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Graphics Technology Discussion: All games on consoles and PCs..
- Thread starter VFX_Veteran
- Start date
exmachina64
Banned
This is a good thing.
I was thinking about something today as I watched The Lego Movie (2014 film) on Blu-ray which uses pretty low-end prerendered CG from what I can tell.
On future consoles, XB4 / PS5 around the end of the decade, I wonder how much game developers might be able to ramp up the per frame detail / complexity and lighting if they limited the resolution to 1080p and the framerate to a locked 30fps, even if those consoles are capable of rendering games in native 4K (3840 x 2160p).
In other words (and this depends on what spec Microsoft & Sony go for next-gen) without the burden of having to render at 4K res, or the burden of running at 60fps, it will be interesting to how much more detail could be crammed into each frame if resolution+framerate are held to 1080p30.
Naturally that is a question nobody can answer right now or anytime in the next couple of years. But seeing The Lego Movie, as well as trailer for The Tomorrow Children on PS4 kinda stirred my imagination about certain trade-offs.
On future consoles, XB4 / PS5 around the end of the decade, I wonder how much game developers might be able to ramp up the per frame detail / complexity and lighting if they limited the resolution to 1080p and the framerate to a locked 30fps, even if those consoles are capable of rendering games in native 4K (3840 x 2160p).
In other words (and this depends on what spec Microsoft & Sony go for next-gen) without the burden of having to render at 4K res, or the burden of running at 60fps, it will be interesting to how much more detail could be crammed into each frame if resolution+framerate are held to 1080p30.
Naturally that is a question nobody can answer right now or anytime in the next couple of years. But seeing The Lego Movie, as well as trailer for The Tomorrow Children on PS4 kinda stirred my imagination about certain trade-offs.
PLASTICA-MAN
Member
If Sony adopts this tech and if it is efficient, we can expect an exponential jump in terms of details possible to display:
http://gearburn.com/2014/08/sonys-playstation-5-plans-could-include-blazing-fast-3d-stacked-ram/
http://goo.gl/1EfKjN
Dictator93
Member
I am pretty sure I read that the lego film was path traced. Hence why it actually looks like legos.
VFX_Veteran
Banned
I just saw it in the vid.. only one level. Too expensive for the whole game. I'd like to know their technique though.
JordanN
Banned
If they do choose to skip 4k, there is always 2k resolution. That was the standard used by Pixar starting with Cars. But of course, those films have lots of anti-aliasing thrown on top of them.
Personally, I prefer Sony/MS wait for the tech for 4k to happen and sell it cheap. Even if it means waiting 10 years for it.
VFX_Veteran
Banned
Bah. One level and that's it? That's not something I would consider a full feature in a game. I would like to know if they used the same technique as CA with realtime radiosity.
VFX_Veteran
Banned
It is. They did a presentation on it at Siggraph.
UnrealEck
Member
Reverb?
VFX_Veteran
Banned
You have no idea what you are saying. It's not. It's using path-tracing and all kinds of PBR with instances, geometry cache, real SSS etc.. that consoles won't have the hardware for at least a few generations.
We need a different architecture for graphics hardware first. Scanline rendering has to be superseded by path-tracing. I imagine the PC will get it first.
JordanN
Banned
Some of those things already exist (PBR and SSS are possible on PS4/XBO).
But there's a lot more to CG that gives it its look (i.e post processing).
You're the one who keeps on thinking this. You never miss a moment to mention that the consoles are a POS.
All that's said is, just last gen and the gen before, games will continue to look better as the generation continues. Nobody is saying there's some hidden power waiting to be used. It boggles my mind why this is doubted seeing how that's what always happens. You have proof out there if you want to look. Launch PS3 games look completely different than the games on PS3 now.
Yes the PS4 is easier to develop for, but there's still learning involved, i don't think that means we won't get the same quality increase over the years.
I was wrong about the rendering technique used in the Lego film, it's more advanced than I had thought. However, I was not suggesting that quality might be possible real-time on future consoles.
