZ2?). Go with your vision devs or at least stay within the confines of what your engine allows. There's no need to butcher IQ just to hit the 60 metric.


so true
 
The MP of shadowfall is definitely blurry, it could have been a close to launch decision to get this portion of the game to 60fps since the competition in battlefield and cod were both 60. Personally, I would have preferred full hd res with less effects at a locked 30 in mp.

...Go with your vision devs or at least stay within the confines of what your engine allows. There's no need to butcher IQ just to hit the 60 metric.
While I agree with your argument in general, I think it's overstating the case to say they "butchered" the IQ. From what I've seen, the results aren't really any worse than Battlefield's 900p.
 

Alienous

Member
The MP of shadowfall is definitely blurry, it could have been a close to launch decision to get this portion of the game to 60fps since the competition in battlefield and cod were both 60. Personally, I would have preferred full hd res with less effects at a locked 30 in mp.

A little note to the devs: Trying to make your game 60fps if it was never your intention in the first place can cause you to make compromises like this (unless you decide to delay the game to achieve that milestone). BF and COD next gen was developed based on 60 but it was a rushed afterthought in Shadowfall. Despite the dev's efforts to get the game at 60 like COD and BF4, many people are still not playing shadowfall mp, ( it's not like there were no popular 30fps mp shooters before, how about KZ2?). Go with your vision devs or at least stay within the confines of what your engine allows. There's no need to butcher IQ just to hit the 60 metric.

I'd be totally ok with the tricky resolution shit if they managed to hit 60fps. But the multiplayer struggles with 30fps in a full lobby. These kinds of compromises to reach smoother gameplay are fine, but you should be honest. Shadow Fall tries to push their engine too far and fails because of it.
 

Angel76m

Neo Member
think people here mixed something up.

The game is runningin full 1080p in SP and MP.

It is a technik to save a couple of recources and it is not Interlaced and it is not 960x1080p.

For a better understanding:

1: first frame rendered with a resolution of 1920x1080p but only the even Columns will be computed and the gap is filled with blank.
2: frame stored in the buffer
3: 2nd frame rendered with a resolution of 1920x1080p but only odd Columns will computed and the gap is filled with blank.

4: it is not realy clear:
1st it could be that both frames where outputed with the gab's in 1920x1080p or
2nd both frames will be merged and outputted as one frame in 1920x1080p


5: back to start..

For Nr 4 i think it is step 2 because the other solution will be end up in flickering.

In logical at a stable 60 hz the game is rendering in Full HD 1080p but with 30 Pics/Sec depending on the Engine is creating 60 Pictures / Sec but with the half of the information. IT is a kind of interlace but without the problems of Interlacing (flickering).
 

nOoblet16

Member
think people here mixed something up.

The game is runningin full 1080p in SP and MP.

It is a technik to save a couple of recources and it is not Interlaced and it is not 960x1080p.

For a better understanding:

1: first frame rendered with a resolution of 1920x1080p but only the even Columns will be computed and the gap is filled with blank.
2: frame stored in the buffer
3: 2nd frame rendered with a resolution of 1920x1080p but only odd Columns will computed and the gap is filled with blank.

4: it is not realy clear:
1st it could be that both frames where outputed with the gab's in 1920x1080p or
2nd both frames will be merged and outputted as one frame in 1920x1080p


5: back to start..

For Nr 4 i think it is step 2 because the other solution will be end up in flickering.

In logical at a stable 60 hz the game is rendering in Full HD 1080p but with 30 Pics/Sec depending on the Engine is creating 60 Pictures / Sec but with the half of the information. IT is a kind of interlace but without the problems of Interlacing (flickering).

From what I can guess they use temporal information from Frame 1 to recreate the blank areas in Frame 2 and then so on. It requires quite some resources to compute since it's temporal information from previous frames.

A lot of games use temporal information to update their assets, and this is what real time rendering is ie. using tricks and approximations to create the illusion of a proper rendered image rather than full blown accuracy like Ray tracing. Which is why I'm surprised at people calling this game sub 1080p, when it clearly isn't and is using a technique not seen before.
 

dark10x

Digital Foundry pixel pusher
Here's a shot taken while rotating the camera at a medium steady rate (taken from a capture card rather than using the built-in sharing feature).

Considering the technique being used, I'm impressed with how artifact free the image appears in motion. From what I can see, this type of rendering has the most noticeable impact on thin objects (such as fences) but even then it simply looks as if it is part of the camera blur.

ARA.png


Here's the same area taken with maximum camera rotation speed. Motion blur is in full effect. If you look at the metal flooring you can see increased aliasing with larger steps but the image still looks good. Without the excellent motion blur it would certainly be more obvious.

