The technology of Alan Wake *spawn

[AnttiApina]

Hi! Hopefully this won't be a douple post, seems like my first mesasge didn't arrive.

Anyway, a handful of new screens are available at GameReactor:
http://www.gamereactor.se/bild/?textid=22161&id=210435

Hopefully this will settle the resolution debate. I suggest you look into these pictures, becaues they are from a different source and seem rather sharp compared to the VideoGames.De screens.

Could someone do a quick calculation on one of these pictures?

Thank you!

[AlStrong]

Could someone do a quick calculation on one of these pictures?

We can move on (really!).

[LightHeaven]

Hi! Hopefully this won't be a douple post, seems like my first mesasge didn't arrive.

Anyway, a handful of new screens are available at GameReactor:
http://www.gamereactor.se/bild/?textid=22161&id=210435

Hopefully this will settle the resolution debate. I suggest you look into these pictures, becaues they are from a different source and seem rather sharp compared to the VideoGames.De screens.

Could someone do a quick calculation on one of these pictures?

Thank you!

I can't pixel count, but those sure look like upscaled, though indeed they look better then the previous ones. And seems to hold up pretty well, it only looks really bad on the cars (but they already don't look that great no matter the res, so XD)... probably the higher contrast areas will be more affected.

[ultragpu]

They look upscaled to me, the water almost look pixelated and the textures look definitively blurry but the aliasing are pretty much gone. Still a pretty looking game if you ask me.

[2real4tv]

Are those direct feeds or captures from a video?

[corduroygt]

Very obvious that it's not 720p from those shots, but why should you care as long as it looks good.
I'm playing a subHD game at the moment (Ratchet and Clank) and I still enjoy it.

[ShadowRunner]

To be fair this is a technology discussion. That said the res has been confirmed many times no need to keep going over it, though it would be interesting to know the technical reason for them going for 540p rather than 580 or 500p etc. wether it was purely a performance/quality balancing act and 540p was the best or if there was anything else influencing the descision like scaling issues or something.

[Quaz51]

Hi! Hopefully this won't be a douple post, seems like my first mesasge didn't arrive.

Anyway, a handful of new screens are available at GameReactor:
http://www.gamereactor.se/bild/?textid=22161&id=210435

Hopefully this will settle the resolution debate. I suggest you look into these pictures, becaues they are from a different source and seem rather sharp compared to the VideoGames.De screens.

Could someone do a quick calculation on one of these pictures?

Thank you!


all 540p

[LittleJohnny]

To be fair this is a technology discussion. That said the res has been confirmed many times no need to keep going over it, though it would be interesting to know the technical reason for them going for 540p rather than 580 or 500p etc. wether it was purely a performance/quality balancing act and 540p was the best or if there was anything else influencing the descision like scaling issues or something.

540p is probably easier to scale to 1080. 540x2=1080.

I still would rather wait until the final game is released and tests are done with a gold copy.

[AlStrong]

540p is probably easier to scale to 1080. 540x2=1080.


As noted before, the framebuffer is software scaled to overlay the 720p HUD, so the integer factor scaling argument would be irrelevant. :)


I still would rather wait until the final game is released and tests are done with a gold copy.I wouldn't hold too much expectation on res, but the rest of the analysis ought to be interesting. Situation with tearing? framerate drops? where and why? texture aliasing? where the MSAA fails if it does? shadows... alpha to coverage... does fog receive colour lighting? how's the geometry LOD transition? water techniques? etc.

Resolution isn't the only technical aspect.

[Chisholm]

Gamasutra article on Alan Wake's cloth physics:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4383/the_secrets_of_cloth_simulation_in_.php?page=1

[larrylain]

On topic>

Listen Eurogamer/Digital Foundry respects MazingerDude/Quaz51 who found out the native rez of sc conviction,ff13 x360,gta4 ps3 and now AW.
If Quaz51 has said that the game is 540p then take that as a gospel truth. You can do the same if MazingerDude tells you so as well

as for al,quaz51 -- correct me if i am wrong , but could the game look blurry on an HD tv since the native rez is 547p, meaning that it would be stretched 2x on a 720p screen?

[Scott_Arm]

Gamasutra article on Alan Wake's cloth physics:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4383/the_secrets_of_cloth_simulation_in_.php?page=1

Nice share. Will read when I get home.

[Shifty Geezer]

If Quaz51 has said that the game is 540p then take that as a gospel truth. You can do the same if MazingerDude tells you so as wellThey know what they are doing, for sure, and we all respect their Awesome Powers. However, you shouldn't really take any research findings anyone presents as 'gospel truth' based on their reputation alone. Mistakes are made by everyone. I heartily encourage intelligent questioning of any asserted fact, followed with either respectful investigation when a mistake is found, or polite acceptance when the evidence and reasoning is concrete proof (or we get official confirmation from those even closer to the debate in question). That is infinitely preferable to blind acceptance, and I'll be surprised if Quaz and MazingerDude aren't similarly minded.

[Laa-Yosh]

Now you guys know why I always call cloth simulation a complicated issue :)

All this jacket can do is move relatively well, but the density of the simulation mesh is nowhere near the amount that's required to create folds and wrinkles. I'd say about 20-40x as much geometry is needed, and I'm almost entirely sure that the processing power requirements are not linearly scaling (because folds also need self collision usually).

Nevertheless, it looks very nice and impressive.

[Alucardx23]

Nice video showing Alan Wake tech.
http://www.gamepro.de/index.cfm?pid=386&pk=2328

[[Reki]]

The ambient occlusion looks most excellent.

[Billy Idol]

I am interested to see how the graphics of this game will be received by us (gamers)!
Up to now, it seems to be common (at the moment) that the chosen "graphic kings" are usually 720p games (except, MW, which has some supporter as well).

If Alan Wake's graphics turn out to be outstanding, and a lot of people agree and the game gets even awards for its graphics- this could maybe change the graphics of the next games we will get!
AW could be a creative precedent...and maybe more and more devs are going to sacrifice resolution to include some extra bling!

[nightshade]

The thing is if something works for one game doesn't necessarily means it'll work for another just as fine.
A blurry look will certainly help AW's look due to its dreamy look & hazy atmosphere, won't work out well with many other games especially vibrant games.

[Rangers]

Well, it was interesting they talked about the game on this week's Weekend Confirmed podcast (basically the spiritual successor to the old 1up podcasts with Garnett Lee) and they seemed to really love the game, but anyway they said a few things about how it looked "amazing" and such, but they never said anything about the 540P. I got the impression they very well probably dont even know.

I'm pretty sure that's how it's going to go down, the "average" person wont even know.

[dragonelite]

Well, it was interesting they talked about the game on this week's Weekend Confirmed podcast (basically the spiritual successor to the old 1up podcasts with Garnett Lee) and they seemed to really love the game, but anyway they said a few things about how it looked "amazing" and such, but they never said anything about the 540P. I got the impression they very well probably dont even know.

I'm pretty sure that's how it's going to go down, the "average" person wont even know.

All the 22min footage got was praise from it looks.
Untill 20 pages further in some threads on different forum the pixel count result came in, and the rest is history.:wink:

[larrylain]

The game is 540p no doubt. The latest batch of screens for GR do confirm that too.Hows the game is gonna look like on a 720p tv? that is something the tech gurus/mods of B3D would be able to tell us

[JB9861]

I am interested to see how the graphics of this game will be received by us (gamers)!
Up to now, it seems to be common (at the moment) that the chosen "graphic kings" are usually 720p games (except, MW, which has some supporter as well).

If Alan Wake's graphics turn out to be outstanding, and a lot of people agree and the game gets even awards for its graphics- this could maybe change the graphics of the next games we will get!
AW could be a creative precedent...and maybe more and more devs are going to sacrifice resolution to include some extra bling!

It's not unprecedented at all for sub HD games to receive praise and visual awards. They've done that in the past. 720p games compete just fine. I wouldn't encourage someone to aspire to low resolutions because that's moving the goalposts even further from what these systems were suppose to be delivering, but these sub HD games aren't even offering extra bling. They're just managing to look comparable.

[Rangers]

The game is 540p no doubt. The latest batch of screens for GR do confirm that too.Hows the game is gonna look like on a 720p tv? that is something the tech gurus/mods of B3D would be able to tell us

Who has a 720P TV? 99% of HDTV's are 1080P.

[Rangers]

All the 22min footage got was praise from it looks.
Untill 20 pages further in some threads on different forum the pixel count result came in, and the rest is history.:wink:

History...on forums...I doubt most reviewers let alone laypeople will care much. Or even understand. A layperson probably can only vaguely comprehend resolution concepts anyway. What do you think would really go through the mind of a non technology minded person if you tried to explain 540P to them? I dont think they could really comprehend it. It's simpler to maybe draw a line between HD and SD, though many people probably even struggle with that. But then to try to explain "this is kind of HD, but not as good" or something like that..joe six pack will not care, he will just look at the screen and think it looks normal.

I would expect for example, that most reviews will only touch on the 540P issue at best if at all, in passing, spend another paragraph or two detailing how the game looks great due to x y and z, and move on.

[zed]

Who has a 720P TV? 99% of HDTV's are 1080P.
hmmm not correct today and certainly not true 3 years ago.
I wish it was true though, I just done a quicke search in the states at a couple of websites to see if it was somehow different to here in nz, and its the same story, still a lot of 720p sets out there
I had a quick look at amazon.com (true they dont sell many tv's but theyre the only ones I know off with a sales ranking) num 1+2 on the best selling list are 720p tvs

[Shifty Geezer]

Who has a 720P TV? 99% of HDTV's are 1080P.Supporting stats? I just bought a latest model Sammy Series 4 32" 720p TV, so it's not like 720p is even obsolete now (1080p 32" sets have only been on the UK market for about a year I think), and even if most TVs sold now are 1080p, the majority of install base is likely 720p. Unless you can prove otherwise. ;)

[Laa-Yosh]

Who has a 720P TV? 99% of HDTV's are 1080P.

Er... a lot of people who got their TVs at the beginning of this console generation? Most small to mid sized LCD TVs were 1360*768 or so, a lot of plasmas as well; not to mention the early plasma TVs with resolutions like 840*480 or 576.

Just because it's easy to buy a 1080p TV nowadays and sales are rising, it doesn't mean that everyone has the newest model at home.

[Laa-Yosh]

I wouldn't encourage someone to aspire to low resolutions because that's moving the goalposts even further from what these systems were suppose to be delivering, but these sub HD games aren't even offering extra bling. They're just managing to look comparable.