I merely said it, among other things, got me wondering if there would be a major benefit for some games (not all) on PS5 era consoles to cap resolution/FPS at 1080p 30 for the purpose of greatly upping the amount of detail/complexity per frame.
My question could also apply to Xbox 360 and PS3. Suppose some games had been developed on those machines in 480p SD (even tho they were capable of 720p and even 1080p). Would the performance savings from not using 720p (~3x the resolution of 480p) allow more to be done with the actual graphics?
I'm pretty sure you could see this effect in a lot of indoor levels. And I know this because I remember playing around with the flashlight throughout the game specifically to see that effect at work.
This thread reminded me to have a look at GDC Vault as I had forgotten GDC happened during Gamescom. In lieu with the recent AC Unity kerfuffle I found an interesting presentation by Alexis Vaisse who's Lead Programmer at Ubisoft Montpellier, in which he discusses the use of compute shaders in their next gen titles (Unity, FC4, Division, etc). It's not a principle we're unfamiliar with as there are obviously tasks better suited to be done on the GPU.
I'm not knowledgeable enough to understand most of the presentation but the presentation includes graphs that reveal interesting relative performance information on last gen and current gen CPUs and GPUs in regards to cloth simulation*.
(*I'm fully aware current gen CPUs are more capable in other areas compared to last gen CPUs like branch prediction)
http://gdcvault.com/play/1020939/Efficient-Usage-of-Compute-Shaders
Maybe the higher clock is doing something afterall
I'm not knowledgeable enough to understand most of the presentation but the presentation includes graphs that reveal interesting relative performance information on last gen and current gen CPUs and GPUs in regards to cloth simulation*.
(*I'm fully aware current gen CPUs are more capable in other areas compared to last gen CPUs like branch prediction)
http://gdcvault.com/play/1020939/Efficient-Usage-of-Compute-Shaders
Maybe the higher clock is doing something afterall
It uses standard shadow map for shadows, there is no trick.
This is simply not true.
TLOU uses their tiled deferred rendering pipeline with a reflective shadowmap and low resolution buffer to calculate indirect lighting from flashlight.
The low-res buffer caused the artifacts that many in gaf were wondering a while back.
The method is very heavy and quality is not that impressive, would love to see them use something like geometrics in their future games. (or other methods which are independent from screen resolution.)
Geometrics use completely different tech.
http://www.geomerics.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/radiosity_architecture.pdf
It's sadly disabled in most scenes.
killatopak
Gold Member
Not really..
Most GPUs can run this game very efficiently.
Also, PS4 and X1 is missing some features in AI. Also limited to 30fps with some dips.. I would hardly call that "holds up very close to a high end PC"
The problem with that pic is that even if you have the same GPU, you don't necessarily have the same CPU/RAM etc.
Except that it doesn't really matter, an i3 is more than enough.
http://gamegpu.ru/action-/-fps-/-tps/alien-isolation-test-gpu.html
NVIDIA drivers:
One of the most visually impressive games I've played recently, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter:
Basically the models and textures in the game are made form real-world photographs/laser scans. Each object is photographed hundreds of times form different angles and then combined into a 3d model using complex algorithms.
More info about it's uses in the game, with very cool in-browser tech demos.
Built on UE3, uses a technique called photogrammetry.
Basically the models and textures in the game are made form real-world photographs/laser scans. Each object is photographed hundreds of times form different angles and then combined into a 3d model using complex algorithms.
More info about it's uses in the game, with very cool in-browser tech demos.
DemonCleaner
Member
Not really..
Most GPUs can run this game very efficiently.
Also, PS4 and X1 is missing some features in AI. Also limited to 30fps with some dips.. I would hardly call that "holds up very close to a high end PC"
if that actually represents a console equivalent setting level, it first and foremost shows how badly optmized this game / engine is on the console side if they can't even hit the performance level of a 'ps4 - 15 %'-TFlops GPU.
playing alien just now and while i love the game it's a technical mess. asset quality is very very low compared to games like KZ:SF. just nothing there to justify this level of performance.
