Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion Archive [2011]

[(((interference)))]

These are frame captures.

Too vague a reference. It's PR, so it could be anything (culled/not culled, visible/not visible).

The total figure you see here is what's rendered.

There are so many things wrong with this statement.

*sigh* Why does it always come back to platform pissing contests. :/ It's so off-topic.

Well, Uncharted and KZ also have large draw distances but they seem to have a lot more foreground detail. Is that really not true?

For me, Alan Wake is a rare example of an exclusive (not multiplat) title that is "pushing the hardware" in the same way that GG, ND, SCE:SM etc push the PS3
http://imagequalitymatters.blogspot.com/2010/05/tech-analysis-alan-wake.html

It certainly puts other linear titles on the system like Mass Effect to shame.
And this is from an independent, 30 people team, not the 200 plus, $50m budget teams you have at Sony - it certainly makes you wonder what would Uncharted made by ND running on 360 would look like.

I think BF3 will be interesting, as no one would dare argue that DICE didn't tailor their engine enough for the PS3, so it will be interesting to see how the two compare - I mean people have already begun criticising Crytek for the PS3 version of C2 apparently being worse than the 360 build.

 

[patsu]

Cool, thx for that. Judging from their numbers it looks like mlaa and their spu occlusion are taking the lions share of all spu time. The "checked it in quietly" comment in the slide made me laugh, been there done that

Amazing that initial LRB plans faltered, while game developers continue to develop CPU rendering subsystems on Cell. Toshiba has evolved their Cell tech too. Really hope to see IBM incorporate the appropriate elements into their next CPU as promised. ^_^

Would be interesting to see alternate approaches to graphics, and tight integration with app logic -- when the core is as flexible as a CPU, and the memory subsystem can "keep up". Hope to see a version of CPU MLAA that can handle subpixel edges better someday.

 

[betan]

Judging from their numbers it looks like mlaa and their spu occlusion are taking the lions share of all spu time.

20-50% of one (and only one) spu is significantly cheaper than what I expected to be honest.

 

[liolio]

20-50% of one (and only one) spu is significantly cheaper than what I expected to be honest.

I didn't get fr'om where this number was coming from at the end on the presentation, it doesn't seem to match the time in ms it takes for the 5 SPU to accomplish the whole treatment. May this figure concerns only on step in the processing, taht would make more sense.

 

[betan]

I didn't get fr'om where this number was coming from at the end on the presentation, it doesn't seem to match the time in ms it takes for the 5 SPU to accomplish the whole treatment. May this figure concerns only on step in the processing, taht would make more sense.

It says for everything, and the ms figures for 5 SPUs are for the original approach which takes slightly more than 1 SPU total.

 

[Tea2]

I mean people have already begun criticising Crytek for the PS3 version of C2 apparently being worse than the 360 build.

Who is criticising Crytek, where and on what basis? So far I haven't seen a fair comparison of both versions, there isn't even a demo available for PS3 yet. How come some people already reached a conclusion that Crytek failed to provide a competent PS3 version of the game that makes use of it's architecture? Seems like a knee jerk reaction to me.
It's a shame that a lot of good games and good tech on both consoles gets burried under this kind of talk on the internet. Words like "incompetence" and "lazy" being thrown around by people with minimal or no grasp of what they're talking about. Not sure why you think DICE would be immune to that, but we'll see how BF3 ends up

 

[assurdum]

Who is criticising Crytek, where and on what basis? So far I haven't seen a fair comparison of both versions, there isn't even a demo available for PS3 yet. How come some people already reached a conclusion that Crytek failed to provide a competent PS3 version of the game that makes use of it's architecture? Seems like a knee jerk reaction to me.
It's a shame that a lot of good games and good tech on both consoles gets burried under this kind of talk on the internet. Words like "incompetence" and "lazy" being thrown around by people with minimal or no grasp of what they're talking about. Not sure why you think DICE would be immune to that, but we'll see how BF3 ends up

Well, whether 1024x720p will be confirmed, imho, it is far beyond than a 'success'... I just imaginated what could be others games like kz3 or gow 3 at this low resolution... I expect a lot more things to BF3 engine in comparison... I'm not to try to blame or bash the talent of Crytek, but it is notorious to doing the better with unlimited resources in a hardware & not for its works on the console...

 

[Tea2]

Well, whether 1024x720p will be confirmed, imho, it is far beyond than a 'success'...

I wouldn't describe every game running at 720p as a 'success' either. There are reasons to why some devs decide to go with specific resolution. Reasons other than "we're not good enough to go HD ready". I'm sure you understand that. The whole "sub hd = automatic 100% fail" generalization is pretty silly imo.

 

[assurdum]

I wouldn't describe every game running at 720p as a 'success' either. There are reasons to why some devs decide to go with specific resolution. Reasons other than "we're not good enough to go HD ready". I'm sure you understand that. The whole "sub hd = automatic 100% fail" generalization is pretty silly imo.

I'm not talking of subhd in general or 720p for every game a success, but the difference through 1280x720p & 1024X720p it's really big... you can save a lot of resources with so much less pixels...

 

[Tea2]

...and they might be using those saved resources on bigger-than-your-average-console-shooter environments with some vertical gameplay, additional post processing or whatever else they can come up with. It's not like they are lowering the resolution in order to run a game that looks the same and "pushes" exactly the same things like the games you mentioned. Different game, different gameplay design, different priorities. Who knows what's going on in the single player campaign.

