Viaibility and implementation of SVO on next-gen consoles *spawn

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Some interesting news -thanks JaviSoft for the link- on the DX 11.2 subject.

Both AMD GPUs support partial resident textures, but we do know for a fact Microsoft added additional dedicated hardware in the X1 architecture to focus on this area beyond AMD's standard implementations.
“Let’s say you are using procedural generation or raytracing via parametric surfaces – that is, using a lot of memory writes and not much texturing or ALU – Xbox One will likely be faster,” said one developer.
Xbox One is able to run what I'd call the lighting of beauty like any other console that does exist now or has ever existed, and by that I mean Raytracing lighting, because of its architecture.

Project Spark is running on voxels, for instance, although that's besides the point.

I mention voxels because Xbox One will be able to create Voxel Cone Ray Tracing lighting in real time. You can see this awesome technology in this video.


http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/so-could-the-x1s-secret-sauce-be-voxel-cone-ray-tracing.453362563/
 
Some interesting news -thanks JaviSoft for the link- on the DX 11.2 subject.

Xbox One is able to run what I'd call the lighting of beauty like any other console that does exist now or has ever existed, and by that I mean Raytracing lighting, because of its architecture.

Project Spark is running on voxels, for instance, although that's besides the point.

I mention voxels because Xbox One will be able to create Voxel Cone Ray Tracing lighting in real time. You can see this awesome technology in this video.


http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/so-could-the-x1s-secret-sauce-be-voxel-cone-ray-tracing.453362563/

this clip is running on NVidia hw which based on recent statement are not dx 11.2 so I don't get the link between xb1 and the video...
 
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this clip is running on NVidia hw which based on recent statement are not dx 11.2 so I don't get the link between xb1 and the video...
If you are looking at a Picasso painting or at Michael Angelo's David it doesn't matter where the museum is placed, they are just meant to be shown to the public, and that video illustrates the Voxel Ray Tracing technology, it's not running on Xbox One hardware.

I would want Voxels lighting back in the Unreal Engine 4, it was the most impressive part of their technology/engine and they removed them in their recent demonstrations because they were so taxing on the hardware, so this gives us some hope.
 
Some interesting news -thanks JaviSoft for the link- on the DX 11.2 subject.

Xbox One is able to run what I'd call the lighting of beauty like any other console that does exist now or has ever existed, and by that I mean Raytracing lighting, because of its architecture.

Project Spark is running on voxels, for instance, although that's besides the point.

I mention voxels because Xbox One will be able to create Voxel Cone Ray Tracing lighting in real time. You can see this awesome technology in this video.


http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/so-could-the-x1s-secret-sauce-be-voxel-cone-ray-tracing.453362563/

If you are looking at a Picasso painting or at Michael Angelo's David it doesn't matter where the museum is placed, they are just meant to be shown to the public, and that video illustrates the Voxel Ray Tracing technology, it's not running on Xbox One hardware.

I would want Voxels lighting back in the Unreal Engine 4, it was the most impressive part of their technology/engine and they removed them in their recent demonstrations because they were so taxing on the hardware, so this gives us some hope.

I'm guessing you haven't looked through the PS4 PSSL PDF?

A Voxel Cone Tracing demo is part of the documents.
 
Some interesting news -thanks JaviSoft for the link- on the DX 11.2 subject.

Xbox One is able to run what I'd call the lighting of beauty like any other console that does exist now or has ever existed, and by that I mean Raytracing lighting, because of its architecture.

Project Spark is running on voxels, for instance, although that's besides the point.

I mention voxels because Xbox One will be able to create Voxel Cone Ray Tracing lighting in real time. You can see this awesome technology in this video.


http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/so-could-the-x1s-secret-sauce-be-voxel-cone-ray-tracing.453362563/

Your source appears to be neither a developer nor a news article but a post from what seems to be a member on the IGN forums. Also I was under the impression that GPU's already contained texture tiling/untiling hardware that was used all the time and that it was noting new.
 
I'm guessing you haven't looked through the PS4 PSSL PDF?

A Voxel Cone Tracing demo is part of the documents.
I didn't to be honest. The point is that the Xbox One seems to be more suited to that kind of processing and it can be tastefully done without cramping or crippling the framerate, maybe because of the eSRAM or some customisation on AMD's part and DirectX functions?
 