Most games go sub HD because of performance problems IMHO; it is an easy solution that apparently less than 10% of the userbase will ever notice.

The only case so far where I can justify the decision is COD4; it is a good compromise to trade off 720p for 60fps and fast controller feedback.
I can also see Bungie's reasons, but as Reach has proven, it is possible to get a higher resolution and good HDR at the same time. They just needed more time to find a way.

Now Alan Wake seems to be the next game that can offer something for the loss in resolution, but I'd still prefer to see it on a TV with my own eyes. It certainly looks promising but the loss of detail is quite significant on paper (almost half the pixels are gone).


Personally, I'd still prefer 720p and a cleaner, sharper image; and there are many games out there on both platforms that manage to do that and look impressive at the same time.
Whether 720p + AA on 1080p sets will be a good idea on the next console generation or not is another question though... Maybe 720p really is enough, or maybe we'll see 960*1080 instead. Then there's the 3D revolution spinning up...

[Rangers]

Supporting stats? I just bought a latest model Sammy Series 4 32" 720p TV, so it's not like 720p is even obsolete now (1080p 32" sets have only been on the UK market for about a year I think), and even if most TVs sold now are 1080p, the majority of install base is likely 720p. Unless you can prove otherwise. ;)

Majority of install base 720P??? No way. 720p was only normal when HDTV market penetration was just beginning (and even then 1080P quickly battled it), which necessarily means it's a small share . You can hardly buy a TV above 32-37" today that's not 1080P. In fact even those would be discontinued models.

But I googled and couldn't really find any statistics. OK, 99% is obviously a little on the high side :)

[Svensk Viking]

I guess it is obvious that 540 4xMSAA will look better than 720p no AA when played on SDTV/EDTV?

[nightshade]

I guess it is obvious that 540 4xMSAA will look better than 720p no AA when played on SDTV/EDTV?
yea..because of the AA. A game that's 720p/no AA will be 480p/no AA while playing on SDTV while 540p/4*AA will be 480p/4*AA.
Unless ofcourse the game uses a different framebuffer while displaying in SD resolution, like Gears of War 1 which does a downscale from 960*720 to 480p & provides a super sampling effect.

[Shifty Geezer]

Majority of install base 720P??? No way. 720p was only normal when HDTV market penetration was just beginning (and even then 1080P quickly battled it), which necessarily means it's a small share . You can hardly buy a TV above 32-37" today that's not 1080P. Yes, today. A year ago, 32" sets were 720p. These are a very common size among Europe as I understand it, altrhough I believe Americans have typically larger sets. 40" is about the maximum common standard here. 40" 1080p sets were rare at the beginning of this gen. My friend bought a 1080p Sammy for his PS3 some 6 months after its release, and he had very few options. So although 1080p is commonplace now, it wasn't, and for the majority of this generation hasn't been, and unless everyone who bought a 720p set for their XB360 or PS3 has recently upgraded to 1080p, the expectation should be that the majority (>50%) are at 720p.

[larrylain]

Who has a 720P TV? 99% of HDTV's are 1080P.

i think you misunderstood my question. I was wondering as to how the game could look like when displayed on a 720p or HD tv. I was inquiring since the game has roughly half the resolution as a normal 720p game . So my question was -could it look very blurry on an HD tv? i was also wondering if 4xAA was enough to compensate for half the resolution of a 720p game?

if you look at the NON DOCTORED/BULLSHOT images of AW which were released like a few days ago,then you could see that the game was looking blurry in those screens

[larrylain]

You know what ? there has been conflicting reports on the graphics of this game. Some at GAF are claiming that the game looks gorgeous on HD tv , some are saying just this .
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=21070774&postcount=3809. I know GAF is also a fanboy forum , but i would still wait for a B3D mod/guru's confirmation of the game's look ,before i purchase it.

[Laa-Yosh]

One thing you can try is to download some HQ movie in WMV format, copy it onto a pendrive and watch it through your Xbox on your TV. It should give you a relatively good idea of what to expect.
Unfortunately, very high quality movies are a rarity...

[[Reki]]

You know what ? there has been conflicting reports on the graphics of this game. Some at GAF are claiming that the game looks gorgeous on HD tv , some are saying just this .
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=21070774&postcount=3809. I know GAF is also a fanboy forum , but i would still wait for a B3D mod/guru's confirmation of the game's look ,before i purchase it.

The low resolution is simply gonna cause the game to look blurry. If you can deal with that, buy it, if not, don't ;)

[Shifty Geezer]

...but i would still wait for a B3D mod/guru's confirmation of the game's look ,before i purchase it.No-one can answer that for you but yourself. You need to view upscaled content on your TV to see if you like the look of it. If you have no problem watching SD content on your TV, you shouldn't have a problem viewing Alan Wake.

[sebbbi]

Console game graphics technology development is all about finding the best compromise between your frame rate, image quality and resolution (for output image, shadowmaps, post effects, particles, etc). All console platforms have predetermined resources to use. If you want to have better looking pixels, you have to either optimize your code, reduce your resolution(s) or reduce your frame rate. Room for optimization always ends up somewhere (current gen consoles are already pretty old and well studied), so at some point you have to decide whether you want to have less better looking pixels or more worse looking pixels.

The current generation hardware is the first HD generation console hardware, and it also is the first console hardware with flexible programmable shaders (hundreds of instructions can be executed per pixel). The processing requirement per outputted pixel has increased dramatically since the last generation. Now we calculate real time pixel perfect lighting using per pixel normals and per pixel material definition. And we do this for dozens of light sources every frame, and we calculate real time shadows from all occluders and all light sources also.

Any developer can still choose to render using a simple color texture with baked light map lighting if he/she chooses so. Using technology like this, there would be no problem at all to render at full 1080p at 60 fps (with MSAA and anisotropic filtering even). However most developers feel that it's more imporant to get better looking image instead of the highest possible resolution. Pixel quality over pixel quantity.

I personally prefer Alan Wake image quality (at quarter Full HD) over the new Perfect Dark version (at Full HD). Alan Wake has four times less output pixels...

[scently]

Console game graphics technology development is all about finding the best compromise between your frame rate, image quality and resolution (for output image, shadowmaps, post effects, particles, etc). All console platforms have predetermined resources to use. If you want to have better looking pixels, you have to either optimize your code, reduce your resolution(s) or reduce your frame rate. Room for optimization always ends up somewhere (current gen consoles are already pretty old and well studied), so at some point you have to decide whether you want to have less better looking pixels or more worse looking pixels.

The current generation hardware is the first HD generation console hardware, and it also is the first console hardware with flexible programmable shaders (hundreds of instructions can be executed per pixel). The processing requirement per outputted pixel has increased dramatically since the last generation. Now we calculate real time pixel perfect lighting using per pixel normals and per pixel material definition. And we do this for dozens of light sources every frame, and we calculate real time shadows from all occluders and all light sources also.

Any developer can still choose to render using a simple color texture with baked light map lighting if he/she chooses so. Using technology like this, there would be no problem at all to render at full 1080p at 60 fps (with MSAA and anisotropic filtering even). However most developers feel that it's more imporant to get better looking image instead of the highest possible resolution. Pixel quality over pixel quantity.

I personally prefer Alan Wake image quality (at quarter Full HD) over the new Perfect Dark version (at Full HD). Alan Wake has four times less output pixels...
Perfectly said.

[2real4tv]

Majority of install base 720P??? No way. 720p was only normal when HDTV market penetration was just beginning (and even then 1080P quickly battled it), which necessarily means it's a small share . You can hardly buy a TV above 32-37" today that's not 1080P. In fact even those would be discontinued models.

But I googled and couldn't really find any statistics. OK, 99% is obviously a little on the high side :)

iirc 720p tvs are cheaper than 1080p, I have two 720p tvs.

[Silent_Buddha]

Yes, today. A year ago, 32" sets were 720p. These are a very common size among Europe as I understand it, altrhough I believe Americans have typically larger sets. 40" is about the maximum common standard here. 40" 1080p sets were rare at the beginning of this gen. My friend bought a 1080p Sammy for his PS3 some 6 months after its release, and he had very few options. So although 1080p is commonplace now, it wasn't, and for the majority of this generation hasn't been, and unless everyone who bought a 720p set for their XB360 or PS3 has recently upgraded to 1080p, the expectation should be that the majority (>50%) are at 720p.

No, 32" 720p sets are still the lions share of consumer LCD TV purchases in the US also.

Regards,
SB

[Kasersky]

Who has a 720P TV? 99% of HDTV's are 1080P.

even then 1280x720 is just an arbitrary number. whether you get a 720p set or a 1080p set its being upscaled. since 720p sets 99% actually have a pixel resolution of 1366x768.

[Shifty Geezer]

No, 32" 720p sets are still the lions share of consumer LCD TV purchases in the US also.In which case up until a couple of years ago at the earliest I think, depending how far ahead the US is in product availability, 1080p sets wouldn't have been available at that size except maybe in the very high end.

even then 1280x720 is just an arbitrary number. whether you get a 720p set or a 1080p set its being upscaled. since 720p sets 99% actually have a pixel resolution of 1366x768.Thats not quite the same, as those TVs don't accept a 1366x768 dignal (at least not from HDMI/composite) such that games can't really target that resolution. The notion here is that isf most people have 1080p sets, rendering at exactly one quarter 1080p resolution would benefit the upscaling quality. Whatever the state of set resolutions, if they're not commonly 1080p, that idea goes out the window.

[ultragpu]

Console game graphics technology development is all about finding the best compromise between your frame rate, image quality and resolution (for output image, shadowmaps, post effects, particles, etc). All console platforms have predetermined resources to use. If you want to have better looking pixels, you have to either optimize your code, reduce your resolution(s) or reduce your frame rate. Room for optimization always ends up somewhere (current gen consoles are already pretty old and well studied), so at some point you have to decide whether you want to have less better looking pixels or more worse looking pixels.

The current generation hardware is the first HD generation console hardware, and it also is the first console hardware with flexible programmable shaders (hundreds of instructions can be executed per pixel). The processing requirement per outputted pixel has increased dramatically since the last generation. Now we calculate real time pixel perfect lighting using per pixel normals and per pixel material definition. And we do this for dozens of light sources every frame, and we calculate real time shadows from all occluders and all light sources also.

