Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion Archive [2011]

[Laa-Yosh]

Yeah, it definitely changes the overall impact of the visuals. Still, it's a matter of preference for a particular colour palette,

Most people, or almost all, seem to find BF3 very realistic, so we can state that it's a little more than just preference.

not sure wether it means much from a console technology perspective.

The lighting math and the exposure settings and tone mapping curve and such are all very, very closely related to the rendering engine.
Or to put it another way, BF3 is a very good example of HDR done right.

 

[AlNom]

Not really, as the developers should have full control over this aspect of the presentation, unlike the TV settings.

I mean just the screenshot with the whites blowing out or people liking that look more.

CryEngine 3 has the colour grading feature anyway. Wonder if they'll include profiles like the Gears 1 did.

The lighting math and the exposure settings and tone mapping curve and such are all very, very closely related to the rendering engine.
Or to put it another way, BF3 is a very good example of HDR done right.

Well, there is the trade-off between SSGI & baked. Then again there's so little we've seen of the final.

 

[Ruskie]

Damn it!The slides are gone duo to exceeded bandwidth
Does anyone have them saved so he could send me?I would be very grateful :smile:

 

[Laa-Yosh]

I dunno, the thing I really like about BF is that it does not actually blow out the whites (beyond not clamping to something yellow-ish). If it was 255-255-255 then ct03 would not be able to bring back the colors into the graded version at all, but the information is still there in the picture.

It's probably not easy to get it right but the results - IMHO - speak for themselves.

 

[Tea2]

The lighting math and the exposure settings and tone mapping curve and such are all very, very closely related to the rendering engine.
Or to put it another way, BF3 is a very good example of HDR done right.

I am aware of that, I just see messing with screeshots "offline" to achieve a particular desired/undesired effect a little bit pointless. It's a good photoshop exercise though
Personally I don't have a preference when it comes to "the look" of both Crysis 2 and BF3, i find them both visually impressive from what I have seen so far. Even though Crysis 2 seems to be going for a more stylised appearance. Which is interesting in itself - if you compare the visuals of Crysis 1 to what we can see on Pier 17 map from the demo. Seems to me like a completely different approach/style.

 

[assurdum]

Suppose it is sub-HD then have you given the tought that it might be becouse to find an optimal balance to squeeze out the most of the system it might be a good solution to not create a botleneck else where?

Talking about optimal optimisations snd squezing out the most of the system which means besides having optimised code also the removal of botlenecks to minimise idle time of different HW parts.

Would that allow them to pull of all the realtime effects in Crysis 2 which frankly no other console game does at the same time. It pretty much got all the praised features from other games all in in a single package. And even with best quality for most if not all parts. Even animations are some of the best dynamic and procedural ones you can find and frankly has much incommon with the BF3 trailer animations atleast for SP (not surprising since they use same animation system, "ANT"). Easily rivals KZ2/3s animations, easily and even hit detection physics/animations.

Think about all the effects in a single package running at 30fps on both consoles +/- some differences both ways.

It's my opinion, but really do you think only the cryengine 3 on ps3 can do that with 1024x720p framebuffer? Did you have seen Vanquish? To me it seems the 'normality' of things obtain what I have seen on the ps3, considering the actual supposed framebuffer, obviously. What I have hear & seen about BF 3 engine completely 'destroy' that in comparison.

 

[patsu]

Debuginfo says otherwise. 1m rendered polys/frame for that scene in KZ3 and a quiet good gauge considering scene size. Thats some hard facts. Also in one of GG rendering presentations they said KZ2 peaked at 1.2m polys/frame. Interesting as ND said roughly the same in a presentation about U2 peaking at 1.2m rendered polygons per frame. All this can be found either in their released tech pdf/ppt files or interviews/presentation videos.

I'm interested in the entire CPU + GPU pipeline on the PS3 though. The final rendered polys/frame is not so interesting since it's a h/w imposed limit. It's what the software does that make things more interesting (and more powerful than stock h/w).

