Halo 5: Guardians [XO]

[turkey]

Dynamic res is quite cool actually imo. I wish more games would use this to stabilize the framerate.

I just wonder about all other parts of the game engine. We often hear that the cpu is a severe bottleneck for 60hz and stuff like AI, physics etc etc....is it also possible to have a dynamic scaling in the complexity of those other game engine parts?

E.g. The more AI simultaneously on screen, the less complex the individual AI is?

Or the frequency of the physics update is scaleable?

The cloud as a veriable resource?

Could you look to otherwise gpu offload some tasks? If the cpu is failing to make the target time reduce the res to free up some gpu and try to compute your way to a stable frame rate? Not all tasks will work this way or be efficient but that time budget needs to be met for stable frame rates and i assume resolution is the easiest sacrifice.

 

[Billy Idol]

Imo, cloud is not usable to enhance performance...especially getting to 60Hz. It seems to me impossible to use cloud and predict impact on frametime (variable latency), which for me seems to be a great achievement even on a closed local box.

However, the cloud could be used for a game like No Man's Sky to make this mega world persistence, like e.g. if part of a planet gets destroyed...keep it forever or so.

But I guess that H5 as being a more traditional game doesn't have a real use for cloud other than dedicated server?!?

 

[NRP]

Perhaps the cloud could be leveraged for more complex and large scale AI behavior that isn't in the immediate vicinity of the player in SP (and perhaps Warzone)? Not sure if it's feasible or worthwhile, but in theory that could alleviate some of the resource burden, couldn't it?

 

[AlNom]

 

[NRP]

Damn Al, those online courses in MS Paint are really paying off. LOL!

 

[AlNom]

 

[Rangers]

So the new DF article about Halo says the lowest observed res in the B-roll footage is 1152X810. That's right about 720P pixels, but that can ramp up to 1920X810 (right now).

Just a thought exercise should show what a ridiculous handicap 60 FPS put on the visuals. So, pretending PS4 is "more powerful" just by it's +~40% more FLOPS (oversimplification of course) you get that X1 can roughly do at 900/30 what PS4 can at 1080/30. Now what happens at 60? You have to in theory come it at about 700K pixels to match that 1080/30 PS4 "flops per pixel", or well below 720P, or of course drop quality. So it's not so surprising maybe the dynamic res hits ~720p.

Where they could have just done a visually cutting edge campaign at 900/30 like normal people and been done with it.

I feel like 343 is pulling a Bungie. I'm STILL mad at Bungie for how bad Halo 3 looked.

 

[iroboto]

So the new DF article about Halo says the lowest observed res in the B-roll footage is 1152X810. That's right about 720P pixels, but that can ramp up to 1920X810 (right now).

Just a thought exercise should show what a ridiculous handicap 60 FPS put on the visuals. So, pretending PS4 is "more powerful" just by it's +~40% more FLOPS (oversimplification of course) you get that X1 can roughly do at 900/30 what PS4 can at 1080/30. Now what happens at 60? You have to in theory come it at about 700K pixels to match that 1080/30 PS4 "flops per pixel", or well below 720P, or of course drop quality. So it's not so surprising maybe the dynamic res hits ~720p.

Where they could have just done a visually cutting edge campaign at 900/30 like normal people and been done with it.

Still quite a ways to go for the game. I wouldn't presume these issues are entirely GPU related this early into the game. I'm not sure when optimization is set to really begin.

 

[Jay]

Where they could have just done a visually cutting edge campaign at 900/30 like normal people and been done with it.

Well in the end it depends on priorities.
Theirs was gameplay over graphics.
What I mean by that is that they think that 60 is fundamental to their vision.

p.s. I'm not saying I think they made right choices, or prejudging how it will actually turn out once it's released, (and had the usual patches that all games require now )

 

[Billy Idol]

Well in the end it depends on priorities.
Theirs was gameplay over graphics.
What I mean by that is that they think that 60 is fundamental to their vision.

p.s. I'm not saying I think they made right choices, or prejudging how it will actually turn out once it's released, (and had the usual patches that all games require now )

It is not that easy imo and not about graphics vs gameplay!

For 60Hz, the devs might sacrifice a lot which contributes as much to gameplay than 60Hz. E.g. Fully interactive world with destruction, game physics, large scale battles with many many A.I. and vehicles, visibility of far away objects, etc etc.

60Hz is just one single parameter for gameplay imo and not the only one.

 

[Jay]

It is not that easy imo and not about graphics vs gameplay!

