I am talking about this thread
Konami Fox Engine and its Games.
- Thread starter Shortbread
- Start date
I am talking about this thread
Lol sorta at first I was. But now maybe not so much. I'm dialing back now that we are talking it through more. Could very well be a symptom of just designing the game for old systems and ps4 and not expecting the Xbox one to come out the way it did with hardware. From reading about fox lighting is a long process through the pipeline. The lack of ROPS could really be hurting X1 here alongside the esram size.
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Yep, but it seems by design not by happenstance. I think the only title to ever have a simultaneous release (outside the latest MG titles) from Kojima was Snatcher. Almost all his other works where porting was done was after the initial release even when he was involved in the porting himself.
I think Konami is the reason Kojima is supporting multiple consoles with simultaneous releases. I think he favors a first party like approach where is he able to fully express the power of the hardware versus spending those resources supporting multiple consoles.
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I don't think it's intentional [that we are implying they are lazy], even I come off that way and I'm not trying to.
We know that Xbox One launch was riddled with poor performance across all titles for launch window, MGS5 got a free pass there. PES2015 is a whole year afterwards, when developers have started to hit their targets.
So there is something wrong with development efforts, or the engine itself has been designed such that regardless of what one does the Xbox One is hamstrung.
Supporting 4 consoles with a multiplat title isn't something Kojima Studios is known for doing. Never mind producing a multiplatform engine for general use by Konami. Its might be a matter of properly allocating one's resources.
Yep, and as a technical thread we should consider this (and the pointing to deferred rendering is a pretty good start). Generalised assertions about the devs are misplaced, plus pretty insulting. Although there are the 'devs' in terms of the people who make the game, and the 'devs' in terms of the corporate identities who have to make business decisions. So the 'devs' (coders) could be slogging their guts out while the 'devs' (business entities) are ignoring/prioritising lowly a platform for whatever reasons. The development studio could be avoiding extra work due to economic considerations (avoiding work == lazy in the vernacular) while the dev teams beaver away.
It's just a case of avoiding these problematic terms and being just that little bit clearer about who and what one is talking about. Developers aren't lazy even if they have to make compromising choices to balance their workloads.
Agreed, I was just about to steer back this way after realizing I pretty much derailed the thread with an over generalized opinion.
What I've read so far:
Fox Engine
- deferred rendering
- [From Eurogamer] FOX uses a lighting technique known as linear-space lighting. In a way, its implementation is analogous to deferred rendering in that it takes a slightly longer route through the graphics pipeline in order to produce an effect which has significant advantages over its traditional counterpart. *I believe this is just gamma corrected lighting.
- [From Eurogamer] The FOX Engine's shaders support translucency, important for accurate simulation of light's reaction with soft surfaces such as skin, hair and cloth.
- The last bit of Fox is coined Physically Based Rendering, but I'm assuming this is just physically based materials.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
So basically, the OP extrapolated that since PES 2015 was likely going to be 720p, then all other games based on that engine are likely to be 720p?
Might be, might not be. I'd imagine that the engine continues to get optimizations and tweaks over time. I'm sure they'll attempt to reach parity on all fronts if possible, and it appears that Microsoft may now be possibly sending engineers their way to see if there is a way to further optimize the engine to make it run better on XBO. It may never reach resolution parity, but I'm sure they'll try.
Will be interesting to see how this evolves.
Regards,
SB
If deferred is the reason, how does MGS5:GZ fit 714,240 pixels into the 360's 10MB back buffer, but can only manage to get an extra 207,360 pixels in the additional 22MB. If they simply maintained the same g-buffer setup they used on the 360 it should fit at 1080p on the Xbox One. And looking at comparison shots between all platforms, I don't see any significant differences in terms of precision other than non-depth related sampling improvements, etc.
The OP observed, if I'm reading it right, that three titles on XB1 using Fox Engine are 720p including up-coming PES. Maybe it's only two games out and two to come? Not sure where the Silent Hill 720p idea came from.
That said, it's curious why PES would be 720p if other titles manage 1080p on the same engine, because it's clearly less demanding visually.
I think it's a combination of the game being 60FPS (Ryse and the 900p multiplat titles with the exception of Plant vs Zombies are not 60FPS), XB1's less powerful hardware and the esram limiting the engine which was build for a more streamline PC/PS4 architecture with less priority to XB1.
Other titles?
MGS is the only game out right now that uses Fox and it's 720p too.
Other titles?