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Your source appears to be neither a developer nor a news article but a post from what seems to be a member on the IGN forums. Also I was under the impression that GPU's already contained texture tiling/untiling hardware that was used all the time and that it was noting new.
It seems to be a bit more complicated like that because of certain developer words, who is deliberately stating that, and it hints at the use of the move engines and eSRAM (the "using a lot of memory writes" part), I think.

“Let’s say you are using procedural generation or raytracing via parametric surfaces – that is, using a lot of memory writes and not much texturing or ALU (....)"
 
It seems to be a bit more complicated like that because of certain developer words, who is deliberately stating that, and it hints at the use of the move engines and eSRAM (the "using a lot of memory writes" part), I think.

I think that was in reference to the usefulness of the low latency aspect of the eSRAM and not the Move Engines.
 
I didn't to be honest. The point is that the Xbox One seems to be more suited to that kind of processing and it can be tastefully done without cramping or crippling the framerate, maybe because of the eSRAM or some customisation on AMD's part and DirectX functions?

Well the PSSL PDF talk about using PRT & Voxel Octree Cone Tracing & what the guy on the IGN forum was going off of was just a Dev giving an example of where the eSRAM could have an advantage but he ignored the part when he is saying "using a lot of memory writes and not much texturing or ALU" so I'll like to know how they plan to do Voxel Octree Cone Tracing without using much ALU's?

PS4 SoC is customized to be better at Fine-grain Asynchronous Computing & has more computing power so I'm not sure what make you say that the Xbox One seems more suited for Voxel Octree Cone Tracing?

Maybe we should wait & see before we make statements like that.



SSS+.jpg


Sparse+V.jpg


Sparse+V2.jpg


PRT.jpg


PRT+2.jpg
 
LOD clamp is available in all GCN GPUs. This can't be the distinctive feature. And if I read the documentation right, there is a 2 bit field in the sampler description (basically a set of scalar registers) where one can set up a sampler not to use lerps but a min or max filter for sampling the residency map. That would mean it is also present in all GCN GPUs. The TFE (texture fail enable) bit in sampling instructions enables to execute a sample instruction for an unmapped memory location without crashing the GPU. In that case it returns an error code (which can be handled in the shader).
Or in other words, it would be hard for me to say, what feature of Tier2 is not supported already by Tahiti (or the documentation is not completely correct regarding this).

Edit:
One thing someone else could help, would be the packed mip levels for texture arrays.

Indeed, you're correct about the LOD clamp. I haven't browsed through the public docs in a while.
 
Well the PSSL PDF talk about using PRT & Voxel Octree Cone Tracing & what the guy on the IGN forum was going off of was just a Dev giving an example of where the eSRAM could have an advantage but he ignored the part when he is saying "using a lot of memory writes and not much texturing or ALU" so I'll like to know how they plan to do Voxel Octree Cone Tracing without using much ALU's?

PS4 SoC is customized to be better at Fine-grain Asynchronous Computing & has more computing power so I'm not sure what make you say that the Xbox One seems more suited for Voxel Octree Cone Tracing?

Maybe we should wait & see before we make statements like that.

Ah I see my post has made it here. Funny I actually created an account 2 days ago to try to discuss it with you guys.

Let me explain the basis of my suspicion.

The idea behind it comes from the fact that if you look up the technique, the bottlenecks to it are the size of the 3D textures in which the scene is stored. Nearly everyone who has implemented it, from Cyril's original thesis to the amateur on the net, mentions the need to move to partial resident textures, or sparse textures in order to handle the large 3D textures.

We know both GPUs support PRTs, but what we also know is that the data move engines on the X1 support tile/untile. I have yet to see any confirmation of something similar on the PS4 hardware. In addition I'm not sure how much of a role the eSRAM could play into something like this, but we do know Microsoft is pushing partial resident textures in DirectX11.1.

Dealing with PRTs and something like SVO will likely require a whole lot of memory reads and writes. The developer in the quote states the X1 is faster at procedural generation and ray tracing "via" parametric surfaces(the wording kind of throws me off a bit).

I already had my suspicion for months regarding PRTs and the X1 perhaps being more suitable for it, so it was pretty interesting to see a dev come out and say something like that. It immediately made me think of voxel cone ray tracing and PRTs. I can't think of what else he could possibly be referring to in regards to ray tracing, because outside of Voxel Cone Ray Tracing which is heavily dependent on 3D textures and partial resident textures, you would think compute power is far more important. And this is an area where the PS4 is well known to be superior.