Any developer can still choose to render using a simple color texture with baked light map lighting if he/she chooses so. Using technology like this, there would be no problem at all to render at full 1080p at 60 fps (with MSAA and anisotropic filtering even). However most developers feel that it's more imporant to get better looking image instead of the highest possible resolution. Pixel quality over pixel quantity.

I personally prefer Alan Wake image quality (at quarter Full HD) over the new Perfect Dark version (at Full HD). Alan Wake has four times less output pixels...
What you said maybe perfectly fitting for last gen consoles along with the universal spread of SD TVs in every households. But since we're living in the HD era with more than half of end users owning a HD capable display at least in the states, expectations in video games should be a lot higher than simply making a sever decrease in resolution for better effects. Of course, one can still tolerate a slight or moderate resolution decrease but there is only so much to cut for before the picture ruins your vision. I personally prefer the best balance with a 720p native res with some sort of AA for the baseline and above average effects. A game like AW can probably get away with the night scenes when rendering at this extreme low res but daytime footage looked far more jarring. All the effects and textures simply couldn't be appreciated in full potential so in a sense they're a little wasted. Games like Gears2 and res5 looked a lot more balanced to me in comparison.

[Svensk Viking]

Am I right when I say that upscaling would be far less of an issue if the majority had CRT HDTVs?

[Arwin]

What you said maybe perfectly fitting for last gen consoles along with the universal spread of SD TVs in every households. But since we're living in the HD era with more than half of end users owning a HD capable display at least in the states, expectations in video games should be a lot higher than simply making a sever decrease in resolution for better effects. Of course, one can still tolerate a slight or moderate resolution decrease but there is only so much to cut for before the picture ruins your vision.

I think you are looking at what sebbbi says from the wrong angle. Maybe try to consider this: compare a video of lap of a real car on a real track in widescreen SD on an HD tv, with seeing that same car and track in a videogame like Forza or GT5 Prologue. Which one looks better? In my view, while sometimes the games can look really great, the video of real life still tends to look a lot better despite the lower resolution. This indicates that there is more to pixel information than just resolution, see? And that leads to the conclusion that there may be cases where spending your budget on more effects rather than on more pixels is more effective. It's very similar to games choosing to use 720p over 1080p - the latter is always also possible, but can still look less impressive, especially in motion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlKOSI8PeW8&feature=fvw

And I took a game type here that can match reality fairly closely much easier than most games can.

[Dural]

What I wonder is how many people actually sit at the correct distance from their TV to actually be able to notice the difference with sub-hd games. I know I sit too far away to notice a difference with my 55" 720p plasma.

[Shifty Geezer]

That's why I chose 720p in the end. At the distance we'll be sitting, the benefit of 1080p on a 32" screen wouldn't really eb onticeable, and certainyl wasn't worth the price premium along with the lower quality reviews of the 1080p sets versus the Sammy I picked (although I would have liked the better screen, as this LCD is prone to smearing before it's warmed up and on very grey frames).

[Scott_Arm]

What you said maybe perfectly fitting for last gen consoles along with the universal spread of SD TVs in every households. But since we're living in the HD era with more than half of end users owning a HD capable display at least in the states, expectations in video games should be a lot higher than simply making a sever decrease in resolution for better effects. Of course, one can still tolerate a slight or moderate resolution decrease but there is only so much to cut for before the picture ruins your vision. I personally prefer the best balance with a 720p native res with some sort of AA for the baseline and above average effects. A game like AW can probably get away with the night scenes when rendering at this extreme low res but daytime footage looked far more jarring. All the effects and textures simply couldn't be appreciated in full potential so in a sense they're a little wasted. Games like Gears2 and res5 looked a lot more balanced to me in comparison.

The lighting and shadows in Alan Wake look incredibly more sophisticated than anything in Gears2 and Resident Evil 5. Both of those are great looking games, but they have different goals. 540p does seem incredibly low resolution, but until the game is out we won't know how much pixel quality they gained, to use Sebbbi's words. Sebbbi's post was spot on, I think. I don't think resolution should be prioritized over anything else. The only thing that matters is if the game looks good.

[Scott_Arm]

That's why I chose 720p in the end. At the distance we'll be sitting, the benefit of 1080p on a 32" screen wouldn't really eb onticeable, and certainyl wasn't worth the price premium along with the lower quality reviews of the 1080p sets versus the Sammy I picked (although I would have liked the better screen, as this LCD is prone to smearing before it's warmed up and on very grey frames).

Or if you're like me and play on an even smaller screen, the differences between 720p and 1080p are marginal when sitting close.

[Scott_Arm]

I was just thinking that Sony and Microsoft should do tv surveys over Live/PSN like Valve does with the hardware surveys on Steam.

[Shifty Geezer]

I was just thinking that Sony and Microsoft should do tv surveys over Live/PSN like Valve does with the hardware surveys on Steam.Do you mean a survey or a poll of the hardware settings? They must be able to gain access to output resolution settings from the system. In fact I expect this is where Epic got their figure when talking about Gears 2' players on SDTVs; we'd just never be privvy to such information.

[Scott_Arm]

Do you mean a survey or a poll of the hardware settings? They must be able to gain access to output resolution settings from the system. In fact I expect this is where Epic got their figure when talking about Gears 2' players on SDTVs; we'd just never be privvy to such information.

Yeah, I remember that, but they don't know the actual size of the tv. I brought up it because viewing distance relative to resolution and tv size was brought up. They could ask questions about plasma vs LCD vs projector and all kinds of stuff. How much of that would be useful to devs, I'm not really sure.

It seems obvious to me that low res in Alan Wake will not bother me that much because I play on a small screen. People with huge 50" and larger displays are probably going to be the ones that don't like it.

[corduroygt]

It depends on distance and screen size, as long as you're in the blue area, Alan Wake will look the same.
Also looking at the chart you really need to have a large HDTV or sit very close to a smaller TV/monitor to appreciate 1080p, so I think games will still not be 1080p mandatory, but I hope 720p and HDMI will be standard, as in no analog outs. SDTV should die already.

http://s3.carltonbale.com/resolution_chart.png

[ShadowRunner]

All of these charts are bassed on movie viewing, and movies have infinate native resolution. This is a totaly different to games where the native resolution is lower or equal to the screen res.

If a movie looks comparable on DVD and BluRay at a certain distance it does not mean a game running at 480p vs 1080p will look the same as eachother at that same distance. There is a ton of misinformation being thrown around here.

EDIT:
Alan wake dev walkthoughs up on GT: http://www.gametrailers.com/game/alan-wake/1608

[nightshade]

All of these charts are bassed on movie viewing, and movies have infinate native resolution. This is a totaly different to games where the native resolution is lower or equal to the screen res.

If a movie looks comparable on DVD and BluRay at a certain distance it does not mean a game running at 480p vs 1080p will look the same as eachother at that same distance. There is a ton of misinformation being thrown around here.
And to add that...movies are far more detailed than anything a current gen game can even remotely pull off. So unless we are talking about "that" level of visuals with a sacrifice in resolution, its not even a fair comparison.

[Dural]

All of these charts are bassed on movie viewing, and movies have infinate native resolution. This is a totaly different to games where the native resolution is lower or equal to the screen res.

If a movie looks comparable on DVD and BluRay at a certain distance it does not mean a game running at 480p vs 1080p will look the same as eachother at that same distance. There is a ton of misinformation being thrown around here.

Everything else being equal a 480p and 1080p game viewed from a distance of 15' on a 50" television will be indistinguishable. Eye sight of course comes in to play and that chart is likely based on the average person. Source resolution doesn't matter, a dvd is still only outputting a set amount of pixels.


And to add that...movies are far more detailed than anything a current gen game can even remotely pull off. So unless we are talking about "that" level of visuals with a sacrifice in resolution, its not even a fair comparison.


That is the point many have tried to make. We are not even comparable to dvd in terms of detail per pixel this gen, so why not use a lower res and make more detailed pixels. Resolution isn't everything.

[Shifty Geezer]

All of these charts are bassed on movie viewing, and movies have infinate native resolution. This is a totaly different to games where the native resolution is lower or equal to the screen res.That's a valid point, but not entirely accurate. Watch an episode of Top Gear and you've a good chance of seeing hideous aliasing around windows from in-car views where the HDR of Real Life destroys the antialiasing methods of photon accumulation on the CCD, whereas a synthetic line-drawing algorithm could produce a much smoother edge.

Certainly aliasing (edge and texture/shader) is going to be more prominent at a given resolution than filmed material, but there is definitely a biological resolving issue, and I believe that chart was drawn up based on the physical properties of the eye and hence is perfectly applicable to considerations of game resolutions and screens.

[corduroygt]

All of these charts are bassed on movie viewing, and movies have infinate native resolution. This is a totaly different to games where the native resolution is lower or equal to the screen res.

If a movie looks comparable on DVD and BluRay at a certain distance it does not mean a game running at 480p vs 1080p will look the same as eachother at that same distance. There is a ton of misinformation being thrown around here.

EDIT:
Alan wake dev walkthoughs up on GT: http://www.gametrailers.com/game/alan-wake/1608

Movies don't have infinite resolution when you watch them in a digital format. The negatives are scanned at either 2k or 4k then downsampled. Not to mention digital movie cameras are getting better every day and the cost savings are pushing movie producers and directors to use them more and more.

The chart is based on the average human eye. You are right about the native resolution thing though, so what we can say is that If all else is the same, you won't notice a difference between two games if one is rendered at 1080p and the other is rendered at 1080p but supersampled to 480p if you're far enough away. This is the exact same analogy between DVD and BD.

Although SSAA is very expensive, there are other tricks and AA methods to approximate it close enough that you wouldn't easily be able to tell the difference between 480p SSAA vs. 480p+other AA when 15' away on a regular sized TV.

[ShadowRunner]

Certainly aliasing (edge and texture/shader) is going to be more prominent at a given resolution than filmed material, but there is definitely a biological resolving issue, and I believe that chart was drawn up based on the physical properties of the eye and hence is perfectly applicable to considerations of game resolutions and screens.

It just doesnt fit in with real world experience. According to the graph if i sit 12-13 feet away from my 42" TV i shouldnt be able to see a difference between a game running in 1080p or 480p but i can see a difference plain and clear. Now doing the test with a movie its much harder to see the difference.

This chart is missleading if you apply it to games, its a bad idea to blindly follow graphs and statistics without question when it flies in the face of our own experience. Either that or i have super human vision, in which case cool :wink:

[Scott_Arm]

All of these charts are bassed on movie viewing, and movies have infinate native resolution. This is a totaly different to games where the native resolution is lower or equal to the screen res.

