brain_stew
Member
Modern UE3 games do as well and it works really well. Its a good compromise to make given the limits of current technology.
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The Big Graphics Problems Bungie Wants To Solve
- Thread starter Dennis
- Start date
Zombie James
Banned
people said some thing about grass...and this animates too
Was going to post this. Grass will always look like shit when it's just a flat, low-resolution texture. Polygonal grass it's where it's at.
That's why you read the article.
god of war 3 in general heavily utilizes prerendered visuals and they will purposely maintain a look to remain consistent and give people a sense that everything is real time.
i think this is why santa monica has been so reluctant to share alot of their tech because the game would be less impressive because of the tricks they employ.
i wish someone would analyze the disc data of god of war because a game like that should not be ~35GB unless it heavily uses extremely high fidelity fmv.
Don't Mobile Unity games like Shadowgun use this alot, or I'm confusing it with something else?
Togglesworlh
Banned
Well, then, they purposely made it look ugly. I guess that's a thing.
I've read it before. I just don't see it in the end result. I think Reach is an amazing game, the best console shooter ever made in fact, but nothing about it seemed technically impressive. It's consistently a pretty middling looking game to me. And not just the IQ. Vanquish is sub-HD too, and I think looks way better, and busier generally too.
Pollux
Member
I'm pleased with both of those. The problem is the first image looks like crap minus the decent hair.
That's the power of good old graphical wizardry and smoke 'n mirrors. Vanquish is baked as fuck.
Is that a bad thing or a good thing?
Even if that is the case, I don't see how that changes the argument in anyway, the whole thing is an illusion, I don't think any specific game can be highlighted as more authentic. If Reach does things in real-time it could do before hand to make the actual game ultimately look better, they should. Because the end result is just a game that doesn't look to compete with it's peers on a technical level.
It's not as if the audience have shown any clear preference towards that either. CoD is outselling every shooter by a very large margin, and those games scream inert constantly, to me at least.
Future PhaZe
Member
I refuse to believe that incredible A.I can't put a game over the top in a world where A.I in all games sucks real bad.
Oh brother.
1) Can you demonstrate Santa Monica has been reluctant to share their technology?
2) Can you share with whom Santa Monica should be sharing their technology?
dragonelite
Member
In rendering culling is your number one friend and GTA 4 has a lot of big buildings that can help you with it.
ai sucks in games because there's little reason to improve it. they can just continue to script everything, and the average consumer doesn't really care or know the difference.
vanquish is fine its level of precalculated lighting is actually above the norm.
character shadows look fine, even suit lights interact with the environment and it has excellent object motion blur.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THxbhS4mZ0M
look at decent foilage, and 3:30 for dynamic lights which accurately light character model and environment.
character shadows look fine, even suit lights interact with the environment and it has excellent object motion blur.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THxbhS4mZ0M
look at decent foilage, and 3:30 for dynamic lights which accurately light character model and environment.
Me. I gave those fuckers The Wheel and Horseback Riding almost a year ago.
You said you don't think reach was technically impressive. The visual flair in general is a subject of taste.
Depends how you like it!
Indeed they do. It's most noticeable during cutscenes.
AbortedWalrusFetus
Member
I don't know much about it, but I was always super impressed by the shadowing in the Uncharted series. They weren't jaggy, it seemed like everything cast them, and they showed up on all of the character models.
Vinterbird
Member
Job postings indicate current gen, but since their deal with Activision spans 10 years, I would figure their MMO project will be cross generation.
Do you own GOW3? Have you even played it? It uses video for some cut-scenes like many games do, and it also has over three hours of behind the scenes video on the production of the game. It's obvious why it takes up 35GB, you don't need to analyze anything.
ive beaten it and watched most of the behind the scene stuff.
Stallion Free
Cock Encumbered
You can hate on pre-baked lighting all you want, but Mirror's Edge still has the best lighting of all time.
Also, I'm playing Hard Reset on PC now and their real-time lighting is prolly the best I have seen in a currently released game. And it was made by some random European dudes.
Also, I'm playing Hard Reset on PC now and their real-time lighting is prolly the best I have seen in a currently released game. And it was made by some random European dudes.
ProfessorMoran
Member
WTF would you consider to be a good graphics engine?
ProfessorMoran
Member
The guys at Sony Santa Monica had a specific code/engine for shadows in GOWIII, and I haven't seen anything come close to that on consoles since. Wish they'd share the love.