But the more you look into it, the more you'll find out running SVO with 3D textures appears to be within grasps, and up and running on even modest GPUs. But converting a large scene to a 3D texture, is going to end up with a very gigantic texture, which will then have to be tiled as a PRT texture and streamed accordingly.

That's something I hoped to get more clarification on here.
 
Xbox One is able to run what I'd call the lighting of beauty like any other console that does exist now or has ever existed, and by that I mean Raytracing lighting, because of its architecture.
No. XB1 will not be raytracing games. the technique you refer to is called "Voxel Cone Tracing" and not "Voxel Cone Ray Tracing". Furthermore, ray tracing is a mathematical technique that has been used in games for decades and its inclusion in an algorithm doesn't equate to ray-traced lighting. Furthermore, raytraced GI is computationally impossible in real-time at the moment, hence the need for very clever alternatives. Finally, the quoted developer says, "“Let’s say you are using procedural generation or raytracing via parametric surfaces..." That's cubes and spheres and objects defined by mathematical functions as opposed to triangle or mesh data.

Project Spark is running on voxels, for instance, although that's besides the point.
The deformable terrain is voxels. The content on top is textured triangles. Spark in pure voxels at the resolution it's been demonstrated in would consume too much RAM. See the discussion about Unlimited Detail technology and the issues with using voxels in games.

I think Dave seemed to imply that one of the consoles' GPU is Tier 2 while the other is Tier 1, to be precise, and he also hinted at the fact that this will show in the way games are going to be developed on both.
Dave wanted to correct a misinformation that all DX11.1 cards are 11.2 hardware. That doesn't say anything about either console which is why this thread has continued as people try to glean which consoles support Tier 2 PRT. There are certainly allusions that the consoles aren't identical in this regard, but there's a lot of reading between the lines going on which is very subjective.
 
Ah I see my post has made it here. Funny I actually created an account 2 days ago to try to discuss it with you guys.
Greetings

We know both GPUs support PRTs, but what we also know is that the data move engines on the X1 support tile/untile.
I'm not sure what tiling support in the MME's means, but I'm confident that the GCN's DMA controllers supports tiling anyway as support for PRT requires addressing tiles. Someone more knowledgeable of AMD's architecture can verify this or not.
we do know Microsoft is pushing partial resident textures in DirectX11.1
And we do know Sony has shown use of PRT for SVO, so it's not like MS are exclusively pursuing this avenue.

Dealing with PRTs and something like SVO will likely require a whole lot of memory reads and writes. The developer in the quote states the X1 is faster at procedural generation and ray tracing "via" parametric surfaces(the wording kind of throws me off a bit).
Parametric surfaces are mathematical objects like spheres and cubes. These can be calculated at render time without having to look data up. The quote states very clearly, “Let’s say you are using procedural generation or raytracing via parametric surfaces – that is, using a lot of memory writes and not much texturing or ALU." As a reference point, that developer quote says nothing about XB1 having an advantage in memory reads.

I already had my suspicion for months regarding PRTs and the X1 perhaps being more suitable for it, so it was pretty interesting to see a dev come out and say something like that. It immediately made me think of voxel cone ray tracing and PRTs.
It's Voxel Cone Tracing, not Voxel Cone Ray Tracing. I suggest you read my reply to Cyan above, because a lot of what he has got wrong has come from your mistakes. ;)

But the more you look into it, the more you'll find out running SVO with 3D textures appears to be within grasps, and up and running on even modest GPUs. But converting a large scene to a 3D texture, is going to end up with a very gigantic texture, which will then have to be tiled as a PRT texture and streamed accordingly.
Yep. Sony even used it as a reference point for their PRT capable GPU.

The real question here is what different Tier 1 versus Tier 2 would make to something like SVO? Clearly support for PRT enables it. If the consoles differ in their PRT capabilities, that'll mean one should be able to handle SVO a little better, but how much better?
 
Greetings

I'm not sure what tiling support in the MME's means, but I'm confident that the GCN's DMA controllers supports tiling anyway as support for PRT requires addressing tiles. Someone more knowledgeable of AMD's architecture can verify this or not.
And we do know Sony has shown use of PRT for SVO, so it's not like MS are exclusively pursuing this avenue.