If a movie looks comparable on DVD and BluRay at a certain distance it does not mean a game running at 480p vs 1080p will look the same as eachother at that same distance. There is a ton of misinformation being thrown around here.

EDIT:
Alan wake dev walkthoughs up on GT: http://www.gametrailers.com/game/alan-wake/1608

Damn, couldn't prevent myself from watching that vid. Gotta stop spoilering the game for myself. It looks really cool. Seems like all of the lighting and shadows are pretty high quality. The shadows all look very detailed and soft. No jaggies by the looks of it. The way the light plays on the fog and the trees is cool. Draw distance looks really good at the dam.

[assen]

Everything else being equal a 480p and 1080p game viewed from a distance of 15' on a 50" television will be indistinguishable.

No, this is true only if the renderer is perfectly antialiased.

If not, details which are too small for 480p, but still can be rendered on 1080p (e.g. single-1080p-pixel lines) will shimmer on 480p, but will be averaged out by your eye in 1080p.

[Gubbi]

No, this is true only if the renderer is perfectly antialiased.


You don't need perfect antialiasing, you just need the same number of samples. At 1080p you're rendering five times as many pixels compared to 480p (854x480). If you did 5x supersampling on your 480p output, you'd be hard pressed to see a difference.

Cheers

[assen]

You don't need perfect antialiasing, you just need the same number of samples. At 1080p you're rendering five times as many pixels compared to 480p (854x480). If you did 5x supersampling on your 480p output, you'd be hard pressed to see a difference.

Cheers

Yes, of course, you are right.

[ShadowRunner]

Damn, couldn't prevent myself from watching that vid. Gotta stop spoilering the game for myself. It looks really cool. Seems like all of the lighting and shadows are pretty high quality. The shadows all look very detailed and soft. No jaggies by the looks of it. The way the light plays on the fog and the trees is cool. Draw distance looks really good at the dam.

Noticed quite a bit of screen tearing but its unclear if thats due to the video or the game. I found jaggies to be pretty bad in the daytime scene, specifically the tables in the diner, to the point that it looked like those edges were getting no AA at all. In the night scenes its a night and day difference, pun intended. In the dark scenes the low contrast really helps hide any jaggies and the overall blurriness isnt an issue in the dark as you are not supposed to be able to see fine detail in the dark anyhow.

Would still like to see a 720p 2xAA version to compare it to and see the actual sacrifices that would have had to have been made to attain this. With it being 540p its easy to assume that its obviosly because the game looks best like that, when in fact reducing the res could have just been the easiest option to get the game out of the door rather than reworking all the other systems to claw back performance. I guess we will never know though. Im just not convinced that it would have to look significantly worse, it doesnt seem to be doing anything too far above and beyond what we have seen from higher res games this gen. At 720p, and indeed even currently, it could well be one of the best looking games this gen but even at 720p i wouldnt say its above and beyond its peers imo.

Does it matter that it is 540p? Hell no, it still looks great.

Gameplay wise im not sure its for me, its more RE5 than Silent Hill which most will be happy about but not me.

[Scott_Arm]

I saw the jaggies in the diner too. I'd have to look again, but it definitely seemed like some edges were affected by AA where some were not. Didn't notice any aliasing on shadow edges throughout. Shadow resolution also seemed fairly high.

Didn't notice the screen tearing, but I'll look again.

[larrylain]

I think most people arent getting what the tech experts here are trying to convey. We have seen Alan Wake on HD TV --ie screens which looked blurry and caused commotion . We have also seen the doctored images (probably from PC or like what EPIC games do with added 16X AA perhaps) . The thing is on HD tv the game isnt going to look anywhere close to those PROBABLE PC screens. Even worse, the game wont look anywhere close to the big guns (KZ2,UC2,GOW3,RE5) on an HD tv.

So, like AmirOX said at GAF, people could be very disappointed by this. You had people claiming it to be one of the best looking games on consoles after the emergence of the DOCTORED images. Then all of a sudden, after the native rez revelation and the leaks of screens which looked BLURRY (if not VERY BLURRY) ,the game went from a pioneer in graphics on consoles to a mere great looking game. Also if your TV has low contrast ratio then i believe the game can indeed look OKish on a 720p/1080p rez.

[LittleJohnny]

I think most people arent getting what the tech experts here are trying to convey. We have seen Alan Wake on HD TV --ie screens which looked blurry and caused commotion . We have also seen the doctored images (probably from PC or like what EPIC games do with added 16X AA perhaps) . The thing is on HD tv the game isnt going to look anywhere close to those PROBABLE PC screens. Even worse, the game wont look anywhere close to the big guns (KZ2,UC2,GOW3,RE5) on an HD tv.

So, like AmirOX said at GAF, people could be very disappointed by this. You had people claiming it to be one of the best looking games on consoles after the emergence of the DOCTORED images. Then all of a sudden, after the native rez revelation and the leaks of screens which looked BLURRY (if not VERY BLURRY) ,the game went from a pioneer in graphics on consoles to a mere great looking game. Also if your TV has low contrast ratio then i believe the game can indeed look OKish on a 720p/1080p rez.


I just watched the gametrailers video in HD which shows actual gameplay and to me it looks better than RE5, I didn't see the so called blurriness, in fact his jacket looks super crisp and shadows look nice and soft for a change rather than the blocky shadows we usually get.

[Laa-Yosh]

Have to disagree as well. The Gametrailers preview vids were very good, complex and dynamic atmospherics, large view distance and scale, very good lighting... I expect this game's graphics to receive pretty much universal praise.

[LittleJohnny]

Someone asked this a few pages back and probably only the developer can answer this, but based on the developer's description it sounds like they're using Inferred Lighting...

http://graphics.cs.uiuc.edu/~kircher/inferred/inferred_lighting_paper.pdf (http://graphics.cs.uiuc.edu/~kircher/inferred/inferred_lighting_paper.pdf)

[larrylain]

Well , judging from the DOCTORED scans
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=20888839&postcount=2475

AW looks better than any console game.

However , when you look at the real screens
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=20857404&postcount=1752

then no, AW doesnt look better than RE5 let alone UC2 and GOW3.
also you can the blurriness in those shots too.

The game might look better in motion ofcourse, but note that it is a 540p game which will have to be stretched 2x on a typical HD or 720p screen

[Scott_Arm]

Yes, we all know the game is 540p.

[[Reki]]

Well , judging from the DOCTORED scans
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=20888839&postcount=2475

AW looks better than any console game.

However , when you look at the real screens
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=20857404&postcount=1752

then no, AW doesnt look better than RE5 let alone UC2 and GOW3.
also you can the blurriness in those shots too.
Right, because resolution is the only thing that matters when judging graphics...

[assurdum]

Well I have to change my previous statement in negative about AW & I have to admit it: 960x540p & enough tearing to me not appears a technical showcase on the 360. Not after so many years of development. This game could remains on the pc indeed.

[Laa-Yosh]

You already have the game then?

[ultragpu]

http://au.xbox360.ign.com/dor/objects/743608/alan-wake/images/alan-wake-20100504064329427.html?page=mediaFull
This is an ingame 720p shot taken from IGN, not sure how reliable their capture device is. But, if it is indicative of the final game then I am enlightened to see how badly a 540p buffer can ruin the overall visual. The textures are down right awful and the low poly placeables don't help either, really hope this is just IGN's way of capturing :(.

[Brad Grenz]

Nope. That's what the screenshots look like everywhere. There's no getting around the fact that the low resolution creates a muddy image. On the plus side, in motion the lighting and particle effects are pretty cool. The fog and the moonlight through the clouds, especially. I can also imagine they thought the trade-off in resolution they made would be mitigated by the fact that you're in the dark so much you weren't likely to miss any detail in the large black patches. It's just too bad they've been passing off those really clean 720p shots for so long as in game. If they were really confidant in the choices they made we would have known what the game was really going to look like before a few weeks ago.

[Billy Idol]

http://au.xbox360.ign.com/dor/objects/743608/alan-wake/images/alan-wake-20100504064329427.html?page=mediaFull
This is an ingame 720p shot taken from IGN, not sure how reliable their capture device is. But, if it is indicative of the final game then I am enlightened to see how badly a 540p buffer can ruin the overall visual. The textures are down right awful and the low poly placeables don't help either, really hope this is just IGN's way of capturing :(.

ew...this screen shot looks gruesome :sad:

[-tkf-]

It depends on distance and screen size, as long as you're in the blue area, Alan Wake will look the same.
Also looking at the chart you really need to have a large HDTV or sit very close to a smaller TV/monitor to appreciate 1080p, so I think games will still not be 1080p mandatory, but I hope 720p and HDMI will be standard, as in no analog outs. SDTV should die already.

http://s3.carltonbale.com/resolution_chart.png

Everytime i see that Chart i want to throw the PC out of the window so it will go away.

Try to see for yourself, your result will vary. And no, you do NOT need to be able to see every pixel in order to enjoy the benefits of higher resolutions.

[Scott_Arm]

http://au.xbox360.ign.com/dor/objects/743608/alan-wake/images/alan-wake-20100504064329427.html?page=mediaFull
This is an ingame 720p shot taken from IGN, not sure how reliable their capture device is. But, if it is indicative of the final game then I am enlightened to see how badly a 540p buffer can ruin the overall visual. The textures are down right awful and the low poly placeables don't help either, really hope this is just IGN's way of capturing :(.

That is definitely an incredibly ugly screenshot. Watching the vids, I never feel like it looks that bad. But maybe if I'm in the drivers seat, I'll start to notice more of the uglies. Still looking forward to playing it.

[Arwin]

Everytime i see that Chart i want to throw the PC out of the window so it will go away.

Try to see for yourself, your result will vary. And no, you do NOT need to be able to see every pixel in order to enjoy the benefits of higher resolutions.

I know from experience that the advantage of 720p over 480p is visible on a 32" screen at about 3 meters. And that's for movies. And just about everyone I know. So yeah, this graph doesn't seem to be right.

[larrylain]

http://au.xbox360.ign.com/dor/objects/743608/alan-wake/images/alan-wake-20100504064329427.html?page=mediaFull
This is an ingame 720p shot taken from IGN, not sure how reliable their capture device is. But, if it is indicative of the final game then I am enlightened to see how badly a 540p buffer can ruin the overall visual. The textures are down right awful and the low poly placeables don't help either, really hope this is just IGN's way of capturing :(.