Photogrammetry is a nice tool, but really requires a lot of work to get proper data out of it, especially if one wants to use results for modern PBR engine.
You need to color correct and get all lighting/shadow information out of the color/albedo texture and then create roughness, specular textures.
Would love to see some game to use results of photogrammetry for a tree bark and similar surface with an aid of vector-displacement map or a multilayer parallax map.
Here's some tests without any additional work. (so, not ready for relighting.)
SMOK3Y
Generous Member
or which part of the world you are in as that makes a big difference in price ridiculous in a lot of cases
actually no, I found out what its called, its called madder.
This vid will explain what its all about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuWWdiLlhyg
VFX_Veteran
Banned
No they aren't when using a path-tracer. And the SSS certainly isn't brute force path-tracing. PBR at the material level is very easy. But coming up with an importance sampled area light estimate or indirect light estimate is not. Something no game is doing currently because of hardware limitations.
-M
VFX_Veteran
Banned
Yes. Most certainly.
VFX_Veteran
Banned
I don't see it at all. I even went to the sewer level on the PS4 looking for it. Hell, you can take the flashlight and turn it off and and on and look at the outer cone to see if any indirect is being cast, it is not. The wall has the same intensity as it does when you turn the flashlight off.
Sound occlusion reverberations etc has been around on pc for well over a decade... then it went away when hardware accelerated audio died. It looks like it's making a comebackthough!yay!
PLASTICA-MAN
Member
It was used very well in the first Thief game (Thief Gold) and it used the ahrdware sound cards. It was very cool since you can hear the enemmies when they are away from with a deep distant sound, but now you can hear them just like they were near you while they aren't. It even lets sound propagate when you hit hard materials. Installing the newest openAL driver can enable it back in Theif Gold through emulation and it chnages the whole atmosphere.
VFX_Veteran
Banned
I was talking about the shadow being projected from the flashlight when it hits an object.
Can you give me a link to the specifics of this technique? I have yet to see it in action the PS4 version of TLOU.
ya it sounds really fucking awesome.
On the topic of Killzone:shadowfall, the whole game is a visuals tech extravaganza.
This guy seems to be playing the game fine (compared to consoles) with a GTX 750 ti + CPU from 2008 and DDR2 RAM:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwL9CBPDqYM
Dictator93
Member
Yeah it definitely has a lot of stuff under the hood which is pretty great. I find the best part to be the arbeitrary area lights they have (which also can have volumetric shapes).
vpance
Member
http://gdcvault.com/play/1020939/Efficient-Usage-of-Compute-Shaders
Maybe the higher clock is doing something afterall
Nice find. Using DirectCompute on consoles sounds very stop gap though. Maybe if they toned down the fancy cloth effects they could actually hit both higher res and framerates.
OsirisBlack
Banned
Crytek's tralucency map based skin shading. It actually captures back lighting tansluceny unlike purely screen space based techniques (basically every game ever).
THe ears:
That was very impressive RAD is using similar techniques as light realistically passes through objects in game to include character skin.
The tech in the Order 1886 is pretty impressive
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1020162/Crafting-a-Next-Gen-Material
http://www.allgamesbeta.com/2013/07/crafting-next-gen-material-pipeline-for.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wIgmEch1P8
PLASTICA-MAN
Member
That was very impressive RAD is using similar techniques as light realistically passes through objects in game to include character skin.
The tech in the Order 1886 is pretty impressive
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1020162/Crafting-a-Next-Gen-Material
http://www.allgamesbeta.com/2013/07/crafting-next-gen-material-pipeline-for.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wIgmEch1P8
Naughty Dog included sub-surface scattering since Uncharted 2 after they saw Nvidia head tech demo.
Oh a doubtful person will ask for links:
http://lousodrome.net/blog/light/tag/screen-space-sub-surface-scattering/
http://advances.realtimerendering.com/s2010/index.html
Download the Uncharted 2: Character Lighting and Shading PDF.