On the average, half or less of the triangles should be culled by the SPUs (using Edge ?). How fast is that ? KZ3 and BF3 (and 2?) have coarse-grained software occlusion culling of varying distance and can get rid of more triangles ? What is the effective performance like ?

In stereoscopic 3D scenes, how would that affect the stats ?

20-50% of one (and only one) spu is significantly cheaper than what I expected to be honest.

SPU has high clock speed (3.2GHz, about 6 times higher than RSX), and DMA + local store. IMHO, what's more interesting about SPU MLAA is the software complexity. It can do more accurate edge detection than simple SIMD cores.

The SPUs and RSX typically work on more than one frame (or rather different frame) at the same time. So they can interleave their work in more flexible ways. Would be cool to see an improved setup with more memory.

 

[Tea2]

I have seen Crytek works without a sort of 'limits' when push the tech & Crysis 2 seem to confirm it isn't exact the best way for them to obtain better results. What I have hear & seen about BF 3 engine completely 'destroy' that in comparison

Really? I thought the overall package/what they've managed to squeeze out of such old hardware is very impressive, at least based on my limited demo experience. I'm not so sure whether it is possible to create a game that would 'destroy' C2 given the hardware limitations. Seems like an exaggeration to me.

 

[Barso]

If the SPUs are so effective at these type of operations then surely it would make sense for Sony to use an upgraded CELL for PS4.
It would be a shame got all of these dev tools to go to waste.

 

[ct03]

I am aware of that, I just see messing with screeshots "offline" to achieve a particular desired/undesired effect a little bit pointless.

Granted, I did use a few localized effects to change the tonemapping. But for the most part, all adjustment layers work for other screenshots just as well.
Here, I changed none of the layers at all, only exchanged the base screenshot:

And this was kind of my point to begin with: that Crysis 2 doesn't reach the full potential of the engine because of questionable choices with regards to color and tonemapping.

 

[kagemaru]

What I have hear & seen about BF 3 engine completely 'destroy' that in comparison & I'll bet will be native 720p+mlaa on the ps3 (& probably on 360 too but I don't know how much could work mlaa on the gpu)

What applies to one game/engine does not apply to all. We don't know how BF3 will run on the ps3/360, so I think we should wait to find that out until we make assumptions.

It's my opinion, but really do you think only the cryengine 3 on ps3 can do that with 1024x720p framebuffer? Did you have seen Vanquish? To me it seems the 'normality' of things obtain what I have seen on the ps3, considering the actual supposed framebuffer, obviously.

If you consider Vanquish to be "normality" at 1024x720 for the ps3, then Crysis 2 exceeds what's normal at that resolutions IMO. Granted Vanquish has a lot happening on the screen at once, so it effects the comparison, but Crysis 2 is pushing more effects at the same time.

 

[Tea2]

And this was kind of my point to begin with: that Crysis 2 doesn't reach the full potential of the engine because of questionable choices with regards to color and tonemapping.

To be fair, we don't know how the whole BF3 campaign is going to look. Maybe they will go crazy with the colors in later parts of the game as well. Or maybe not Regardless, it would be interesting to see more games running on Cryengine 3, with different approach to lighting as you noted. You can always go with mods, but that's out of the question since we are talking about consoles here.
BTW, is Frostbite 2.0 created with the sole purpose of powering Battlefield games or is it going to be a shared engine within EA?

 

[Laa-Yosh]

There's already quite noticeable color bleeding when the soldiers run through that narrow street and in a few other places. It doesn't have to be Unreal 1 colorful

 

[scently]

To be fair, we don't know how the whole BF3 campaign is going to look. Maybe they will go crazy with the colors in later parts of the game as well. Or maybe not Regardless, it would be interesting to see more games running on Cryengine 3, with different approach to lighting as you noted. You can always go with mods, but that's out of the question since we are talking about consoles here.
BTW, is Frostbite 2.0 created with the sole purpose of powering Battlefield games or is it going to be a shared engine within EA?

Its going to be shared within EA.