You can see some of GT's walkthrough vids and the game really looks blurry. Although i am not sure if GT is using an old TV with low contrast ratio.If you have a BRAVIA OLED or KURO then i guess all games will look good on those TVs but not everyone could afford a high end and high priced TV of that calibre .

[Shifty Geezer]

You can see some of GT's walkthrough vids and the game really looks blurry. Although i am not sure if GT is using an old TV with low contrast ratio.:???: They're captures from the output, not off-screen footage.
If you have a BRAVIA OLED or KURO then i guess all games will look good on those TVs but not everyone could afford a high end and high priced TV of that calibre .Who own's an OLED TV?! And AFAIK there's only one option and it's not HD.

Modhat: There's zero technical discussion going on this thread. Can people please stop discussing whether the game looks ugly or not, and instead focus on the technical aspects. eg. "Why the low-resolution textures," instead of "ugh, they're ugly".

I haven't explored the available screenshots, but what I have seen does show limited texture fidelity. Coupled with the low-res output, the whole thing feels RAM starved. Are we seeing technical limits here, or programmer limits?

[SG79]

The 360's hardware scaling is just as good as any high end TV's from my experience. It'll boil down to how picky you are really.

[nightshade]

This is a part of my Alan Wake impression that I posted in the Alan Wake thread, thought it would be okay to mention it here:

The subHD resolution doesn't seem to effect it "that" much ; aliasing is surprisingly quite minimal here, shader aliasing & some aliasing on edges covered with fog/mist were probably the only cases where its obviously noticeable. Lightning,Fog & mist are great and lastly interactive foliage ! finally a console game where interactive foliage is done right. The animations for movements & facial expressions are okay at best. I must stress that the game looks extremely nice in the night sequences, switch to day sequences & the cover's blown....daytime sequences are easily the area that gets affected the most due to the low resolution.

That said the textures are really low res & specularity on metals is quite off...almost makes them look plastic.Light volumes have noisy edges, shadowing while not jagged are still poor with dithering & lots of noise/flickering and they also seem to have their LOD switch occur as soon as the player move just 3 meters from them. One thing that I'd like to mention about the lighting here is that the light volumetric are really odd in this game, most of them don't seem to create any kind of shafts if you try to block it partially with objects in environments or your playing character, till now I've seen just 1 light source in total that created shafts when I tried to partially block it.

[obonicus]

What about tearing? I heard on the giant bombcast that AW had its share of tearing, but the internet doesn't necessarily agree.

[joker454]

I haven't explored the available screenshots, but what I have seen does show limited texture fidelity. Coupled with the low-res output, the whole thing feels RAM starved. Are we seeing technical limits here, or programmer limits?

I'll cast my vote for neither, as screen shots this gen are useless. I'll suggest something totally radical, and instead suggest that people play the game at home then make some judgment calls on how it looks and why. Play the game?!? I know I know, suggesting that people actually play a game before making technical judgments is complete and utter madness, I mean who actually wants to see a game in motion anymore before throwing it under the bus as technical garbage? But I suggest people give it a try, you might be astounded by how different a game looks when it's actually played!

[nightshade]

What about tearing? I heard on the giant bombcast that AW had its share of tearing, but the internet doesn't necessarily agree.
Yes there is tearing, it seems to tear even where there's nothing going on.
It also tears in places where there's lot of flare gas or if you have a light source with dense volume.

I think I saw a lot of noise in the texture, it has some kind of shimmering the kind which you get when the game uses bilinear filtering but the thing is, instead of being just a sort of a shimmering "line" it shimmers everywhere.

[Shifty Geezer]

I'll cast my vote for neither, as screen shots this gen are useless....I mean who actually wants to see a game in motion anymore before throwing it under the bus as technical garbage? But I suggest people give it a try, you might be astounded by how different a game looks when it's actually played!Then the answers 'technical limitations.' You're being too sensitive here. The question is a technical one of why the limited texture and FB resolutions. If the resources are being spent elsewhere, they're being spent elsewhere. And from a technical perspective, what are Remedy doing to make it look so good in motion?

[ultragpu]

I think it's down to hardware limitation in AW's case. If you take Rememdy, a self proclaimed highly technical development team, who's spent 5 years working on the engine and you would think they have exhausted every options available for the game but still ended with a 540p buffer. It's pretty clear to me now the incredible lighting and shadows of AW is the double edged sword for which most devs have been trying to avoid. I think there's a reason you don't see that many 540p games.

[corduroygt]

Tearing is much more disappointing compared to 540p. I'd rather have a 480p game that doesn't tear.

[JB9861]

Then the answers 'technical limitations.' You're being too sensitive here. The question is a technical one of why the limited texture and FB resolutions. If the resources are being spent elsewhere, they're being spent elsewhere. And from a technical perspective, what are Remedy doing to make it look so good in motion?

At nightfall the dynamic lighting an be emphasized along with approximation effects. Muted color palette helps the aliasing. And indoor/daylight pulls the curtain on the models and the geometry.

[ultragpu]

Tearing is much more disappointing compared to 540p. I'd rather have a 480p game that doesn't tear.
I might be the odd one but tearing doesn't bother me nearly as much as a blurry low res output, tearing is momentary at least but a fixed frame buffer is fixed for good.

[2real4tv]

Maybe they are not streaming?

[Billy Idol]

I haven't explored the available screenshots, but what I have seen does show limited texture fidelity. Coupled with the low-res output, the whole thing feels RAM starved. Are we seeing technical limits here, or programmer limits?

Ew, this is some kind of heritical question you ask here Mr Mod!
I really hope (and I ultimately believe) that it is programmer limits!
For me it is obvious that Remedy had some serious troubles during the development of this game and that they did not master the Xbox360!!
I read an interview in my local game Mag, where even one of the Remedy heads admit that they loose a lot of dev time due to wrong choices (iirc, they planed this game as an open world game at the beginning and rejected rather late).

[zed]

The question is a technical one of why the limited texture and FB resolutions.not to mention low polygon counts sometimes!
the wheels here have less polygons than mario kart wii :)
http://au.xbox360.ign.com/dor/objects/743608/alan-wake/images/alan-wake-20100504064329427.html?page=mediaFull

Yes I think memory issues are the largest problem theyve had

[patsu]

May be they are preparing a stereoscopic 3D version ? :twisted:

[Rangers]

Well once again I think we're picking bad shots and having our fun, for example, this gameplay shot of another game looks quite blurry and low poly also http://www.gamespot.com/ps3/action/uncharted2amongthieves/images/0/58/?full_size=1 I'll take the Alan Wake shot, thanks.

That's what happens when you dont look at bullshots. And not too mention cherry pick the worst possible shots for your agenda.

[patsu]

That's an MP game screenshot though.

Bringing U2 into the discussion is only going to make the thread worse.

EDIT: Ha ha, changed screen shot. ^_^

That room is huge with a gigantic sculpture in the middle (It's about 3-4 storey tall), great use of lighting and climbing for puzzle too. When you bring U2 into the discussion, the first thing people will think of is 720p. I suggest we abort this game comparison subthread. :)

[Shifty Geezer]

That's what happens when you dont look at bullshots. And not too mention cherry pick the worst possible shots for your agenda.The media is out there for anyone to link to. Where there are points of good texture fidelity and detailed polygon models within Alan Wake, you can link to those rather than completely different game. ;)

Seriously though, this is the basis of sane debate. Someone presents a point, and someone else refutes with refutations linking to supporting evidence. In this case posit A, "Alan Wake has bad textures as evidenced here," would be refuted with, "ahh, but that's a worst case image, and these images here and here demonstrate good texture detail." Without the contrasting evidence, there's no meat to the argument. Or as the case may be here, the refutation may be, "yes, texture resolution isn't typical of current gen games, but the lighting model/particle engine/voxel tech/Digital Molecular Matter/yadayada which enables this (link to picture or video) is trading texture space to enable this effect."

Everyone here is smart enough to know these are finite boxes that can't do everything. If a game trades texture resolution, so be it. And if it doesn't, fine. But no-one should be getting shirty over the debate regardless of the game (Alan Wake's exclusivity is the real issue here :().

[2real4tv]

May be they are preparing a stereoscopic 3D version ? :twisted:

Or Natal....doesn't that take resourses away?

[LittleJohnny]

Or Natal....doesn't that take resourses away?


It was rumored that MS had done away with the internal processor and opted to use Xenon instead which would probably tie up one of it's cores. Based on that rumor and the link below I assume that MS had an Internal processor for Natal (Not prime sense) and were having trouble with lag, MS then scrapped the processor and tried using some of the 360 resources which caused an outcry from the Interweb whinnies, so they decided to go with Primesense, and from the looks of it, the spec's have improved, according to the article the sensor no analyses a 640 x 480 image at 60fps (Originally 30fps before the Primesense processor). This is just my guess based on Natal's published progress.


http://www.slashgear.com/primesense-confirmed-as-project-natal-hardware-source-3179868/

[Alucardx23]

Well I managed to play the game early and I must say that the trade off was worth it, I’m on the second part of the 3rd chapter, and I’m really impressed with how the game looks at night, no other game on console look this good at night in mi opinion, you only really notice that the game is Sub HD at day time, which is only 15-20% of the time, the gameplay is slower and more about talking and exploration at day, that makes me think that they could have used a higher resolution during the day because most of the effects that you see at night are not there, its true that some of the texture look a little bit blurry but nothing that’s out of the ordinary, but trust me when you see the game at night with your flashlight casting shadow on everything, the wind moving all the trees and grass around you and the fog casting shadows on the floor you will be convinced.

[ShadowRunner]

It was rumored that MS had done away with the internal processor and opted to use Xenon instead which would probably tie up one of it's cores. Based on that rumor and the link below I assume that MS had an Internal processor for Natal (Not prime sense) and were having trouble with lag, MS then scrapped the processor and tried using some of the 360 resources which caused an outcry from the Interweb whinnies, so they decided to go with Primesense, and from the looks of it, the spec's have improved, according to the article the sensor no analyses a 640 x 480 image at 60fps (Originally 30fps before the Primesense processor). This is just my guess based on Natal's published progress.


http://www.slashgear.com/primesense-confirmed-as-project-natal-hardware-source-3179868/

The specs you are quoting are from the primsense reference design not Natal. A reference design is usually scaleable to different cost/performance needs, GPUs are a good example of this. Natal is still 30fps as far as we know. From what i have seen it has always been primesense underlying tech from the very begining with MS helping to develope it further. They had an idea to add custom silicon but scrapped the idea for price or performance reasons. I dont think the natal situation is any more complex than that and certainly dont think Interweb whinnies had much to do with any decision MS has made with regards to it :wink:

[JB9861]

Well I managed to play the game early and I must say that the trade off was worth it, I?m on the second part of the 3rd chapter, and I?m really impressed with how the game looks at night, no other game on console look this good at night in mi opinion, you only really notice that the game is Sub HD at day time, which is only 15-20% of the time, the gameplay is slower and more about talking and exploration at day, that makes me think that they could have used a higher resolution during the day because most of the effects that you see at night are not there, its true that some of the texture look a little bit blurry but nothing that?s out of the ordinary, but trust me when you see the game at night with your flashlight casting shadow on everything, the wind moving all the trees and grass around you and the fog casting shadows on the floor you will be convinced.