A lot of their environmental shadows are basically baked, there's nothing special there, it's like going back to the horse and buggy in order to solve the jaggies problem.
ProfessorMoran
Member
Bungie is already competitive in terms of graphical bells and whistles, their lighting solution is one of the best on the xbox360, what do you consider missing from Reach that other games are doing other than maybe dynamic light columns which is more of a feature that we see in 2011?
MT framework is GROSSLY overrated.
They are NOT pre-baked, at least not the ones in the pic.
Look at this vid (1:10 onwards):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKt-Wj58qQw
Zoramon089
Banned
You say this like it's a bad thing. Is there any reason to have real time shadows for static environments? As long as the shadows look right when the character interacts with them isn't that good enough?
Vinterbird
Member
Not sure, but they are using some new middleware stuff, suites for MMO's.
Cant remember much else, sadly stuck on my phone. Gamasutra reported on it not long ago.
ProfessorMoran
Member
Environmental shadows, what shadows are you referring to in that scene?
Not really. R* for one did much much better job(and they are 3rd party). So did Crytek and Epic.
All the realtime shadows from the characters.
The MMO bit scares me. I really hope they're not making an MMO.
Epic are a third party studio, but they're still focusing on a single platform, and I imagine get all the inside baseball any first party studio would. I think that's a special case.
ProfessorMoran
Member
Dynamic light sources, time of day variations, baked shadows aside from not having jaggies don't always look the same as dynamic shadows, and artists have to bake them, everytime you change the position of a fake light or move an object you would have rebake them again, time could be better spent elsewhere than worry about shadow quality.
Basically you have to have static objects to even use baked shadows, and the problem is you end up having a lot of static objects.
Image quality will improve, because AA and output resolution will improve due to hardware advancement, that problem will solve itself eventually instead of trying to fake every single thing in the game world.
I specifically referred to the environmental shadows in my original reply.
They would suck if their characters don't cast realtime shadows, I thought we've already moved on to the point where it is expected that characters don't have shit circular shadows anymore.
I was talking more about R*. To me, they are without a doubt top five when it comes to graphical(tech) wizardly.
ProfessorMoran
Member
Aside from their games being open-world and day-night cycles, what is R* North doing that Bungie isn't?
Their PS3 efforts have been a little lackluster, but on 360 absolutely yeah, RDR looks pretty great. I'm quite excited to see MP3 running on a system first hand, it's their first real stab at a smaller scope, tighter focused action game on these systems, and it's so late in the cycle, it could be amazing.
Have you seen character shadows in 99% of Xbox 360/PS3 games? They would look better as blobs. They're awful.
Vinterbird
Member
I think the MMO stuff was incredibly obvious efter they signed a decade long deal with a single publisher for a single IP.
(Also a friend visited last year and saw some stuff for it, and said it was very online focused, but wouldnt use the MMO term)
Forsaken82
Member
Actually im pretty sure Ubisoft did pretty good in Assassin's Creed Brotherhood. The grass was short but usually reacted to movement
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zgsm0LDy9rU
It is hard to see, but the entire grassy fields in the game are actually grass.
Heart of Black
Member
I think Bungie needs to hire some competent artists to make their characters not look like such generic schlock, & then I might care about their technical prowess.
Well lots of things have hinted at it being an MMO, Bungie have talked about building worlds for players to live in, persistence seems to be a big focus, Kotick said that running the biggest MMO gave Bungie the reassurance they knew how to handle this next project, there's probably more stuff.
I guess it depends what people consider an MMO really. If it has the well crafted co-op gameplay their Halo games do, I'll still be excited to play it, but I'm not paying a monthly subscription for that. I guess I shouldn't put it as I'm against it being an MMO, I'm against it being what MMOs have been so far.
RDR has great looking shadows and they are ALL dynamic. Thats why I like what R* puts out this gen, everything is dynamic.
Don't forget Rare.
Rare have done wonders with the 360 hardware, and they've done it from launch.
Having said that, the engines Bungie have used for all the Halo games HAVE done some amazing stuff not many others do. The problem is, most of that stuff was shit no one notices, cares about, or really adds to the experience.
For example. All mountains and terrain in the distance in Halo games are actually rendered with real geometry. Why? What's the point in doing that?