Pretty sure flashlight shadows use shadowmaps as well.
It's in ps3 version as well. (although very low resolution and selected scenes only.)
http://youtu.be/qxLJoI16JjU?t=11m41s
Idea is to render ligt view of the scene like in shadowmap, but you render albedo and normal as well.
Using the information you create lot of pointlights into the scene. (you can handle them as normal lights, but you can easily end up with tens of visible lights per pixel, so usually low-res buffer is used.)
Search instant radiosity, virtual point lights (VPL) and reflective shadowmaps and you should get better explanations.
OsirisBlack
Banned
reading it now and I really didn't know about it being in U2 pretty good tech.
Jedipottsy
Member
Perlin noise is the algorithm used to generate volumetric cloud structures. Weather the brand behind the slouds is Truesky or not, they almost certainly used perlin noise to generate the cloud structure. Its the primary method for VFX clouds
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-lZvKHgTKs
Browsing through the TrueSky youtube videos i got reminded of this old video of Elite Dangerous. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTBvpd3_Vqk&feature=player_detailpage#t=286
I wonder how it looks now.
I wonder how it looks now.
PLASTICA-MAN
Member
I heard from a steam friend that Sierra and Lucas Arts are revived and they are coming back slowly. Any news about that? I was very interested in that Indian Jones game that used DMM (Digital Molecular Matter) for realistic destruction (yes it had a better version than the simplistic version of Star Wars The Force Unleashed)!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEJDInk1NXQ
The tech demo was nice, sadly the final game wasn't that advanced in that domain with no shards and debris like that , just big chunks of wood getting broken and disappear later. I watched a longer live presentation of DMM at Games Convention in 2007 or 2008 in the same scene with R2D2 breaking crystlas and bending metal so realistically and dinosaur bones breaking too. In Star Wars, you can use the force to open metal doors by bending them but it looked very limited and almost scripted or animated.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEJDInk1NXQ
The tech demo was nice, sadly the final game wasn't that advanced in that domain with no shards and debris like that , just big chunks of wood getting broken and disappear later. I watched a longer live presentation of DMM at Games Convention in 2007 or 2008 in the same scene with R2D2 breaking crystlas and bending metal so realistically and dinosaur bones breaking too. In Star Wars, you can use the force to open metal doors by bending them but it looked very limited and almost scripted or animated.
Jedipottsy
Member
Crytek's tralucency map based skin shading. It actually captures back lighting tansluceny unlike purely screen space based techniques (basically every game ever).
THe ears:
While the results are impressive, a map based approach like this leads to artifacts and 'faked' results., ie notice the backlit nostril. An approach we used in VFX not long ago was point cloud sss, which while still an approx, considered the density of the geometry and direction of light, and was relatively cheap.
Dictator93
Member
Yeah,but the modek actually used in game is not very accurate at all. Much like screen based/SH warpping techniques.
IMO, something which can be covered with clever art. Much better to have some back lighting then none at all.
PLASTICA-MAN
Member
Yeah the woman's nostril in the game doens't look as if it even existwhen it missed the correct lighting ,it looked like a 2D cartoon nose in some times and angles. I think only Marius got the biggest focus.
PLASTICA-MAN
Member
What does SH mean?
PLASTICA-MAN
Member
Oh wow, Quantum Break uses DMM: http://www.pixelux.com/
No wonder the game physics looked cool http://www.pixelux.com/Remedy-QuantumBreak2013.html?id=20614102&siteID=123112&linkID=9242259
No wonder the game physics looked cool http://www.pixelux.com/Remedy-QuantumBreak2013.html?id=20614102&siteID=123112&linkID=9242259
Dictator93
Member
Spherical Harmonics
JordanN
Banned
On the subject of SSS, UE4 is getting a new one this week!
https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/unreal-engine-45-preview-notes
https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/unreal-engine-45-preview-notes