Lightning was also a nice touch. Illuminated the fields and the trees.

[corduroygt]

I know from experience that the advantage of 720p over 480p is visible on a 32" screen at about 3 meters. And that's for movies. And just about everyone I know. So yeah, this graph doesn't seem to be right.
The blue line, where benefit of 720p over 480p starts to become noticable for 32" TV's is right around the 9-10 feet mark which is 3 meters, which will mean you're right on the borderline on being able to tell 480p from 720p. Also the graph is not perfect, the scale might be a little off, who knows.

[zed]

but trust me when you see the game at night with your flashlight casting shadow on everything, the wind moving all the trees and grass around you and the fog casting shadows on the floor you will be convinced.sounds like my engine :)
Hmm Im guessing now its not just the memory that they had issues with but also lack of CPU power, since to do this stuff fast you need to do a lot of calculations per frame

[SG79]

The blue line, where benefit of 720p over 480p starts to become noticable for 32" TV's is right around the 9-10 feet mark which is 3 meters, which will mean you're right on the borderline on being able to tell 480p from 720p. Also the graph is not perfect, the scale might be a little off, who knows.

There is more to 720p or 1080p than just the increased number of active pixels, which by itself is enough. Colour depth increases and other artifacts disappear, so unless one is watching a 32" screen from a 20'+ distance, the advantage should be clear enough.

There are other factors, such as proper calibration of a TV, which makes certain a big difference too. So this chart's usefulness is very questionable at best.

[joker454]

sounds like my engine :)
Hmm Im guessing now its not just the memory that they had issues with but also lack of CPU power, since to do this stuff fast you need to do a lot of calculations per frame

It's more gpu for shadow maps no? Lots of fill rate and vertex work which the gpu is good at, it can overlap much of the work. It's gpu is also good at branching which makes using cascaded shadow maps easy. Or did they go some other route for the shadows in this game? Thought it was just shadow maps but I've only seen a few pics...

[Svensk Viking]

Perhaps this doesn't belong to this part of the forum, but I can't see how they initially had planned this to be open-world...
Now when the game is confirmed to be linear, and the game is running in sub-HD and has some tearing, I can't see how they would have made it work in an open-world environment

But then again, I am no techhead:P

[dragonelite]

Perhaps this doesn't belong to this part of the forum, but I can't see how they initially had planned this to be open-world...
Now when the game is confirmed to be linear, and the game is running in sub-HD and has some tearing, I can't see how they would have made it work in an open-world environment

But then again, I am no techhead:P

The game seems to have a very large draw distance.
So the tech could be there. Not sure if dropping the open world is a technical thing or more story based like remedy says.

[Arwin]

Perhaps this doesn't belong to this part of the forum, but I can't see how they initially had planned this to be open-world...
Now when the game is confirmed to be linear, and the game is running in sub-HD and has some tearing, I can't see how they would have made it work in an open-world environment

You're seeing this from the wrong angle. When they initially designed the game's rendering pipeline, they optimised it so that it could hande an open-world environment. However, along the lines they had to give up on this decision (for whatever reason, probably a combination of technical issues, game design and story). If they had designed the game to be linear from the start, they could have chosen a different rendering pipeline that could be optimised for so-called 'corridors', which allows for much more detail and (typically also) a higher resolution.

[Svensk Viking]

You're seeing this from the wrong angle. When they initially designed the game's rendering pipeline, they optimised it so that it could hande an open-world environment. However, along the lines they had to give up on this decision (for whatever reason, probably a combination of technical issues, game design and story). If they had designed the game to be linear from the start, they could have chosen a different rendering pipeline that could be optimised for so-called 'corridors', which allows for much more detail and (typically also) a higher resolution.

What I am trying to say is, that if this is the result of their engine with the open world taken out, how would the tearing, resolution and such have been if it still was open world?

I get that it is easier going for linearity from the beginning(eg God of War 3, Uncharted 2), but surely an open world engine must still get some horsepower freed up when making the environments smaller?

[Shifty Geezer]

What I am trying to say is, that if this is the result of their engine with the open world taken out, how would the tearing, resolution and such have been if it still was open world?The same. If you build a tractor to pull a Boeing at 10 MPH, and then connect a caravan instead, it's going to go ten miles an hour. Only if you know from the outset that you won't have a heavy load and instead are entering a caravan race, you can build a completely different vehicle to different specs.

If the open world argument is true, I'm sure the AW engine could take a free-roam game and render exactly as is in AW, whereas, say, the Uncharted engine would struggle with texture loads and whatnot. However, if true, it's also the case that they have the wrong tool for the job, an open world engine for a corridor-shooter game, and the economics of game development could be having an impact on the end results.

[Svensk Viking]

The same. If you build a tractor to pull a Boeing at 10 MPH, and then connect a caravan instead, it's going to go ten miles an hour. Only if you know from the outset that you won't have a heavy load and instead are entering a caravan race, you can build a completely different vehicle to different specs.

If the open world argument is true, I'm sure the AW engine could take a free-roam game and render exactly as is in AW, whereas, say, the Uncharted engine would struggle with texture loads and whatnot. However, if true, it's also the case that they have the wrong tool for the job, an open world engine for a corridor-shooter game, and the economics of game development could be having an impact on the end results.

Ok, thanks for explaining

I have always thought that lesser scale makes it easier pushing eye candy than when rendering a bigger scale

[Shifty Geezer]

I have always thought that lesser scale makes it easier pushing eye candy than when rendering a bigger scaleWhich is correct. ;)

[zed]

It's more gpu for shadow maps no? Lots of fill rate and vertex work which the gpu is good at, it can overlap much of the work. It's gpu is also good at branching which makes using cascaded shadow maps easy. Or did they go some other route for the shadows in this game? Thought it was just shadow maps but I've only seen a few pics...
If you wanna have fast shadows youve gottta minimize the amount of work the GPU does, you process the scene first on the CPU.
Ive been doing this for ages eg see
http://www.opengl.org/discussion_boards/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=156027&page=23
I believe I showed the first implementation of a spotlight casting shadows with a texturemap, now this is 8 years ago. hardware then had no shaders or shadowmaps etc. IIRC it still worked with a single light at ~20fps on a gf2mx. with the hardware of ~2006 (like what I have) it absolutly screams, since theres now shadowmap/(shader lesser degree) support, 20 spotlights onscreen @ >100fps @720p on my card which is similar to a RSX

[zed]

OK with the benifit of hindsight now Ill give my opinion (encompasses a few games, carmack understands this)
never believe a companies promises sony/MS/nvidia/ATI etc
i.e. if u do such + such it will be brill later on run at 100fps no worries, true ATM it runs at 2fps but trust us with the next hardware iteration its gonnna run 100x quicker, you dont wanna be left in the slow lane do you?
get it runnning at a decent speed today, OK the next hardware iteration wont show a 100x improvement, it just improves what u have (by a lot), which is a decent implementation but most importantly youre not letting youself into the hands of promises (which u cant control)

the mantra is KISS, dont wait for the hardware to catch up to you, give it what u have + let the hardware just give a faster/better version.

[Billy Idol]

It depends on distance and screen size, as long as you're in the blue area, Alan Wake will look the same.
Also looking at the chart you really need to have a large HDTV or sit very close to a smaller TV/monitor to appreciate 1080p, so I think games will still not be 1080p mandatory, but I hope 720p and HDMI will be standard, as in no analog outs. SDTV should die already.

http://s3.carltonbale.com/resolution_chart.png

here is a very good read on this topic:

http://filmicgames.com/archives/35

[sogeking]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-alanwake-tech-analysis

[2real4tv]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-alanwake-tech-analysis

Couple questions:
Why not triple buffer, I remember a discussion going on about 360 not using it was their ever and explanation?

Day night cycles, dynamic weather..is it still in the game?

It seems to me the game started tearing the most when multiple light sources were on screen...whats the bottleneck?


Even though its held as a AAA title I'am starting to believe the budget wasn't that huge.

[Billy Idol]

Couple questions:
Why not triple buffer, I remember a discussion going on about 360 not using it was their ever and explanation?

Day night cycles, dynamic weather..is it still in the game?

It seems to me the game started tearing the most when multiple light sources were on screen...whats the bottleneck?


Even though its held as a AAA title I'am starting to believe the budget wasn't that huge.

If I remember the discussion correctly, trible buffering increases the memory hit.
And Alan Wake engine is definitely memory hungry (just look at the low res textures in screenshots released all over the web...).
So this might maybe the reason Remedy did not consider it at all (action seems to be slow paced, so input lag should not be a big issue for this game!?)

[Shifty Geezer]

If I remember the discussion correctly, trible buffering increases the memory hit.This is due to the multiplying factor of trible buffering. Although everyone likes trible buffering (it's hard to resist!), what starts out as one extra trible buffer ends up being hundreds before too long.

[ultragpu]

DigitalFoundry article mentioned camera based motion blur in AW, is object based motion blur not present then?

[Billy Idol]

This is due to the multiplying factor of trible buffering. Although everyone likes trible buffering (it's hard to resist!), what starts out as one extra trible buffer ends up being hundreds before too long.

Ah, ok! Does this mean that tiling increase the memory hit as well when using trible buffering?

[psorcerer]

If the open world argument is true, I'm sure the AW engine could take a free-roam game and render exactly as is in AW, whereas, say, the Uncharted engine would struggle with texture loads and whatnot. However, if true, it's also the case that they have the wrong tool for the job, an open world engine for a corridor-shooter game, and the economics of game development could be having an impact on the end results.

After all the lies from the "developers" I don't think anything they tell is "true". Even the motion capture that they claimed to be "state of the art" and "better than Heavy Rain" is absent in released game and the lip-sync only will be added by patch.

