Graphical effects rarely seen this gen that you expect/hope become standard next-gen

N_B said:
Doesn't seem to be much of a difference between the higher ("volumetric effects") settings.
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The difference between settings is the density of the volume effects used for flashlights/vehicle/special lights that are not players. The difference is the amount of slices and spacing inbetween each slice. Higher settings allows IIRC 200+ slices at once. Kinda costly effects with so much transparency. By default the optimised type of slices is used in Crysis games which are called 'Optimised' and AFAIK 1280x720+ res upscaled. You can also switch to full resolution or fake ones. Fake ones might be for lowest setting.

Anyway best place to 'study' them is the "core" level which has tons of volume effects for lights with slices. Funny thing is optimised looks IMO better than full res ones due to the 'soft glow' on slice edges blended due to upscaling of post process effect. I am sure someone commented about this to regarding Metro 2033 v.h full res PP and high upscaled PP. :p´

EDIT: Reminds me of STALKER games crazy use of full res volume godrays with 40+ slices that can cover the whole screen with huge depth. Hah crazy unecessary stuff..
 
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Nebula said:
Funny thing is optimised looks IMO better than full res ones due to the 'soft glow' on slice edges blended due to upscaling of post process effect. I am sure someone commented about this to regarding Metro 2033 v.h full res PP and high upscaled PP. :p´
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I guess it was me :p ..no really not sure though heh !
But yea full rez "God Rays" are far too sharp & the performance hit makes it even worse, on the other hand a half rez buffer which is then upscaled looks quite soft & very natural.
 
Volumetric effects on the 'Core' level in Crysis are the best I've ever seen (perhaps Metro has surpassed it?). NPC flashlights in Crysis are surprisingly low quality in comparison, and don't seem to actually light anything up.

As for the topic, next gen games should have at least Crysis quality volume effects.
 
Easier to show my next gen wishes than describe them! So I went on a screenshot spree with a cool Crysis mod to find examples :cool:

Vegetation like this
http://img121.imageshack.us/img121/3808/crysis64201005041717144.jpg

Lighting like this
http://img709.imageshack.us/img709/2564/crysis64201005041739271.jpg

And shadow quality like this
http://img685.imageshack.us/img685/217/crysis64201005041739391.jpg

Water like this
http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/6108/crysis64201005041745591.jpg

Destructibility like this
http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/1641/crysis64201005041803538.jpg

But it's not enough just to look that good. This all took place on one GIGANTIC map, and it never loaded. There is a day/night cycle, so none of the lighting can be baked. Parts you see in the distance aren't just lame imposters, they are actual places with dudes to shoot and stuff to blow up. If my next Xbox accomplishes all this I will be a happy bunny.
 
homerdog said:
But it's not enough just to look that good. This all took place on one GIGANTIC map, and it never loaded. There is a day/night cycle, so none of the lighting can be baked. Parts you see in the distance aren't just lame imposters, they are actual places with dudes to shoot and stuff to blow up. If my next Xbox accomplishes all this I will be a happy bunny.
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Because, you know, in movies you always see how they travel from scene to scene, and you see how time passes and goes through a day/night cycle?
 
Just give the devs a lot of fast and easilly accessible and workable RAM and they will do wonders with the new technologies that are about to come.

As for graphical breathtaking features ... real particules (with real physical interaction, not just gravity and bounce) and atmospherique Ambiance and Lightning.
That is amazing what you can do with particules.
 
patataboy said:
Just give the devs a lot of fast and easilly accessible and workable RAM and they will do wonders with the new technologies that are about to come.

As for graphical breathtaking features ... real particules (with real physical interaction, not just gravity and bounce) and atmospherique Ambiance and Lightning.
That is amazing what you can do with particules.
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Agreed, I'd like to see a lot of this next-gen:

 
L. Scofield said:
Agreed, I'd like to see a lot of this next-gen:
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That's very nice. However, I would like to see it this gen, and controlled with a Move controller, and in 3D. :LOL: Well who knows, the Finnish wizards at Housemarque may get close. ;)
 
Arwin said:
That's very nice. However, I would like to see it this gen, and controlled with a Move controller, and in 3D. :LOL: Well who knows, the Finnish wizards at Housemarque may get close. ;)
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Wait for next-gen or next after that becouse that is way to many advanced particles for current gen consoles even in techdemo form unless it is really really low-res or greatly simplified.
 