 

[L. Scofield]

Yeah, quite close to what I've been talking about. BF3 does this very well, which is one of the reasons why it has managed to impress pretty much everyone who's seen it.

If the PC version ships with the editor, modders could adjust the contrast/gamma and LUT charts to make the graphics more like BF3's.

What I have hear & seen about BF 3 engine completely 'destroy' that in comparison.

Nonsensical hyperbole shouldn't be allowed in this thread.

 

[Tea2]

Its going to be shared within EA.

Very nice. Would love to read a detailed feature on DF at some point in the future... I think this would go to the top of my "most wanted" list.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Its going to be shared within EA.

I must have missed that part. That could be pretty interesting, if true. Dead Space 3? I'm just imagining the possibilities.

 

[AlNom]

It's my opinion, but really do you think only the cryengine 3 on ps3 can do that with 1024x720p framebuffer? Did you have seen Vanquish? To me it seems the 'normality' of things obtain what I have seen on the ps3, considering the actual supposed framebuffer, obviously. What I have hear & seen about BF 3 engine completely 'destroy' that in comparison.

These comparisons are going to be pretty pointless when you consider that every game has different needs in terms of memory or shading (for starters). You can't just single out resolution along with your opinion of what you see in the end game or actually take PR talk as truth.

The tech forums here are supposed to be beyond such things.

Why arent some of its aspects not praised as much from a technical point of view as other games?

As a tech forum, we should be more concerned with the actual tech, not just praising things. Now that we have these technical exposés, isn't that enough?

Not to single you out, but I mean, how many bloody times do I have to reiterate that these are technical forums. Save the opinionated praise for the games threads or other forums. Once in awhile I'd actually like to read something in the Tech Forums that relates to the word. :/

 

[Rotmm]

Why arent some of its [Killzone3] aspects not praised as much from a technical point of view as other games?

I honestly don't think I've ever seen a stranger, more far from the truth, assertion ever here at B3D.

Maybe you reside in a different Internet, but the one I visit praises the technical aspects of the 2 PS3 Killzone games far, far more than any other from this generation.

 

[joker454]

On the average, half or less of the triangles should be culled by the SPUs (using Edge ?).

It's tough to get an average because it heavily depends on the game. If you were say drawing a scene with 10 cars from GT5 and nothing else, then you would get somewhere near half the triangles culled by spu. That's because the cars are fully modeled all around, anywhere you rotate and look at them there is geometry present, so half is a possible average. Game levels though in many cases though are set pieces that have no backside. So like seeing an impressive building in the distance, the artists know that the player can't get behind that building so they don't need to model any of the geometry in the back. Hence rendering that building would result in very few triangles culled by spu.

Ultimately how much gets culled by spu will vary a lot depending on the game. That's also why something like Edge can make a big difference in some games, and much less difference in others. The more predictable the game, the more fake set pieces are used and the less the average spu poly cull count will be for that game.

KZ3 and BF3 (and 2?) have coarse-grained software occlusion culling of varying distance and can get rid of more triangles ? What is the effective performance like ?

Just fyi, most games have some form of course occlusion culling, that's not a new thing. The way KZ3 does it is unique in that they did it via software spu resterizer but it's not a new idea.

You can't just single out resolution along with your opinion of what you see in the end game or actually take PR talk as truth.

You also can't single out resolution as what does it mean anyways? For example if you are playing a Ps3 game that runs at 1280x720, then in reality what you are looking at on screen is a mix of 1280x720 and 640x360 due to all the 1/4 res effects that get used and de-res the final product. So what ends up being better, a game that runs at 1024x720 full time, or a game that runs at a mix of 1280x720 and 640x360? Post process steps also often run at a mix of resolution, and likewise could de-res the final product on screen in various ways, like the god ray effect. It's a reason why I find it amusing when some people will ban a game because it isn't full 1280x720, yet they play games that frequently have portions of the screen displaying a 1/4 of that res. The final pr resolution number often doesn't mean much, just ignore resolution, play the game, and judge the result with your own eyes.