And for Uncharted engine: it's indeed an "open world" one, they have streaming of assets inplace, memory defragmentation and dynamic LOD, this is more than enough to make a sandbox game.

[Kameradschaft]

http://au.xbox360.ign.com/dor/objects/743608/alan-wake/images/alan-wake-20100504064329427.html?page=mediaFull
This is an ingame 720p shot taken from IGN, not sure how reliable their capture device is. But, if it is indicative of the final game then I am enlightened to see how badly a 540p buffer can ruin the overall visual. The textures are down right awful and the low poly placeables don't help either, really hope this is just IGN's way of capturing :(.

After playing the game I can assure you that this isn't IGN's way of capturing, this is what the IQ looks on a 40" LCD. :???:

[L. Scofield]

After all the lies from the "developers" I don't think anything they tell is "true". Even the motion capture that they claimed to be "state of the art" and "better than Heavy Rain" is absent in released game and the lip-sync only will be added by patch.
Well it is better than Heavy Rain's. Specially if you consider eyes actually move :lol:

And for Uncharted engine: it's in deed an "open world" one, they have streaming of assets inplace, memory defragmentation and dynamic LOD, this is more than enough to make a sandbox game.
Hasn't this been discussed already in another thread?

[assurdum]

Ew, this is some kind of heritical question you ask here Mr Mod!
I really hope (and I ultimately believe) that it is programmer limits!
For me it is obvious that Remedy had some serious troubles during the development of this game and that they did not master the Xbox360!!
I read an interview in my local game Mag, where even one of the Remedy heads admit that they loose a lot of dev time due to wrong choices (iirc, they planed this game as an open world game at the beginning and rejected rather late).
Don't let me wrong but if after six years or less of development not have learned anything to master or optimize the 360 hardware to the better, I don't know how many years needs more... the time waste in wrong decisions it's part of the job :roll: imho probably AW engine isn't suitable for the 360 hardware. An engine based more on unified shaders & or high buffers would be a better solution for the 360, like bayonetta.

[psorcerer]

Well it is better than Heavy Rain's. Specially if you consider eyes actually move :lol:

Ehm...what is "better than Heavy Rain"? Total absence of any lip-sync? Just to be sure: opening and closing mouth is not a lip-sync.

[patsu]

If the mo-cap is as the dev says (no human intervention), then it may simplify/skip the parts that need careful human tweaking. As I recall, the HR animations are not so consistent, some have eye movements, some don't. The best is the storekeeper, which is amazing.

What is HeavyRain doing here ? :)

[psorcerer]

What is HeavyRain doing here ? :)

http://www.vg247.com/2010/03/30/alan-wake-mo-cap-expert-heavy-rain-is-visually-uneven/

[patsu]

Ha ha, he's trying to sell his service. Have a heart !

You have the game and you can see the outcome. It wouldn't be surprising to find flaws in AW's mocap since Laa-Yosh firmly believed that human tweaking is needed (and he's in the line of work). And once human treatment is involved, inconsistency will find its way into the game unless they have a lot of time to polish. Even in Heavenly Sword which has consistent eye and expression mocap, I liked it but some of us find the action exaggerated. So there is a lot of human factors/value-adds here.

We should be able to discuss AW in the context of its merits. The devs will need the room for experiments/growth instead of getting compared out-of-context, or always getting capped by other titles' visions. 540p vs 720p is another example. I personally don't mind 540p if they can create a unique visual experiences, or even 3D vision.

[Neb]

Ehm...what is "better than Heavy Rain"? Total absence of any lip-sync? Just to be sure: opening and closing mouth is not a lip-sync.

Iz got eye-sync.

[patsu]

They probably didn't want to spend the resources on localizing the lips animation to multiple languages ?

I hope eye motion capture becomes standard too.

[Laa-Yosh]

Hasn't this been discussed already in another thread?

To the death...

On the other hand, neither Alan Wake's nor Heavy Rain's face mocap can be called good...
I still think Mass Effect 2's facial animation looks the best so far (for a conversation heavy game), at least with most of the main characters. But that's not mocap at all...

Facial animation is a tough nut to crack.

[Laa-Yosh]

You can't really mocap eyes... Sony Imageworks went with electrodes on top of the eyelids for Beowulf and even that looked dead.

Eyes will only work if they're in sync with the actual environment as well, ie. the character's eyelines should follow actual people or objects in the scene, stay in sync with (or more precisely, follow/lead) head animation and so on. A procedural system using various IK constraints is usually way better for games then mocap.

[patsu]

Wait a minute, if done well, mo-cap should offer more realism right ? One of the problems is they have too much data to clean up using current technology.

For syncing eye movement, don't they capture multiple characters on the set at the same time ? So the actors' eye movements are already directed at the right position/people. I remember seeing multiple actors in the same mocap stage for Heavenly Sword.

If they capture individual actors one at a time, then I agree the eye position may be wrong w.r.t. the entire scene.

EDIT: Ok, in Heavenly Sword, they may have captured the facial expressions and then add the eye animations manually based on the other concurrent characters' movement.

[TheWretched]

I found the lip syncing in Assassin's Creed 2 quite good! Well, I did play on PC, so the quality is a bit higher than on consoles (the graphics as a whole), but the cutscenes (and in-game for that matter) lipsyncing was pretty good, for being an open world game and being multiplatform too.

Yes, the eyes are dead too, and the characters aren't the best we've seen either, but the animations are pretty good.

In Heavy Rain, I didn't notice the eyes. Which should mean, to me, they were made well. Especially in the load screens (higher res shaders and such, I'd guess), but some characters movements are TOTALLY off, especially since the rest is very well done, they stand out even more. I'd guess even the bad movements in HR could pass as good in other games.

[Laa-Yosh]

Wait a minute, if done well, mo-cap should offer more realism right ?

Well, here are some of my own personal thoughts on this...

Mocap in general can offer two important aspects of realistic animation:

- Realistic movement dynamics. The time between the various poses, the shape of the intensity curve (acceleration/deceleration), the reaction times etc. are all important in creating the illusion of life, and animating from the ground up can never really match mocap data in these ways.
There are some rules or rather guidelines, created by decades of experimenting with traditional cell animation and analyzing human movement and poses. Like your head will always turn in a curve instead of a straight line, and you usually blink when you look at something else after the move. Or how there's anticipation before the motion, or which phonemes are the ones you blink more on while speaking. But these can never replace real people, and animators also tend to exaggerate a bit too much, which is good for creating characters larger then life - but sometimes subtlety is the key (this part is also true for the second point).

- Realistic poses. An actor or even an everyday human being will usually activate far more muscles then what's necessary for a certain movement, which gives it an individual character, even if it's near unnoticeable. Sometimes it's completely subconscious, or it's a deliberate result of acting. For facial animation it can be as subtle as a 1mm difference!

Now it's also worth knowing that proper video reference can provide both of the above, but it also takes a lot of manual work to rotoscope it all. Nevertheless, even Avatar has used this "old" method (developed for Disney's Snow White as far as I know) for many many scenes, despite all the super high end mocap stuff they had. Sometimes they had up to 10 HD cameras shooting reference video footage while also recording the actual mocap!

Also, mocap is not a 100% reliable tool, you always trade flexibility for precision. The majority of the systems are optical, because you can adjust marker placement and numbers, and also use as many actors as you can manage; and you're free from any electromagnetic interference (which even standard cables in an office building tend to create).
But tracking multiple people adds noise and errors; not enough stabilization and separation can affect camera precision (the actor jumps and the cameras tremble a bit) and so on, resulting in bad data. Filtering tends to remove both the noise and the tiny imprecisions that would add life - overlfiltered mocap is very disturbing usually.


So, in my opinion, mocap is a very cool thing, but it's never enough on its own and human interaction is always required. An animator will be able to identify and differentiate between noise and worthy details, and can also modify or replace the performance if the shot requires it. But completely realistic human motion is nearly impossible without mocap in most cases... then again, very few would notice the difference between mocap and a very good and talented animator either.


Games are, however, not shot driven, the camera can sometimes roam around freely, and the amount of data to process is several orders of magnitudes higher. Which is why semi-procedural approaches like Mass Effect's stuff is usually more consistent and easier to tweak then working with hours of mocap data - per character. It also allows for localized speech and even character customization as well.
Processing dozens of hours of mocap for both body and face is an incredibly time consuming task and can dramatically increase budgets IMHO. But if done well, it'll always be a lot better then the procedural approach... so it's a question of money in the end and the tech is secondary in most cases.

And games are also a lot more forgiving, it's still pretty common to have intersecting limbs, heads and clothing/armor and noone cares about it. However facial animation can still ruin the immersion pretty quickly.

One of the problems is they have too much data to clean up using current technology.

I'm not sure what you mean by that :)

For syncing eye movement, don't they capture multiple characters on the set at the same time ? So the actors' eye movements are already directed at the right position/people. I remember seeing multiple actors in the same mocap stage for Heavenly Sword.

It's not as simple; characters might have completely different proportions and such compared to the actors; for example I think Andy Serkis's HS character was considerably differently built, taller and more robust which instantly made all the mocap inherently wrong. Also, the capture volume might not be big enough, character placements might not be correct and so on.
And curiously, sometimes even 100% correct eyelines and such won't look correct from the camera's view - even movies cheat a LOT (it's also true for lighting).
So, capturing multiple actors is usually more important for their chemistry and reactions to each other then for correct eyelines and physical interactions.

[patsu]

I'm not sure what you mean by that :)


You have essentially explained the picture in my mind. :)

[Laa-Yosh]

Heh :)

One final note is that in my opinion the trouble with facial mocap in today's games is that they only manage to get the dynamics of the motion itself right; but they fail utterly at the poses, creating distorted and scary faces. This is because facial deformations are extremely complex and simple transformations copied over from mocap markers just don't cut it.
Building the kind of elaborate face rigs and data processing that's getting common in movie VFX is just not a viable option as it seems, so games forfeiting mocap are the ones that usually work out better. Like the Uncharted and Mass Effect games for example; although the mocap in GTA4 was also quite good.

[patsu]

Aye, but for certain kind of games, mocap has to eventually provide a more realistic performance than hand crafted expression and animations. "We" are just in the process of growing up.

[2real4tv]

Well it is better than Heavy Rain's. Specially if you consider eyes actually move :lol:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DwwadAZ0-A

[Billy Idol]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-alanwake-tech-analysis

Hm, I wonder if the optional install improves the performance of the game, like reducing load times and tearing?!
Maybe grandmaster could enlight us please?!