Parametric surfaces are mathematical objects like spheres and cubes. These can be calculated at render time without having to look data up. The quote states very clearly, “Let’s say you are using procedural generation or raytracing via parametric surfaces – that is, using a lot of memory writes and not much texturing or ALU." As a reference point, that developer quote says nothing about XB1 having an advantage in memory reads.

It's Voxel Cone Tracing, not Voxel Cone Ray Tracing. I suggest you read my reply to Cyan above, because a lot of what he has got wrong has come from your mistakes. ;)

Yep. Sony even used it as a reference point for their PRT capable GPU.

The real question here is what different Tier 1 versus Tier 2 would make to something like SVO? Clearly support for PRT enables it. If the consoles differ in their PRT capabilities, that'll mean one should be able to handle SVO a little better, but how much better?

OK no need to pick on wordage since we all obviously know what we're talking about, but aside from that....is appears to me you basically agree but you don't know how the customized parts would affect this either right?

Also I took calculus so I'm quite familiar with what parametric surfaces are, and with you being such a stickler for words I'm surprised you didn't pick up on the phrase..."ray tracing VIA parametric surfaces. Because as far as I'm aware of it the phrase is usually "ray tracing parametric surfaces". So it's either mistranslated, misquoted, or the developer is using a very odd way to refer to something like a cone, in cone tracing.

On the topic of wordage, I'm betting the developer wouldn't have said something like writes and reads. The only reason I can think this would be the case, would be the eSRAM. Bringing back into the picture MS's claim of reading and writing simultaneously. It's not far fetched to think he's implying both in this case. Unless you can think of another reason why else the X1 would have an advantage in writes, and writes only?

Btw, when you say Sony has shown it, I'd be curious in seeing it to. Or do you mean on a slide?
 
BTW, I couldn't find an edit button, and it's early, so I have a couple of spelling mistakes as well. Hope you'll let them slide and focus on the issue;)
 
No. XB1 will not be raytracing games. the technique you refer to is called "Voxel Cone Tracing" and not "Voxel Cone Ray Tracing". Furthermore, ray tracing is a mathematical technique that has been used in games for decades and its inclusion in an algorithm doesn't equate to ray-traced lighting. Furthermore, raytraced GI is computationally impossible in real-time at the moment, hence the need for very clever alternatives. Finally, the quoted developer says, "“Let’s say you are using procedural generation or raytracing via parametric surfaces..." That's cubes and spheres and objects defined by mathematical functions as opposed to triangle or mesh data.

The deformable terrain is voxels. The content on top is textured triangles. Spark in pure voxels at the resolution it's been demonstrated in would consume too much RAM. See the discussion about Unlimited Detail technology and the issues with using voxels in games.

Dave wanted to correct a misinformation that all DX11.1 cards are 11.2 hardware. That doesn't say anything about either console which is why this thread has continued as people try to glean which consoles support Tier 2 PRT. There are certainly allusions that the consoles aren't identical in this regard, but there's a lot of reading between the lines going on which is very subjective.


If you were to read the link he pointed to, I've already explained what you have. And if you really want to get technical it's actually called Sparse Voxel Octree Cone Tracing or Sparse Voxel Octree Global Illumination. Either way, nobody's confusing ray tracing with SVO cone tracing. I really hope your knowledge extends beyond definitions here.

But as far as ray tracing, define "currently", because Brigade's already doing it on a Titan or equivalent. It's just noisy.

You should look again at Spark. I could be wrong but those, biomes, goblins and trees don't look like triangles to me. It appears pretty obvious when they're scaling them.

1683213-poster-1280-how-microsoft-wants-to-inspire-you-with-project-spark.jpg


Also Everquest Next is using the Voxel Farm engine and it's also using voxels for quite a bit more than just terrain.

Either way it's a voxel engine, and while they do have the capability of rendering as voxels or triangles, the developers of Project Spark even specifically talk about their clouds being made out of voxels as well as a few other objects. So no, not everything on top of the terrain are triangles.
 
