Rage (id Software)

PC version has at least one frame extra latency to detect texture pages that need to be loaded. It's because you have to transfer the texture page visibility data from GPU->CPU, and that isn't particularly fast. PC drivers have to keep display lists pretty long (so much API overhead), and it takes time for GPU to empty the display list and to execute the transfers over PCI express. If you don't want to stall the CPU, you need to wait for a pretty long time before actually accessing the data you have requested from the GPU. Xbox 360 and PS3 can interleave CPU & GPU calculation better, since there's no API overhead, and lower latency memory access / transfer (and GPU can interrupt CPU immediately as data is ready). Xbox obviously doesn't need to transfer data from GPU to CPU at all, since it's an unified memory system.

Rage is also the first PC game that does huge amount of texture resource updating (CPU->GPU->CPU traffic). And it is using OpenGL, and there haven't been many games using it recently, so the drivers seem to be a bit rusty...

I think the weakness in my setup is the 512MB ram on the videocard. It seems they use videoram as local "cache" on those with more ram. Which makes sense since it´s alot faster and more like the Consoles setup.

I have a 2 screen setup , so i did a test with performance monitor on one side where i could see CPU usage and Disk I/O. My cpu is using around 40-60% in peak, the Disk I/O is around 10MB with action and topped at 20MB. The res is 1920x1080.

60% on a 4 core/8 thread i7 CPU running 3.33Ghz is pretty high :)
 
Pop rockets are awesome, have made the game a whole lot more fun since i started using them! You need to get the arc right depending on distance as well as leading ahead of moving targets adjusting for time of flight, which aparrently i have an undiscovered talent for ;) So satisfying exploding guys from across the map with a perfectly aimed shot, cant see any reason to use any other gun from now on!
 
After reading the DF face-off, I'm very impressed by the way Rage dynamically adjusts quality and resolution to keep a constant framerate. More developers should be doing this.
Motostorm does this i think. Capcom has the adaptive anti alias. Didn't the first Riddik applied a similar technique?
 
Pop rockets are awesome, have made the game a whole lot more fun since i started using them! You need to get the arc right depending on distance as well as leading ahead of moving targets adjusting for time of flight, which aparrently i have an undiscovered talent for ;) So satisfying exploding guys from across the map with a perfectly aimed shot, cant see any reason to use any other gun from now on!

They do have a drawback ie if you need to loot the bodies of the enemies afterwards for ammo etc there won't be any bodies..;)
 
They do have a drawback ie if you need to loot the bodies of the enemies afterwards for ammo etc there won't be any bodies..;)

That gets me everytime!! It's like 'Ooh, could do with the ammo or the dollars' and then it's like 'no, no, don't sit on the grenade..' BOOM splat. 'Bugger'...
 
The game is still getting 8, 8.5s and 9s from various review sites.. Looks like its a good game, just the PC performance fiasco created a negative stir near launch.
 
Honestly, the game is too tedious for me to keep playing. There's too much else sitting on my shelf. It's a shame.
 
well, I like the game very much...no graphics issues at all, took me 5min to figure out the config files (thanks to this forum) and since then: no issue, no texture pop in , nice graphics (if you don't go close up to stuff :))...but I really like the gameplay, it is little bit open world..but not too much for my taste, so good! I really enjoy the hit response system of the foes...reminds me of KZ2 hit response system! I really like the weapons, and that there are so many of them with different bullet types you even have more variation! Driving is ok as well, but I try to reduce this as much as possible..up to now, I did all the main and side missions...because I need money for my guns :mrgreen:

my verdict: buy it, if you like shooters!
 
They have clearly spent a lot of time and energy on the PS3 version. ^_^
I will get it in Jan. Already have games lined up till December. :(
 
The hardest part of the whole game for me is the speed at which it runs!! I'm so used to running in treacle that the quick pace throws me :D

In the City now and I am really hating the mutants. They're too flipping fast, they get too close for the shotgun and if you don't get them with a dead centre blast it only slows them down. Plus I've met two of the big guys, one with a tentacle and one that comes straight out of a Troma film. Honestly he's like the Toxic Avenger but bigger. And with rocket launchers!!

But it is quite amazing that they have got this much detail into a 60fps game. I wonder if Tech5 is created to scale for the nextgen console. After all it's still an opengl based engine isn't it?
 