MGS is the only game out right now that uses Fox and it's 720p too.
Hopefully cross-gen development is "holding" back Fox Engine but at preset IMO there are many things that it can't do "right".
First different materials don't look different at all; rock, wood, metal, clothes, water, hairs and skin all look like they are made of plastic.
LOD and streaming issues abound in Ground Zeros and the map is really, really small.
When it comes to lighting GZ pales compered to Second Son, Shadow Fall and even Thief which is a Unreal Engine 3 game.
First different materials don't look different at all; rock, wood, metal, clothes, water, hairs and skin all look like they are made of plastic.
LOD and streaming issues abound in Ground Zeros and the map is really, really small.
When it comes to lighting GZ pales compered to Second Son, Shadow Fall and even Thief which is a Unreal Engine 3 game.
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Future titles. The theory is that if PES can't handle more than 720p on XB1, other more demanding games won't be able to go higher. It would be curious if PES can only manage 720p yet MGS releases at higher res, so the hypothesis that PES at 720p == Fox Engine at 720p for all games has a reasonably solid footing.
It's a about the money money money!!!
And the magical ratio of Do we care enough given the projected sales on the platform (that's the technical term).
Time and money are precious luxuries and when Konsmi thinks their games won't sell a third as much on X11 as they do on PS4, they will devote less than a third of the time and money working on those versions.
And the magical ratio of Do we care enough given the projected sales on the platform (that's the technical term).
Time and money are precious luxuries and when Konsmi thinks their games won't sell a third as much on X11 as they do on PS4, they will devote less than a third of the time and money working on those versions.
To me MGS got the lighting and materials more "right" than the games you mention especially Thief. Killzone and Infamous rape Thief in terms of lighting but they can impress some people more than MGS because they are artistically more stylized.
Sigfried1977
Legend
I wouldn't really call Infamous or Killzone stylized. Killzone in particular looks about as realistic as they could probably make it look. (it's why the awful facial animations are so damn immersion breaking. Everything which was so carefully constructed completely falls apart whenever the rubbery masks start shifting and morphing)
Their locations are in the future with large illuminated colorful cities and characters wear fancy fashionable attire or futuristic combat suits with leds. You ve got laser weapons, neon weapons, electrifying blasts, shiny structures etc etc. Visuals are realistic but not the setting. MGS has a more grounded setting that shouldnt allow for those crazy amounts of lightsources and crazy variety of colors. Its simply not practical for a jungle or an army camp to look like a dark disco club
Sigfried1977
Legend
^that has absolutely nothing to do with the term stylized. Killzone uses high res photo textures and the team even recreated actual living actors. Gears of War's characters are stylized. Darksiders is entirely stylized. Uncharted is stylized (albeit rather subtly). Killzone merely takes places in a sci-fi setting the developers tried to make as realistically as possible. It's about as "stylized" as Blade Runner, Starship Troopers or The Lord of the Rings.
But both Bladerunner and LOTR are stylised indeed, it's why the lighting in Bladerunner looks bleak and same for LOTR (which can also look vibrant depending on the areas).
For example the Helghan side of Vekta looks reddish and has a grim atmosphere to it while the Vektan side has vibrant and colourful atmosphere during the same time of day. There's even a level where you get past the wall and the tone in atmosphere and lighting is completely opposite from what you experienced 2 minutes ago. That tells you that the lighting is stylised.
MGS however, is definitely not stylised and looks far more natural compared to Infamous and Thief and Killzone. Material quality is indeed worse though, Big Boss' suit looks completely plastic and so do a lot of things in the game.
Sigfried1977
Legend
If a minor coloring filter that's there to support the mood of a scene is already enough to constitute for a stylized piece of work, then just about everything that doesn't adhere to the human vision 100% can be considered stylized I guess.
Besides, it wasn't any less sunny in the no man's land sector bordering Vekta City. Who knows what the wheather was like there by the time you entered the Helghan side proper. Maybe it just started to rain.
Would you also consider something like Battlefield 4 as being stylized? Certainly never heard anyone say that about that particular game before, but BF4 goes pretty nuts on the post effect filters as well.
Besides, it wasn't any less sunny in the no man's land sector bordering Vekta City. Who knows what the wheather was like there by the time you entered the Helghan side proper. Maybe it just started to rain.
Would you also consider something like Battlefield 4 as being stylized? Certainly never heard anyone say that about that particular game before, but BF4 goes pretty nuts on the post effect filters as well.