OK no need to pick on wordage since we all obviously know what we're talking about...
With any new contributor, you never know what their level of understanding is. Some people quote articles and ideas they don't really understand, so until one's picked up on what they know, one has to evaluate. We just had a noob posting excerpts in a vague argument regards Wii U, for example. You'll have just have to bare with that if you feel I'm talking down to you - I approach all info from the basis that you never know what someone knows and there's no harm in going down to the basics ;)

, but aside from that....is appears to me you basically agree but you don't know how the customized parts would affect this either right?
Not really. I'm not seeing anything in your argument to convince me XB1 is better at SVO than PS4. I'm not sure that's entirely on topic either.

Also I took calculus so I'm quite familiar with what parametric surfaces are, and with you being such a stickler for words I'm surprised you didn't pick up on the phrase..."ray tracing VIA parametric surfaces. Because as far as I'm aware of it the phrase is usually "ray tracing parametric surfaces". So it's either mistranslated, misquoted, or the developer is using a very odd way to refer to something like a cone, in cone tracing.
Vernacular language is rarely exact. I read it as "ray tracing [of a scene] via [use of] parametric surfaces" because that fits the info most comfortably.

Unless you can think of another reason why else the X1 would have an advantage in writes, and writes only?
Taking the example as raytracing a CSG scene, you don't need to read any content, save some positions and dimensions. So, for example, rendering a million marbles procedurally would consist almost entirely of writes to the ESRAM to create the framebuffer. The quote doesn't actually explain why XB1 would be faster, so it's not much use in understanding the advantage and whether that advantage is applicable to SVO.

Btw, when you say Sony has shown it, I'd be curious in seeing it to. Or do you mean on a slide?
In the slides OnQ duplicated in this thread, from GDC Europe.

If you were to read the link he pointed to, I've already explained what you have. And if you really want to get technical it's actually called Sparse Voxel Octree Cone Tracing or Sparse Voxel Octree Global Illumination. Either way, nobody's confusing ray tracing with SVO cone tracing.
Some people would, hence me being particular. ;) There's a lot of internet chatter that just quotes terms and phrases without understanding. There will be people who read Voxel Cone Ray Tracing and equate it to full-fledged ray-tracing because it sounds the same.

You cover a lot more stuff which is definitely OT. Feel free to take up the conversation in other threads. As I've said above, I'm not even sure this conversation belongs in this thread. We need to understand what exactly the difference between Tier 1 and Tier 2, whether PS4 and XB1 are at different Tiers, and then how that affects PRT performance, to be able to consider implications on SVO's use in games across the two consoles.
 
With any new contributor, you never know what their level of understanding is. Some people quote articles and ideas they don't really understand, so until one's picked up on what they know, one has to evaluate. We just had a noob posting excerpts in a vague argument regards Wii U, for example. You'll have just have to bare with that if you feel I'm talking down to you - I approach all info from the basis that you never know what someone knows and there's no harm in going down to the basics ;)

Not really. I'm not seeing anything in your argument to convince me XB1 is better at SVO than PS4. I'm not sure that's entirely on topic either.

I'm sorry I thought you said this...

If the consoles differ in their PRT capabilities,that'll mean one should be able to handle SVO a little better, but how much better?

I thought you were agreeing. It seems you've ignored or didn't see some of the questions so perhaps that's why you didn't see anything in my argument. So here...

Unless you can think of another reason[other than eSRAM] why else the X1 would have an advantage in writes, and writes only?

I'm saying I can only think of the eSRAM and the tile/untile features on the DMEs. And PRTs in particular are what accelerates SVO cone tracing.

Vernacular language is rarely exact. I read it as "ray tracing [of a scene] via [use of] parametric surfaces" because that fits the info most comfortably.

Right and that's how I read it too. But that's not good enough to just stop there. I thought you were a stickler for language;) Let's talk about that.

If that's the case, you would have to ask yourself, what type of ray tracing uses parametric surfaces to achieve ray tracing? Doesn't make much sense, does it? It's entirely backwards. Although SVO cone tracing might fit because SVO uses a cone which could be considered a parametric surface...


Taking the example as raytracing a CSG scene, you don't need to read any content, save some positions and dimensions. So, for example, rendering a million marbles procedurally would consist almost entirely of writes to the ESRAM to create the framebuffer. The quote doesn't actually explain why XB1 would be faster, so it's not much use in understanding the advantage and whether that advantage is applicable to SVO.

Ok so you're saying it's either misused, mistranslated, misquoted, or just a weird vernacular language phrase and he actually does mean ray tracing parametric surfaces? Fair enough, it's entirely possible. But on the topic of wordage we should be a little careful here, because in relation to his phrase it makes all the difference in the world.