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Nebula said:
Wait for next-gen or next after that becouse that is way to many advanced particles for current gen consoles even in techdemo form unless it is really really low-res or greatly simplified.
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Yeah, you're probably right. Would be fun to see though whether with all sorts of optimisations and trickery you could come close on current hardware though. I don't think very many people are currently trying this kind of thing - the closest we have seen maybe is Super Rub-a-Dub, which has reasonably complex fluid simulation.
 
It's worth pointing out LBP's smoke effect, unequalled in any game I know of (outside plasma pong :p). Full 3D fluid dynamics would be overkill for games, but similar 2d shortcuts could work for something like a Diablo title; it's a graphical technique crying out to be used for magic effects.
 
I want the effect which you get when you are looking at a offscreen pic of a game...somehow this often improves quality of the actual graphics...but maybe some of you techies could tell me what this effect is (is it a trivial one?)
 
Billy Idol said:
I want the effect which you get when you are looking at a offscreen pic of a game...somehow this often improves quality of the actual graphics...but maybe some of you techies could tell me what this effect is (is it a trivial one?)
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Supersampling anti-aliasing?
 
Billy Idol said:
I want the effect which you get when you are looking at a offscreen pic of a game...somehow this often improves quality of the actual graphics...but maybe some of you techies could tell me what this effect is (is it a trivial one?)
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Yeah as Dungeonscaper said, SSAA. Though it comes at a hefty cost and uses tons of VRAM if you aim for very high resolutions to down-sample. Though 2560x1600 to 1280x800 (2x2SSAA) is quite feasible in quite some games with decent hardware if you limit or disable MSAA becouse SSAA + MSAA is a killer!
 
Dungeonscaper said:
Supersampling anti-aliasing?
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Nebula said:
Yeah as Dungeonscaper said, SSAA. Though it comes at a hefty cost and uses tons of VRAM if you aim for very high resolutions to down-sample. Though 2560x1600 to 1280x800 (2x2SSAA) is quite feasible in quite some games with decent hardware if you limit or disable MSAA becouse SSAA + MSAA is a killer!
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Sorry guys, this I don't understand...look for instance at these pics by nightshade (maybe not the best example in the world, I admit)

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1416616&postcount=52

Is this effect only SSAA?
Hm, I also often have the feeling that the lightning looks somehow better...

Regarding SSAA:
must the higher resolution before downsampling be an integer of the "goal" resolution...for instance a factor of 2?

What about a factor of 1.5:
1920x1080 => 1280x720 would be a factor of 1.5

Would you still get a decent effect? How would this compare to lets say standard 720p+2xMSAA?
 
Shifty Geezer said:
It's worth pointing out LBP's smoke effect, unequalled in any game I know of (outside plasma pong :p). Full 3D fluid dynamics would be overkill for games, but similar 2d shortcuts could work for something like a Diablo title; it's a graphical technique crying out to be used for magic effects.
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Yeah, good point! Forgot about it. It seems to pull it off fairly effortlessly too (sure it's 2D, but it's not like the game isn't doing anything else in the meantime).

Another graphical effect I guess would be MLAA as in God of War 3. Would be a great new default form of AA, and I'm sure DX11 hardware should be able to implement something like that fairly easily too.
 
Arwin said:
Another graphical effect I guess would be MLAA as in God of War 3. Would be a great new default form of AA, and I'm sure DX11 hardware should be able to implement something like that fairly easily too.
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They could just run it on GPGPU (CUDA/ATI Stream) on DX9-DX11 on Nvidia 8xxx ATI 2xxx hardware. Though I wonder why Intel hasn't used this themselves as they put out the algorithm several years ago, no?
 
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