[Kasersky]

DigitalFoundry article mentioned camera based motion blur in AW, is object based motion blur not present then?

enemies have some weird motion blur effect.

[nightshade]

No object motion blur...if I remember correctly.

[Laa-Yosh]

http://www.videogamer.com/news/remedy_alan_wake_dlc_to_ditch_fugly_faces.html

Apparently, the facial animations are a bit wonky, particularly during cut scenes.

But they'll be better in upcoming DLC, though, development director Markus Mäki has promised.

"We have a few different methods of doing facial animation - in-game using FaceFX and motion capture used in cinematics," he said in a post on Remedy's forum.

Hmm, I don't think they'd update the existing cutscene data so the improvements are more likely constrained to the new content.
From what I've seen so far, the faces are kinda wooden and there's very strange eye movement in the cutscenes.
Edit: just look at her eyes, her gaze is all over the place...

View 6MB animated gif (http://i43.tinypic.com/30t08e9.gif)

Also, FaceFX is the tech used in the Mass Effect games, a 3rd party program that uses small individual gestures (manually fine tuned, either from mocap or keyframe animation), driven by scripting and with voice-based lipsync.

[nightshade]

I'll say that eye movements go a long way into making a realistic face expression, do it wrong & you have an awful facial expression. I realized this after I saw that gif of Alan's wife.

[Shifty Geezer]

Is she talking to someone? Those eyes are dire if so, and that seems quite a bizarre mistake to let through, as locking eye vectors on a target isn't new or complex.

[nightshade]

yes she's taking to Alan.

[Laa-Yosh]

Just aim constraining the eyes isn't enough IMHO, actually it should be divided between the eyes and the head and override the mocap head movement when necessary. And where you're aiming at matters too... look in the eyes of the other character, or at some arbitrary target can make a lot of difference, especially if the other character is not in the frame.

I've previously linked a nice youtube video somewhere, let me look it up.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2q3sLLJUT0c

[Shifty Geezer]

Just aim constraining the eyes isn't enough IMHO...Sure it's far from ideal, but infinitely preferable to a china-doll's icy glaze! Has this model got independent eye meshes or are these eyes decals applied to a single-piece head mesh?

[Laa-Yosh]

Can't tell because of the low res but it seems to be a separate mesh. There's usually a rather large hollow around the inner corners of the eyes and it looks like it's there on the woman's face.

Then again HL2 was praised for its facial animation and it had decals... probably because of Z-fighting with thin eyelids and eyeballs. Makes sense to LOD them whenever possible. But it shouldn't have any effect on gazes; you could just aim constrain the coordinate system for the eye decal projections instead of eyeball meshes.

[Shifty Geezer]

But it shouldn't have any effect on gazes; you could just aim constrain the coordinate system for the eye decal projections instead of eyeball meshes.True enough. Any ideas why the eyes are this way in AW? Some last minute bug or change that they'll fix with the patch?

[Laa-Yosh]

IK is kinda resource hungry as far as I know, and proper rigs and procedural animation take human resources too. Art and engine development also have to work together very closely to implement features like this. So it's at least in part a question of the budget.
And it's not something trivial either, just because I've stumbled upon these videos does not guarantee that every other game developer and 3D artist does so, too. We've just discussed how almost every other game fails to get it right too... including character oriented titles like Heavy Rain at times.

We also haven't seen all of Alan Wake to judge all the animations, we don't even have a clue about the amount they have in the game.

[Shifty Geezer]

And it's not something trivial either, just because I've stumbled upon these videos does not guarantee that every other game developer and 3D artist does so, too.Indeed, I was thinking what reference standards are there. My argument was very theoretical based on a nice, convenient paper idea on what is needed to direct eyes! It caught me unawares that a character these days could stare into space instead of who they are talking to, but it may be a common compromise for all I know!

[Kameradschaft]

I have a question to all the guys that know about 360 development/programming and its pros and cons as a hardware here...I'm really curious to know if there is an excuse for this game to run at such a low resolution and not even run at a steady 30fps with v-sync on? is the post-processing effects that taxing? or is it the lighting? the game also has low resolution textures and really bad looking shadowing...and all that in a game with linear areas.

Am I missing something? when I see other recent games (which are multiplatform) like Battlefield: BC2, Lost Planet 2 and Red Dead Redemption for example running at 720p with a lot of stuff on screen at the same time at better frame-rates with equally impressive vistas I can't stop thinking that AW technically is such a disappointment and just a bad/dumbed down port of the PC version...I just find it hard to believe that after 5 years of development and especially after working exclusively on the 360's hardware for 2-3 years Remedy came up with that flawed and unpolished engine.

[Billy Idol]

I have a question to all the guys that know about 360 development/programming and its pros and cons as a hardware here...I'm really curious to know if there is an excuse for this game to run at such a low resolution and not even run at a steady 30fps with v-sync on? is the post-processing effects that taxing? or is it the lighting? the game also has low resolution textures and really bad looking shadowing...and all that in a game with linear areas.

Am I missing something? when I see other recent games (which are multiplatform) like Battlefield: BC2, Lost Planet 2 and Red Dead Redemption for example running at 720p with a lot of stuff on screen at the same time at better frame-rates with equally impressive vistas I can't stop thinking that AW technically is such a disappointment and just a bad/dumbed down port of the PC version...I just find it hard to believe that after 5 years of development and especially after working exclusively on the 360's hardware for 2-3 years Remedy came up with that flawed and unpolished engine.

Some stuff could look really good! I like the atmosphere created in night in the forest...all the swaying trees and stuff - looked good.

But I think (as already mentioned by someone here in this forum) that we have to factor in that Remedy is a rather small dev team.
When finishing a game, I typically look at the credits...and I really wondered because in the case of AW the credits were really short! So this could maybe an explanation...

[nightshade]

A team of 50 dev can be considered a medium sized team instead of small...its less than many big budget games for sure though.

[Neb]

Am I missing something? when I see other recent games (which are multiplatform) like Battlefield: BC2, Lost Planet 2 and Red Dead Redemption for example running at 720p with a lot of stuff on screen at the same time at better frame-rates with equally impressive vistas I can't stop thinking that AW technically is such a disappointment and just a bad/dumbed down port of the PC version...I just find it hard to believe that after 5 years of development and especially after working exclusively on the 360's hardware for 2-3 years Remedy came up with that flawed and unpolished engine.

Umm it is more about hitting 360 perfomance and capabilities limit. Their game vision was set around PC platform and obviously that wouldn't translate well to console hardware. But they decided to skip as little as possible by dropping resolution. As I see it AW is doing far more technically in graphics department and realtime stuff that is..

[nightshade]

Are we sure that we are right in assuming its a case of hardware limitation rather than programing limitation ?
Imo its more due to the later, cause I see many rough areas apart from the resolution to consider it a technical one.

[Kameradschaft]

Are we sure that we are right in assuming its a case of hardware limitation rather than programing limitation ?
Imo its more due to the later, cause I see many rough areas apart from the resolution to consider it a technical one.

That's what I'm saying, if the game run at 720p at it's current state or at 540p but with a higher frame-rate, better textures and some object motion-blur for example I'd be more positive about the engine and I could understand sacrificing the res or the texture resolution but now the game just looks so rushed and unpolished in many areas besides the great-looking effects and the beautiful lighting that's hard to accept that the low-res, the tearing and the mediocre textures are there because of a hardware limitation.

[Quaz51]

remember this obscure post of Remedy

Alan Wake's renderer on the Xbox360 uses about 50 different intermediate render targets in different resolutions... In the end all are combined to form one 720p image


and i read that in the (720p) Split/second digital Foundry interview

The complexity of the rendering in Split/Second requires us to have over 70 render targets which eventually get composited together to form the final image

:p
sorry :oops:

[nightshade]

Heh...I had the exact same thoughts when I read the DF interview :)

[Scott_Arm]

I'm seeing dithering in Alan Wake's hair, but I'm not sure if it's from shadows projected onto his head. Any time there are showed on his neck or face, they are considerably dithered. Also seeing dithering in some dithering in foliage. There is a part where you're in Alan Wake's house, and there is a vase full of sun flowers in one of the rooms. If you rotate the camera near them, it looks dithered like the snow foliage in Bad Company 2 on the 360. A2C without AA? Same with the green plant by the window in the same room. Wish I had a capture card. When it's dark, it's hard to tell if the outdoor foliage has the same problem.

Edit:

Foliage on trees doesn't seem to have the same dithering.

[Ruskie]

While i think AW looks quite good i have couple of compliments about some things.It kinda hurts seeing how stiff and blocky lip syncing is,i dont know is it because of UC2 and now RDR but it seems very unnatural and un polished.Textures are quite low res(as it seems to me) and details in world like chairs,radio,cars...look look very low in poly count which kinda remind me of last gen,so those details in world put it down quite a bit IMO.But i do like volumetric fog,draw distance and lightning,its on of the finest that i have seen on consoles...

Anyway,i have a feeling that such a long dev time and totally changing direction of the game hurt the tech it self as it kinda feels out dated.I think it might be duo to the game firstly being open world game to show of PC power,but then linear exclusive for 360...maybe thats why textures are not as good as some other linear hi profile games and low poly count on alot of details in the game.

[nightshade]

I'm seeing dithering in Alan Wake's hair, but I'm not sure if it's from shadows projected onto his head. Any time there are showed on his neck or face, they are considerably dithered. Also seeing dithering in some dithering in foliage. There is a part where you're in Alan Wake's house, and there is a vase full of sun flowers in one of the rooms. If you rotate the camera near them, it looks dithered like the snow foliage in Bad Company 2 on the 360. A2C without AA? Same with the green plant by the window in the same room. Wish I had a capture card. When it's dark, it's hard to tell if the outdoor foliage has the same problem.

Edit:

Foliage on trees doesn't seem to have the same dithering.
The game uses A2C for transparencies....and leaves the job of reducing artifacting to MSAA.
This (http://i48.tinypic.com/2hec749.jpg) is what you wanna show right ? And you are also not wrong when you say that the shadows are dithered.

[Scott_Arm]

The game uses A2C for transparencies....and leaves the job of reducing artifacting to MSAA.
This (http://i48.tinypic.com/2hec749.jpg) is what you wanna show right ? And you are also not wrong when you say that the shadows are dithered.

Seems that some transparencies have MSAA applied and others do not. I have to add, I really like the look of this game, despite some obvious flaws.