First I need to point out that your example of "rendering a million marbles" is not something that's typically referred to as procedural generation. That's usually referred to as instancing which is quite a bit different from procedural generation as it is known and used the large majority of the time(tessellation, procedural textures, terrain generation, etc). And most of those use parametric surfaces algorithms.

If it was a "missphrase", and all he meant was ray tracing a bunch of marbles, then why even bring it up? Ray tracing, as we both agreed, is out of the question and ray tracing spheres and cones alone is pretty useless to anyone not interested in seeing a marble and cone Youtube demo of basic ray tracing.

But procedural generation and SVO cone tracing are both doable and practical. And if we were to assume he's giving us practical and applicable examples as it may relate to the capabilities of each console and what we may actually see, and take his phrase as it was written, then literally he's saying that you are using a parametric surface[like a cone] to achieve ray tracing. And that can only lead me to believe he's referring to SVO cone tracing. I can't think of anything else that would fit.

Also, if you look up "ray tracing parametric surfaces"

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/showciting;jsessionid=06DA1282D637478ECEB614D1576078D6?cid=228055

You're seeing a whole bunch of papers ALL referencing some type of voxel cone tracing.


In the slides OnQ duplicated in this thread, from GDC Europe.

Ok so no demonstration. That's a bummer. Personally I would love to have confirmation of this on either console because it would be pretty amazing. It was a big bummer to find out UE4 yanked it out.

I will say this though, on the topic of demonstration. If one was to look at the trailer Black Tusk released at E3, and just imagine for a second that it wasn't pre-rendered(if it is, you gotta admit it's pretty low quality CG)....those reflection and that scene itself would be pretty ambitious to pull off using only screen spaced reflections or cube maps. Screen space reflections wouldn't work for something like that, and to pull off the dynamic fireworks with cube maps, would be one hell of an undertaking. So my guess is, if that's CG, that scene is likely not going to be in the game. If it's not, SVO cone tracing, could easily make that possible and we know UE4 had support for it. We also know Black Tusk is licensing it for the game as is other MS studios like Lionhead. Just food for thought.

Some people would, hence me being particular. ;) There's a lot of internet chatter that just quotes terms and phrases without understanding. There will be people who read Voxel Cone Ray Tracing and equate it to full-fledged ray-tracing because it sounds the same.

You cover a lot more stuff which is definitely OT. Feel free to take up the conversation in other threads. As I've said above, I'm not even sure this conversation belongs in this thread. We need to understand what exactly the difference between Tier 1 and Tier 2, whether PS4 and XB1 are at different Tiers, and then how that affects PRT performance, to be able to consider implications on SVO's use in games across the two consoles.

Fair enough, and I was going to post it in its own thread but someone else brought the discussion in here before I could. However the answer to the thread title, when it all comes down to it, might just be SVO cone tracing, so how off topic is it? In the end what it all comes down to is what the spec differences actually achieve in terms of graphics or software techniques, no? That's what matters.
 
Ah I see my post has made it here. Funny I actually created an account 2 days ago to try to discuss it with you guys.

[sorry for talking about this in this thread BUT seeing as Alex the original article writer is here and it is a direct response to his post...]

Hey Alex,

A while back, June 2013, the Forza devs made a statement on their use of materials for their Forza 5 game

The image-based lighting from Forza 4?

No, no, this is new. This is the material system we’ve brought to the Xbox One, where no material has a colour or texture, it has properties and interactions with light. We can literally go in and go ‘This surface is concrete, no, we’re going to make it asphalt, no, we’re going to make it gun metal’, and it just works in the environment. We don’t have to go in and tweak the lighting and the shading like we have in the past; everything works with light the way it’s supposed to.

That’s really key, because with the power of Xbox One we don’t want to go off and have to deal with eight times the complexity of an air environment. We had to invest in the technology to be able to build smarter. It goes all the way back to how we used laser-scanning, which doesn’t just give us surfaces, it gives us colour and texture as well. We can bring it back as reference for the artists and quickly bring it up to that quality we’re going for.
ref: http://www.nowgamer.com/features/19...dware_building_tracks_drivatar_explained.html


This sounds like Voxel Cone Tracing no?! Wasn't sure back then BUT from you're post it sounds like this technique.
 
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