BRA.png


I'd love to know just how many resources this technique frees up. It could be a real alternative to traditional rendering that would allow for a higher framerate without the massive loss in image quality associated with lowering overall resolution (which really only looks bad as a result of scaling).

Also, just for fun, here's a shot with the PS4 set to output at 720p. The system is downscaling the image so jaggies are minimized compared to what you'd get with a traditional 720p image. When blown up to 1080p it looks dramatically worse than the 960x1080 method they used.

Click on the images to see them at full resolution.

DRA.png
 

RoboPlato

I'd be in the dick
I don't want to suggest that there is some sort of conspiracy. On the contrary, if there was an "agenda", it wouldn't make any sense for DF to not report it as early as possible. Accusations of shilling or lying are generally used too liberally here, although we have had enough examples over the last months that don't leave much room for other conclusions; but in this case it just wouldn't make sense.

My point is that if GG wanted to be transparent and make their technique public, they would likely chose a channel like DF. The info isn't really important enough for any other channels, and the people interested in it are the same people in DF's target group. So it makes much sense that all they did (and all that was really necessary) was to tell DF. What remains is the oddity that DF didn't report it until now. Not that I want to defend developers in general and GG in particular for not being more transparent, I am just not comfortable with accusations of deliberate lying yet; it's somewhat hyperbolic at this point. We have always learned about such things through things like casual twitter feeds or pixel counting, so it doesn't seem like GG behaved much different than other developers here.

Wish developers would be generally more transparent, though, especially when the game is out on multiple platforms and consumers have a choice between multiple versions.

I agree with you but I still don't like that they called it 1080p native multiple times since that directly implies 1920x1080. DF not reporting it is very odd though.
 

dark10x

Digital Foundry pixel pusher
I agree with you but I still don't like that they called it 1080p native multiple times since that directly implies 1920x1080. DF not reporting it is very odd though.
Look at the shot I posted. It really does look like native 1080p.
 

RoboPlato

I'd be in the dick
Look at the shot I posted. It really does look like native 1080p.

Those shots look way better than the game has ever looked on my TV in multiplayer. Honestly I wouldn't be this annoyed if the game ran at a steady 60fps or looked that clean all the time since the method is rather clever but it doesn't.

I do think this technique has some potential though. Considering that this is likely a late addition to the engine it can probably be improved considerably with more work or a higher base resolution.
 

jiggles

Banned
It's kind of insane how difficult it is to spot in those shots. I'd take this over an upscaled image or frame-rate reduction any day of the week.
 

Vamphuntr

Member
Now it's interlaced, too? Funny thing people made such a fuss about the Xbox One and its 720p games while clamoring if was easy to see the difference between 720p and 1080p.
 

dark10x

Digital Foundry pixel pusher
Those shots look way better than the game has ever looked on my TV in multiplayer. Honestly I wouldn't be this annoyed if the game ran at a steady 60fps since the method is rather clever but it doesn't.

I do think this technique has some potential though. Considering that this is likely a late addition to the engine it can probably be improved considerably with more work or a higher base resolution.
Really? What kind of TV are you using? Those are just direct captures from a PS4. Nothing fancy going on.

I think it looks a lot better than that on my Kuro plasma, in fact. From about 5ft away (It's a 50" screen), the image is crisp and clean. Looking closely on this monitor reveals more flaws, actually.

kind of like motion rez on LCDs. Looks great still shot until its in motion.
Keep in mind that the blur is the result of actual motion blur and appears in SP as well. That blurriness of the shot has nothing to do with this technique.
 

RoboPlato

I'd be in the dick
Really? What kind of TV are you using? Those are just direct captures from a PS4. Nothing fancy going on.

I think it looks a lot better than that on my Kuro plasma, in fact. From about 5ft away (It's a 50" screen), the image is crisp and clean. Looking closely on this monitor reveals more flaws, actually.


Keep in mind that the blur is the result of actual motion blur and appears in SP as well. That blurriness of the shot has nothing to do with this technique.

You have a Kuro? That would explain a lot (and I should have figured it out from your avatar). I just have a 32inch Samsung LCD from a few years back. Planning a substantial upgrade later this year.
 

benny_a

extra source of jiggaflops
Really? What kind of TV are you using? Those are just direct captures from a PS4. Nothing fancy going on.

I don't know if that is the map, but I think KZSF looked the worst in the map with the white buildings. (Edit: How about the same map in a full server.)

That 720p vs. 1080p* image is very interesting.

I think this solution overall is very interesting. But I also felt like that with the LucasArts method where the guy blurred the main character to get from 30 to 60fps.\

My position on this is just that they should have been up front about it.
Now that ElTorro says GG told DF about this before launch and it was only reported now means GG is not really the culprit because they communicated it to the console tech enthusiast outlet.
 
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