 

[Neb]

Well, whether 1024x720p will be confirmed, imho, it is far beyond than a 'success'...

I'm not talking of subhd in general or 720p for every game a success, but the difference through 1280x720p & 1024X720p it's really big... you can save a lot of resources with so much less pixels...

Suppose it is sub-HD then have you given the tought that it might be becouse to find an optimal balance to squeeze out the most of the system it might be a good solution to not create a botleneck else where?

Talking about optimal optimisations snd squezing out the most of the system which means besides having optimised code also the removal of botlenecks to minimise idle time of different HW parts.

Would that allow them to pull of all the realtime effects in Crysis 2 which frankly no other console game does at the same time. It pretty much got all the praised features from other games all in in a single package. And even with best quality for most if not all parts. Even animations are some of the best dynamic and procedural ones you can find and frankly has much incommon with the BF3 trailer animations atleast for SP (not surprising since they use same animation system, "ANT"). Easily rivals KZ2/3s animations, easily and even hit detection physics/animations.

Think about all the effects in a single package running at 30fps on both consoles +/- some differences both ways.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

BF3 still looks better so far, IMHO... just to throw in another opinion.

 

[Tea2]

Is there any good quality footage from the console versions of BF3? I thought what we've seen so far was PC version.

 

[kagemaru]

Well, whether 1024x720p will be confirmed, imho, it is far beyond than a 'success'...

I'm not talking of subhd in general or 720p for every game a success, but the difference through 1280x720p & 1024X720p it's really big... you can save a lot of resources with so much less pixels...

It would be one thing if one version was 1280x720 and the other was 1024x720, but that's not the case. It looks like one is 1152x720 while the other may be 1024x720, not really a huge difference.

I don't understand why comparisons and assumptions need to be constantly made. If the beta's config file is anything to go by, they have put in A LOT more ps3-specific optimizations/tweaks in Crysis 2 than what I saw for the 360.

 

[ct03]

4million polygons per frame

I don't have a game background, so bear with me, but where are these numbers coming from? They seem completely off to me.

Exhibit a): Killzone 3 characters use around 12,500 triangles (Pixologic interview), so I completely fail to see how you'd get to 4 million triangles total.
Exhibit b): I believe Crysis 1 uses around 1 million triangles per frame, but we're talking about dense vistas with tons of foliage and objects.
Exhibit c): I currently work on a realistic steadicam animation in my free time which happens to have almost exactly 4 million triangles. Most of the shaders are still missing, but you can see that the detail far exceeds what you'd expect to see in a game like Killzone 3

 

[hoho]

Most of the shaders are still missing, but you can see that the detail far exceeds what you'd expect to see in a game like Killzone 3:

"Problem" is developers add the triangles generated during lighting rendering into the totals as well. IIRC for KZ3 it meant roughly quadrupling the visible triangle count to get the total processed triangle count.

 

[Lucid_Dreamer]

Well, Uncharted and KZ also have large draw distances but they seem to have a lot more foreground detail. Is that really not true?

For me, Alan Wake is a rare example of an exclusive (not multiplat) title that is "pushing the hardware" in the same way that GG, ND, SCE:SM etc push the PS3
http://imagequalitymatters.blogspot.com/2010/05/tech-analysis-alan-wake.html

It certainly puts other linear titles on the system like Mass Effect to shame.
And this is from an independent, 30 people team, not the 200 plus, $50m budget teams you have at Sony - it certainly makes you wonder what would Uncharted made by ND running on 360 would look like.

I think BF3 will be interesting, as no one would dare argue that DICE didn't tailor their engine enough for the PS3, so it will be interesting to see how the two compare - I mean people have already begun criticising Crytek for the PS3 version of C2 apparently being worse than the 360 build.

How much SPU time DICE is using for BF3? The percentage of SPU/GPU related tasks would determine whether they tailored their engine enough for the PS3, don't you think? A couple SPU centric tasks does not necessarily make a great overall PS3 resource usage, right? But, it's probably the best multiplatform effort by far. Wouldn't you agree, from their presentation? Like you, I'm anticipating the visual end results.

 

[Lucid_Dreamer]

I don't have a game background, so bear with me, but where are these numbers coming from? They seem completely off to me.

Exhibit a): Killzone 3 characters use around 12,500 triangles (Pixologic interview), so I completely fail to see how you'd get to 4 million triangles total.
Exhibit b): I believe Crysis 1 uses around 1 million triangles per frame, but we're talking about dense vistas with tons of foliage and objects.
Exhibit c): I currently work on a realistic steadicam animation in my free time which happens to have almost exactly 4 million triangles. Most of the shaders are still missing, but you can see that the detail far exceeds what you'd expect to see in a game like Killzone 3:

That area is also far smaller than a KZ3 level (20x+ smaller?). And, hoho is right.

 

[Neb]

BF3 still looks better so far, IMHO... just to throw in another opinion.

BF3 was on PC. Btw you haven't really seen real high nor let alone v.h for C2 so to compare it right now aint really fair.

 

[ct03]

That area is also far smaller than a KZ3 level (20x+ smaller?).

Do game engines process the entire level every frame?