[homerdog]

Oh so we get shitty textures too? Cool. I would hate to feel left out.

[Sxotty]

Glad you don't feel left out

BTW I wonder if the reason there is no PC preview is b/c they are still fiddling? Carmack said something to that effect during Qcon. Basically that since it was digital distribution they could work on it until the last minute. Of course it is more likely there is a dastardly plot in the works to take over the world or something like that.

[Ike Turner]

Originally Posted by Sxotty

Glad you don't feel left out

BTW I wonder if the reason there is no PC preview is b/c they are still fiddling? Carmack said something to that effect during Qcon. Basically that since it was digital distribution they could work on it until the last minute. Of course it is more likely there is a dastardly plot in the works to take over the world or something like that.

The three versions are Gold so...no. No PC Review is understandable given that it will get praises on the consoles because it's one of the best looking games there (and 60fps) and mostly get shitted on on PC because o the low res textures, pop-in and lack of other wiz-bang effects.. PR rules the world.

[Man from Atlantis]

We also spoke about tech with Tim, taking a moment to work through a special Transcoding option for those with fast GPUs.
“When you have a high-end graphics card,” says Tim, “you can apply [it] to Transcoding, so when you whip around fast in Rage the world comes into focus extremely quickly. And of course, if you have a high-end video card with lots of video RAM, your texture size will be larger, which will give you much crisper textures much farther away than you would normally see on a console.”

http://www.geforce.com/News/articles...r-high-end-gpu

[suryad]

This game is a skip for me. Bring on Batman.

[Davros]

So much for mega texture being the second coming

[NRP]

God you guys are jaded. Just play it and have fun. Stop worrying about all the shit that may or may not be happening behind the scenes.

[swaaye]

Ya really. I'm mostly wondering what kind of game this is. I'm still foggy on that aspect and that's what's keeping me from throwing money their way until some reviews and player comments come in.

[Scott_Arm]

Originally Posted by NRP

God you guys are jaded. Just play it and have fun. Stop worrying about all the shit that may or may not be happening behind the scenes.

Agreed.

[homerdog]

I do think it's funny how they hyped it vs how it turned out in practice (regarding MT).

On PC it is dumb that they don't give us better textures. End of line.

That said if it's a fun game I'll get it, but not for full price.

[suryad]

Originally Posted by homerdog

I do think it's funny how they hyped it vs how it turned out in practice (regarding MT).

On PC it is dumb that they don't give us better textures. End of line.

That said if it's a fun game I'll get it, but not for full price.

Pretty much word for word how I feel.

[pjbliverpool]

Originally Posted by Man from Atlantis

http://www.geforce.com/News/articles...r-high-end-gpu

That's pretty interesting. He also mentioned the transcoding being done on high end multi core CPU's - presumably this would have to be the case regardless or your CPU power if the GPU isn't doing it though??

It could make for some interesting benchmarks though, especially in comparison to how PS3 handles the same situation. What PC will it take to equal Cell in this respect if GPU transcoding is not activated?

Incidentally, the 'benefit' of this appears to be the world coming into focus faster if you turn around quickly... shouldn't that be a given in any game?

NIce to hear we'll get some texture benefits aswell even if the close up textures will still be same res. Based on the performance we keep hearing about from this engine, I'm expecting the big advantage on PC is going to be near cgi level image quality with very high resolution and insane levels of AA. I really hope they put some good AA options in there to soak up that power - DICE really perfected it here with a mix of MSAA and Post process AA both controlled from the in game menu.

[pjbliverpool]

Oh and about the game itself

Looks like it could be quite good to me. I'll likely be picking it up when it hits the sub £15 level (which I do for every game these days with very few execptions).

Graphically it looks nice despite the console roots. I'm not holding Id to task for that though since it's already been suggested that Doom 4 will be the big PC graphical powerhouse. I see Rage as the consolers game that we get to play and Doom 4 as the PC'ers game that they get to play. Difference is even the consolers game is better on the PC

[Grall]

Originally Posted by NRP

God you guys are jaded. Just play it and have fun.

I'm with you here.

When I hear people whining about blurry textures all I'm saying to myself is, "it's an action game! what are you doing pushing your nose up to the scenery???"

IMO, unique but blurrier textures everywhere beats out super-crisp textures that repeat all over the place by about a bajillion times. Unique textures is one of those things I've been (at times subconsciously) wishing for for ages now and when it's finally here, people do nothing but complain, complain, complain. Boring.

Rage looks like a very enjoyable experience from what I've seen so far. Rarely has id let me down - Wolfenstein was a bit naff in some ways (having to buy ammo and weapon upgrades with money for example, and no built-in cheats is pure heresy on the PC platform.) But overall they've been very consistent with quality over many years now and I see no real evidence that it's about to change.

[bigtabs]

To be fair, this is Beyond3D, not a pure gaming site. It's in our nature to be graphics whores and love new technology that pushes it forward. We are well within normal operational parameters to criticize new tech that doesn't appear to do what we've been looking forward to seeing for so long.

It won't stop us enjoying the game... much.

