http://fumufumu.q-games.com/archives/2014_09.php#000934
That's some HOT technology.
Cascaced Voxel Cone Tracing enables them to simulate lighting in real time (ray-tracing), and uses actual real reflections, and not screen space reflections like most games.
EDIT: Dylan Cuthbert in this thread:
That's some HOT technology.
Cascaced Voxel Cone Tracing enables them to simulate lighting in real time (ray-tracing), and uses actual real reflections, and not screen space reflections like most games.
EDIT: Dylan Cuthbert in this thread:
Hey, it's Dylan here from Q,
Thanks for checking out James' presentation, he put a lot of work into that to try and help people understand what is going on with our engine!
The game has freely deform-able geometry which is why right at the start we decided we couldn't go with the more standard graphics pipelines that need a lot of pre-baked information. However, we *did* want the very nice lighting that those pre-baked systems can give (like the lighting you are seeing in the Silicon Studios demo released this week).
When you guys see this game actually *running* in 1080p on your tvs with the lighting all simply *working* you are going to love it; dig into a mountain and the light spills around correctly, and the shadowing from things cast in all directions natually and realistically. It /almost/ looks like a Pixar movie at times and is the closest to that "rendered" ideal I've seen so far in an actual game (not a tech demo). Although I do have high hopes for Uncharted on the PS4!
Release information and types of release etc., are entirely up to Sony. Although, because this game is only online, an online-only release does make sense.
*quote*
Thanks, this is the kind of comment I like to see because I am amazed daily by how it looks. The latest builds actually look a lot better than the footage in those videos now too because we're constantly tweaking and tuning.
The game is a bit of a crazy sandbox experience, we don't force you to do anything really and you can decide either collectively/collaboratively or egotistically to do whatever you want. You could just set up a picnic up in the hills if you like. (of course if everyone does that your beautiful vista might eventually become marred by the sight of the burning town in the distance, but hey, someone will do the work right?)
The response has been truly amazing since Gamescom.
We are kind of sticking our necks out a bit on this one, new technology and a new genre, it's been a huge challenge for us.
One side of the game people haven't picked up on yet is that it also has hints of a collaborative Animal Crossing in it (without drawing on that too much), but with kaiju and missile launchers!
SCEE and SCEA should be making announcements regarding the alpha testing in their respective territories soon.
*snipped quote*
You live in a particular town with X no. of other people, you can visit other people's towns too. The world and its objects are entirely shared but you only see each-other when you perform actions that can affect other players because you are projected clones all a little shifted away from each-other on the plane of reality.
So for example, if you pick up an object, you will appear in the other people's worlds, stoop down, pick up the object, stand up and then fizzle out of existence (taking the object with you).
When you put it down again, the same thing happens again, leaving the object in everyone's world.
Someone was saying on twitter that in an earlier thread on neogaf a false rumour was spread saying that we aren't 1080p. Well, I'm saying it now, we've always been 1080p, right from the very start and never even considered a lower resolution. There is no up-scaling.
Lukas - you really need to read the pdf - we ditched octrees for 3d textures which sped up everything, especially when we moved to multiple sets of 3d textures. Have a read through, we have some pretty damn good optimisations detailed in there.
Async compute does let the ps4 punch above its weight, because code can be fine-tuned to the system we have to use it fully (filling in the holes).
Callibretto - because it adds a lot of uniqueness to the game and lets us do things a bit differently. It also lets us support a ton of people in the same area with no slow down.
The most important thing though is that it lets you feel more in control, more as if you are playing a single player game (like Journey or Dark Souls) and the other players simply pop in from time to time.
Actually we do optimize down to the register level for a lot of stuff; we check and fine-tune all the important core loops to that level. It's how we squeeze stuff to be the fastest it can be.
We took the challenge because several years ago right at the start of the project Mark [Cerny] personally asked us to use it, as other devs will initially use the simpler "PC" gpu pipeline. He wanted someone to try and use all the cool hardware he had spent years putting together