The Game Technology discussion thread *Read first post before posting*

[Kameradschaft]

I don't suppose there are screen captures that have not been manipulated to look at? I'm more inclined to think the blurriness is due to using FXAA, not that I don't think it complements the cartoony style. It looked fine when I tried the demo.

Yeah after playing the PS3 demo I have to say that the game does not look sub-HD - looks quite sharp actually so yeah as you said Al maybe it's the FXAA that blurs slightly the PS3 version (btw is there a less agreessive FXAA on the 360 or it's MSAA?)...otherwise I didn't notice any other differences besides the smoother shadows on the PS3 version.

Also wondering if the new Alan Wake: American Nightmare's dev diary gameplay bits are good enough for pixel counting.

 

[Kameradschaft]

According to Remedy American Nightmare runs at a res higher than 540p.

http://forum.alanwake.com/showpost.php?p=139055&postcount=14

The resolution is higher, and the game looks much "cleaner".

So the guys in here who said that the inclusion of FXAA instead of MSAA will help them up the resolution were right...probably the Arizona setting also helped as I remember reading in DF IIRC that the foliage was a part of the reason for the low resolution of the first game.

Curious to see if they improved the shadows as well and finally got rid of the tearing.

 

[Devious]

^ To add to the post above me, this is what the Xbox 360 version of Alan Wake is compared to the PC version (in terms of low, medium, & high)

How these were on the Xbox360 build:

Resolution - mix of 960x544 and 1280x720, and some things like fog particles were rendered in half resolution that are rendered in full on PC.

Vsync - Xbox had "smart vsync" i.e. Vsync on if frame rate above 30, and off if below 30. PC doesn't support a mode like this. American Nightmare Xbox360 btw has a selectable Vsync (on, off, smart).

Antialiasing and FXAA - We had 4xAA on Xbox. FXAA was added to American Nightmare.

Anisotropic Filtering - Some textures where it was important had Aniso on Xbox (like the road texture with the yellow line), most were trilinear filtered only.

Shadow Quality - Xbox360 is somewhere around the medium setting. The rendering differs a bit so no exact comparisons can be made.

SSAO Quality - Xbox360 build had something like the Low setting - maybe with a bit less noise.

Backdrop Quality - Xbox360 Alan Wake used Medium.

GodRay Quality - Xbox360 build had this turned to off except for some specific scenes where we had the performance to turn it on and had most visual impact. The quality was less than "High".

Volumetric Light Quality - Xbox used the "Low" setting.

Draw Distance - Xbox build had this at Full - it was mainly added as an optimization. Draw calls are way more expensive on the PC than they are on the Xbox360, and this reduces draw calls.

LOD Distance - Xbox build had this around the middle mark.

FOV - Middle / default is the one Xbox360 version used too.

http://forum.alanwake.com/showpost.php?p=138982&postcount=6

 

[AlNom]

huh, did not know this:

Conker used a hemisphere lighting model. Esentially, we interpolated between two colours – sky and ground. If the normal pointed upwards, we would choose the sky colour. If it pointed downwards, we would choose the ground colour.

The ground colour was sampled dynamically, by shooting a ray downwards and doing collision detection with the ground. The colour was encoded in the vertices, and we could interpolate it at the point where the ray hit the triangles. On the left you can how the colour is this sort of blue-gray, while on the right it’s orange.

This is about the crudest appoximation of colour bleeding that you can get.

http://fileadmin.cs.lth.se/cs/Education/EDAN35/lectures/Stefanov10-gi-in-games-notes.pdf

 

[user542745831]

Might be old, but just came across this, has some (very short) footage of GoW3 at 60 fps :

http://www.gamefront.com/files/20711021/Inside_UDK__Fall_2011



It's this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6UkNN-LRi0

but at much higher bitrate and 60 fps .

It also shows performance data like in this picture:

http://udk.com/elements/img/June_clip_image009.png (Source: http://udk.com/news-beta-jun2011)

and hovers around 16 ms .

 

[SteelOak]

Is anyone here playing Ghost Recon Future Soldier beta ?
Is it volumetric light or normal post proces light shafts ?
There are volumes even without looking on light source but I really doubt it that it is possible on current gen consoles.
I know that Laa-Yosh was talking about some different ways to achive something similar to volumetric light and I am curious if this is it ?

 

[MJP]

There are volumes even without looking on light source but I really doubt it that it is possible on current gen consoles.

You can certainly do a volumetric lighting effect that's not in screen space. All you need to do is render a shadow map, then for each pixel march along the view ray and do the shadow test. Combine it with a faked lighting/scattering effect that takes the light attenuation into account, and you're done. Uncharted 3 had this kind of stuff all over the place, and IIRC so did Alan Wake.

What would actually be surprising would be applying a physically-based scattering model, but I don't think that anyone is doing that yet.

 

[nightshade]

Is anyone here playing Ghost Recon Future Soldier beta ?
Is it volumetric light or normal post proces light shafts ?
There are volumes even without looking on light source but I really doubt it that it is possible on current gen consoles.
I know that Laa-Yosh was talking about some different ways to achive something similar to volumetric light and I am curious if this is it ?