[Davros]

Originally Posted by Grall

IWolfenstein was a bit naff

Good job it wasn't developed by id then

[Malo]

Originally Posted by bigtabs

To be fair, this is Beyond3D, not a pure gaming site. It's in our nature to be graphics whores and love new technology that pushes it forward. We are well within normal operational parameters to criticize new tech that doesn't appear to do what we've been looking forward to seeing for so long.

It won't stop us enjoying the game... much.

My thoughts exactly, this is why this forum exists and why we're here.

[Grall]

All of us old-timers at least are well aware of the purpose of B3D, but I just don't see the validity of a lot of criticism aimed against Rage. All realtime 3D tech is essentially a series of trade-offs, where one decision will impact another. Blurry textures, well, the game's already ~20 gigs, there's nothing TECHNICAL stopping id from releasing it with pin-sharp textures, except downloaded copies would be excessively large and take ages to trickle home through narrow internet connections, it would come on a huge number of discs for retail PC and 360 owners, and so on.

By the way, RAGE preload is active on Steam now. Maybe it's been enabled for a while and it's already been mentioned in the thread, except I didn't notice so I'll post a reminder all the same.

[Sxotty]

It doesn't work though. Says too many are already preloading it and I have to wait

Anyway I am looking forward to the 4th.

[ct03]

Originally Posted by Grall

IMO, unique but blurrier textures everywhere beats out super-crisp textures that repeat all over the place by about a bajillion times.

I strongly, strongly, strongly disagree.

[Grall]

Maybe you'll reconsider after having had the chance to play a game that features unique texturing.

We've done texture tiling now for 20 years, it's time for change.

[swaaye]

Originally Posted by Grall

Maybe you'll reconsider after having had the chance to play a game that features unique texturing.

We've done texture tiling now for 20 years, it's time for change.

I'm looking forward to seeing it. It's a totally new approach. Artists get a lot more freedom than usual and we have already seen many times that game visuals really come down to the artists. Honestly this aspect is probably enough to get a purchase from me.

I liked hearing JC say in his super long keynote how the artists went nuts and actually forced them to redesign the rendering somewhat. The artists were doing things well beyond their predictions.

[sebbbi]

Originally Posted by Grall

IMO, unique but blurrier textures everywhere beats out super-crisp textures that repeat all over the place by about a bajillion times. Unique textures is one of those things I've been (at times subconsciously) wishing for for ages now and when it's finally here, people do nothing but complain, complain, complain. Boring.

Completely unique textures everywhere are great, but in my opinion not worth the extra storage space. Most of the time it's enough that no obvious tiling can be seen, and there's enough different textures to cover the current viewport with enough variety. For example it doesn't matter if the same asphalt texture is repeated in other location of the world, since it's really hard to remember the formations of small cracks and little stones in a seemingly "random" texture surface. It's often better to have a few (under ten) really high quality large asphalt textures, than having a completely unique (low quality) asphalt texture for each road in the game world (hundreds of them).

I personally prefer an option in the middle. Virtual texturing ("megatexture") also allows very cost effective decaling on runtime. You can still uniquely map every object surface in the virtual texture space, but you do not store the pixel data of each texture variation to the disc/hdd. Instead every surface uses a base texture that can be shared by any amount of differently decaled surface variations. The (huge amount of) decals make the surface look unique, and can be used to hide texture tiling as well. For example we have a few different (artist painted) base texture variations for our wooden box object, and each wooden box texture instance can be modified by (artist placed) decals and various other dynamic properties. We have a few hundred of wooden boxes in our game world, and with this system we can have a 2048x2048 texture on each. If we stored completely unique pixel data of each instance (to HDD/disc), we would need to drop the texture resolution to 256x256 (assuming same storage budget). It's of course a trade off. Completely unique textures would allow even more variation and artist creativity, but if we can have enough variation that all the surfaces visible in the same game area look unique, it doesn't really matter that much if the player could find two completely identical looking wooden boxes in the game world (artists do not have time to decal each copy uniquely).

It's also a matter of art budget. Completely unique textures everywhere require huge amount of artist work. Rage has been on development for a long long time. I am really waiting to see the game world, as it is definitely the game that has taken the most artist resources in the history of game development. Not many companies have the guts (and the resources) to create a game that takes 3 DVDs. And so far it seems that their decision has paid off (at least in the consoles, where 60 fps games are really rare, and Rage looks stunning compared even compared to the 30 fps games). Maybe the PC gamers will get a high quality texture patch later... 2x2 higher res textures would quadruple the texture data size... so the HQ pack would be at least 50 gigs

[slapnutz]

First JC said around E3 that PC would be higher res texture... e.g. 64k instead of 32k (dont quote me on the figures) .....

... then at QCon he said he is trying to get Higher Res textures as a free DLC for PC...

... now I'm reading here (via JC twitter) that its back to same Res at console with no DLC mention...

... sooo.. what exactly is the latest accurate info?

Is it, Pc has same tex res as Console with no guarantee of any Texture packs in future?



Also I agree about Beyond3D site visitors, we are mostly gfx whores, this is our home!

[jlippo]

Originally Posted by slapnutz

... sooo.. what exactly is the latest accurate info?

All platforms use same textures and biggest textures are 128kx128k, environment and characters are in different MT.