I wonder if Tech5 is created to scale for the nextgen console. After all it's still an opengl based engine isn't it?
Tech5 is a cross platform engine. In a well designed multiplatform renderer, you usually have less than 5% API specific code. The current version of Tech5 has at least 3 separate rendering APIs supported currently (Xbox, PS3 and OpenGL/PC). The OpenGL support could likely help porting the engine to Linux and OSX, but it woudn't help with next generation consoles, as console developers tend to use close to metal APIs for best performance.
 
well, I like the game very much...no graphics issues at all, took me 5min to figure out the config files (thanks to this forum) and since then: no issue, no texture pop in , nice graphics (if you don't go close up to stuff :))...but I really like the gameplay, it is little bit open world..but not too much for my taste, so good! I really enjoy the hit response system of the foes...reminds me of KZ2 hit response system! I really like the weapons, and that there are so many of them with different bullet types you even have more variation! Driving is ok as well, but I try to reduce this as much as possible..up to now, I did all the main and side missions...because I need money for my guns :mrgreen:

my verdict: buy it, if you like shooters!

If you need money for guns play cards. If you collect a good deck you are basically unbeatable. It is actually a bit sad b/c the game was more fun before I had a decent deck. Now I can win on normal (or whatever the medium is) every single time, but I don't have enough high level cards for expert and I didn't understand at first where I got cards and missed out on some in dead city and other spots that I cannot go back to.
 
If you need money for guns play cards. If you collect a good deck you are basically unbeatable. It is actually a bit sad b/c the game was more fun before I had a decent deck. Now I can win on normal (or whatever the medium is) every single time, but I don't have enough high level cards for expert and I didn't understand at first where I got cards and missed out on some in dead city and other spots that I cannot go back to.

oh, ok!! thanks for the hint...did not borther up to now...never played cards so far...will try it out!
 
I still don't see any theoretical problem in upgrading various aspects of the renderer, maybe even adding full deferred rendering and lighting.
However, the most probable changes for Doom4 are to increase texel density by using a smaller world (assuming they don't add vehicles and such) and to increase number of enemies, after all that's what we loved Doom for.

Not sure about the dynamic lighting aspect though. The thing is that if you can have unique 1:1 lightmapping in the world then it makes all kinds of sense to bake your lighting, at least for the static elements. This was one of the reasons for the 60fps speed and the nice atmospheric look of the environments with all the color bleed and stuff in Rage. For Doom they could do some really creepy stuff using baked lighting but more complex surface shaders...


Edit: it's actually an interesting thought experiment, what would you do with this engine if your frame cap was 30Hz so you had at least twice as much computing power to spend on everything? :)
 
That would be interesting. The same engine with double the amount of rendering time available... You'd definitely get FXAA in there and maybe aim for an animated sky and a day-night cycle. Dynamic weather? Feet.

That's why I was wondering if ID mean for this engine to scale to the next gen as it is and practically have the extra rendering time available. Are the gfx good enough now that they only need some extra effects to be added to make them amazing?
 
The decision to make a world this big might have been a bad one, you see the wasteland imo is mostly boring and is only for driving around and destroying other cars. They could've gone for a smaller world with increased texel density as that is pretty much what's hurting Rage's look right now aside from the image quality and the static world (which I'm sure would've been taken care of it wasnt 60fps)
 
That would be interesting. The same engine with double the amount of rendering time available... You'd definitely get FXAA in there and maybe aim for an animated sky and a day-night cycle. Dynamic weather? Feet.
FXAA and animated sky would be definitely possible. Just a few milliseconds extra (another 14 ms left). However dynamic day-night cycle / weather (= dynamic lighting) could be problematic to do in 30 fps on current consoles, assuming you wanted same lighting/shadowing quality (Rage has baked high quality global illumination, so you would need really good quality real time soft shadows and screen space ambient occlusion & color bleeding to get anywhere close). Also they currently seem to have one virtual texture with just color data (for static objects). For real time lighting you need also normal maps and material properties. Adding normal maps and material properties to the virtual texture containing all the static surface/objects (all the terrain, etc) would at least double their storage cost... Six DVD's anyone? :)
 
The decision to make a world this big might have been a bad one, you see the wasteland imo is mostly boring and is only for driving around and destroying other cars.

It'd look really silly if the towns and other mission specific areas would be even closer to each other, IMHO. It'd have to be a completely different type of game to work in a world that's small enough to provide at least a twofold increase in texel density (which is AFAIK quite high actually, in places it's 5 per inch)

that is pretty much what's hurting Rage's look right now aside from the image quality and the static world (which I'm sure would've been taken care of it wasnt 60fps)

I still think that the world's general richness is a good compromise, I don't give much about how a phone looks up close.
I've already explained why the static world and baked lighting makes all kinds of sense. Not sure how different something like Gears of War 3 actually is from this... a little more movable geometry to collapse a few select buildings, basically?
 
Also they currently seem to have one virtual texture with just color data (for static objects).

Interesting, are you sure there's absolutely no dynamic shading on the world surfaces, no speculars or anything?
 
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