It's a 2D post process, and in almost all cases the light source is somewhere or screen on almost on screen, you can do 2D post process light shafts even with the lightsource slightly being offscreen. To make sure that it's not proper volumetric light source or something like what MJP mentioned just do this test, face opposite to the direction of light and if you still see the shaft or the cone of light then it's probably volumetric or using the shadow map technique.


EDIT: Also I wonder when Ubisoft changed their mind about the framerate for Future Soldier. I remember when it was revealed the devs mentioned that they going to make it target 60FPS, that's not the case anymore.

 

[SteelOak]

To make sure that it's not proper volumetric light source or something like what MJP mentioned just do this test, face opposite to the direction of light and if you still see the shaft or the cone of light then it's probably volumetric or using the shadow map technique.

Yes I know and I have done it on the map "mill" and there are still some shafts when you are faceing opposite to the light source but only if you look up.
It's pretty obvious that this is post process on this pipeline map but it looks different on the mill.It's probably because light source is directly above the player so I wasn't really faceying opposite to the light source .

 

[nightshade]

Yes I know and I have done it on the map "mill" and there are still some shafts when you are faceing opposite to the light source but only if you look up.
It's pretty obvious that this is post process on this pipeline map but it looks different on the mill.It's probably because light source is directly above the player.

Yes I played on that map and saw then realize it's more to do with the size and placement of the light source.

 

[-tkf-]

Ugh both versions have moments where the load times are horrible. I'm assuming there's a mandatory install for the Ps3 version which explains the disparity with the first vid.

The "2nd play" version on the PS3 uses the HD as a Cache.. like GT5, it "installs" as you use the assets.

 

[tims]

The Last of Us ambient occlusion shadowing

I'm really want to draw your attention on their soft area shadows. I made a quick cut of the trailers :

http://www.timsoret.com/out/lastofus_lighting.mp4

How did they achieve this look ?

I can't think of an algorithm close to this. Usually in modern games this is just Direct Lighting + SSAO in the shadows, and that's why it feels very flat if you're in the shadows usually. As there is no more electricity in their story, it seems that Naughty Dog really pushed forward the indoor lighting to avoid the flat SSAO look and add some soft shadowing when there isn't sun.

Another look where you can see both direct & indirect shadows :

http://www.timsoret.com/out/lastofus/lastofus_both.gif

Video version of the gif :
http://www.timsoret.com/out/lastofus/lastofus_both.mp4

 

[Graham]

... Last of us ambient shadows ...

That was by far the most impressive element of the demo for me. However if you look closely, it's probably very simple (eg it could be achieved via multiple jittered low res shadows cast from the dominant ambient light direction + blur, reprojected into the scene). There are many, many ways to achieve that kind of effect - and it really boggles my mind that we don't see it attempted more often (as it works so well to ground a character - and can be very cheap if done effectively).

We are doing a similar thing at work, projecting ambient shadows - far, far less complex or good looking - but then we have much tighter performance restrictions

Seems we always end up with endless global SSAO implementations, which IMO usually look bollocks.

 

[jlippo]

I wonder if they use some sort of analytic method or some sort of splatting/occlusion field.
It certainly will be very interesting to read the future tech papers on subject.

 

[tims]

I'm sorry guys, I've corrected the first link (It seems I can't edit the message).
You can take a look at it, I've selected the best parts where we can see this effect.

Graham : Casting multiple low res shadows to approximate penumbra is very costly no ?

 

[RenegadeRocks]

I'm really want to draw your attention on their soft area shadows. I made a quick cut of the trailers :

http://www.timsoret.com/out/lastofus_lighting.mp4

How did they achieve this look ?

I can't think of an algorithm close to this. Usually in modern games this is just Direct Lighting + SSAO in the shadows, and that's why it feels very flat if you're in the shadows usually. As there is no more electricity in their story, it seems that Naughty Dog really pushed forward the indoor lighting to avoid the flat SSAO look and add some soft shadowing when there isn't sun.

Another look where you can see both direct & indirect shadows :

http://www.timsoret.com/out/lastofus/lastofus_both.gif

Video version of the gif :
http://www.timsoret.com/out/lastofus/lastofus_both.mp4

Those indirect shadows are superb !!!! Would love to know if they are actually placing multiple light sources to cast them or are they being calcualted via some Realtime GI simulation. They look too good to be either !

 

[L. Scofield]

It's something I noticed in the VGA reveal but I thought it was something ND added for the FMV trailer. Seeing it in-game is awesome. Hopefully other devs will copy this.

 

[Gitaroo]

Those indirect shadows are superb !!!! Would love to know if they are actually placing multiple light sources to cast them or are they being calcualted via some Realtime GI simulation. They look too good to be either !

as long as they looks good, thats what really matters anyway.

 

[tims]

Yes but it would be great to know how they made it so other developers can enhance their games.

 

[AlNom]

Realtime GI simulation. They look too good to be either !

There's no dynamic light bouncing...

Anyways, this thread should try to stick to the tech discussion. There's a reason why it's separate from the game thread.