Actually in regards to what I was responding to and when I said "What I mean by that is that they think that 60 is fundamental to their vision." I think it is gameplay vs graphics.
Rangers was talking about graphics (strictly how good it looks) and compromising it for 60.

I don't disagree with what you had to say if the conversation wasn't framed the way it was though.
But I also will still say that for their vision they felt that 60 was that important, when balanced with everything you said.
We wont know if in general people felt it was the right decision until it's out and being played.

 

[AlNom]

At the end of the day, I hope they can swallow their "passion for Halo" and just give us a 30Hz lock like Sony did for Killzone and Infamous.

And with derpnamic res, they should adjust it for said 30Hz.

 

[Jay]

Maybe they should alternate Halo games, 60 super smooth Chief one year, then 30 dapper pimp Locke the next.
Be like Forza games

 

[Inuhanyou]

It is not that easy imo and not about graphics vs gameplay!

For 60Hz, the devs might sacrifice a lot which contributes as much to gameplay than 60Hz. E.g. Fully interactive world with destruction, game physics, large scale battles with many many A.I. and vehicles, visibility of far away objects, etc etc.

60Hz is just one single parameter for gameplay imo and not the only one.

THANK YOU.

I'm so sick of people who don't know anything about developing a game dismiss these kinds of trade offs as "well they just want to look good in still shots with pretty graphix so they can trick the braindead masses!"

Please spare me. 30fps will always have major benefits not only to visuals but actual game design too.

 

[Jay]

No one was dismissing that at all apart from Rangers.
30 and 60 have pros and cons that need to be considered when developing a game, and what your trying to achieve .
In fact that was my whole point, which I verified to Billy Idol.

So 343 felt that 60 > 30 for what they are trying to do for gameplay, if they felt it made little difference then they would have gone for 30, which is also a valid decision.
At this point I have no reason to believe that they are making it 60 just for brain dead masses who believe that's the only thing that makes a current gen game.
Otherwise I believe they would've more likely have gone for 1080p30.

900p/30 for campaign like normal people may not play how they want it to. Especially as the campaign seems to be very co-op type based.
The game still has time for optimising and as DF conceded they don't know if in campaign if it gets more open or not.

30 or 60 and relatively locked frame rate is always better though. Unless you was actually employing dynamic frame rate.

So no I will not spare you, 30 or 60 can be made for gameplay purposes, it's not just to sound next gen.

 

[shredenvain]

Resolution and visuals are really 2 different things. The game has quite a bit of new tech in the engine that just wasn't possible last gen. They have a brand new lighting system and material system. The game actually looks pretty damn good in my opinion. Especially what was shown of the campaign. If they can nail 60 fps with dynamic resolution and keep the amount of things on screen they showed at e3 I think it will be great.
They want the controller response that comes along with 60hz.

 

[Rikimaru]

It does not look impressive to me at all.

 

[NRP]

It will be nice to have a 60 fps Halo. Hopefully.

 

[Cyan]

At the end of the day, I hope they can swallow their "passion for Halo" and just give us a 30Hz lock like Sony did for Killzone and Infamous.

And with derpnamic res, they should adjust it for said 30Hz.

THANK YOU.

I'm so sick of people who don't know anything about developing a game dismiss these kinds of trade offs as "well they just want to look good in still shots with pretty graphix so they can trick the braindead masses!"

Please spare me. 30fps will always have major benefits not only to visuals but actual game design too.

I don't know how I can overcome being able to see the transition between frames when playing 30 fps games and how jerky and twitchy it feels to me. There are plenty of 60 fps games on the X1, and in fact, 90%+ of my 57 X1 games run at 60 fps.

If Halo 5 runs at 30 fps I won't buy the game. I just don't want to buy it to leave it aside and don't play it. I can try when it is a game I am passionate about , like TW3 or I could forgive anything to Bethesda for a great The Elder Scrolls game.

But when you get your hopes up and they make a promise about the game being 60 fps, if it finally ran at 30 fps it'd be the most disappointing thing that happened in years for me.

Maybe they can hire Forza crew to get a perfect 60 fps. I just don't care about the graphics much, seen enough of Halo TMCC to know that good graphics and 60 fps are possible, and dynamic resolution fascinates me.

 

[NRP]

I'm expecting the SP campaign to be an underwhelming "one and done" thing, so I'm not too worried about SP visuals.

60 Hz will be more important for MP, which is where I will spend most of my time anyway.