Influences of Favorite Console Religion on Game Perception (containment thread)

[VFX_Veteran]

Graphical features don't matter, you can have the best *x feature* in the industry and the image can still fall apart when viewed as a whole. What ND are good at is identifying what looks good as a whole even if they don't satisfy the graphical feature checklist in every department.

I agree with that! They have very good talented teams (often a lot of them taken from film companies).

And to remind you again, realtime rendering != offline rendering.

That's such a silly argument dude. If anything I would be used to seeing the "correct" solution for any/all graphics features. Real time uses tricks that in 99% of the cases yield inaccurate results compared to the true solution. Differences may be subtle (depending on the solution) but they are there.

 

[chris1515]

And for shadow we will wait ND explanation maybe distant shadow are backed shadow but if it is not the case, it has a limitation, the shadow maps are dithered during part of the rendering. It is not like if the shadow were rendered without artifact. It is a trick and a good one. To clearly see it we need to slow down video of UC4...

 

[Clukos]

I agree with that! They have very good talented teams (often a lot of them taken from film companies).

That's such a silly argument dude. If anything I would be used to seeing the "correct" solution for any/all graphics features. Real time uses tricks that in 99% of the cases yield inaccurate results compared to the true solution. Differences may be subtle (depending on the solution) but they are there.

I think maybe you should stop reading fanboy comments about games then, i don't think we disagree necessarily, you just misunderstood me. I'm one of the few that posted inaccuracies in the latest U4 videos (dithered shadows/shaders, the lod system in use etc.) and i can tell you exactly where they are cutting corners(from the footage available at least). I also like the end result and think it's one of the best uses of the Ps4 hardware to date (good looking while also being more open, not constricting gameplay).

 

[Clukos]

Oh, and something has to be said about things that are not necessarily connected to GPU or CPU power (or at least loosely connected). Great animation, great art (textures, environments, shaders) all these help make the game look better even though they are not necessarily that h/w heavy. It's why i believe games like Bloodborne and Dark Souls can look amazing at times even though they are not pushing many graphical features (From has top of the line talent in their art and animation department). And that's a good thing, because indie games wouldn't stand a chance against AAA games, and that's clearly not the case in the industry right now, look at Ori and the Blind Forest for example i consider it to be one of the best looking games of 2015 and it's nowhere near as h/w taxing as something like Crysis 3 or Ryse or Battlefront.

 

[VFX_Veteran]

Clukos,

I just read your comments on shadow casting lights on all objects in a scene in UC4 and saying that a Titan X would be bottlenecked. I think it's very easy to mark a directional light source (i.e just the Sun/Moon) as a shadow caster. There have been some games released tha does this (i.e. Dying Light comes to mind). I think the bottleneck in hardware comes from creating multiple shadow casting local light sources. In this example, the Titan X would of course destroy the PS4 @ 1080p, but would still become a problem rendering at a good frame clip the more lights you include in the scene.

 

[Clukos]

Clukos,

I just read your comments on shadow casting lights on all objects in a scene in UC4 and saying that a Titan X would be bottlenecked. I think it's very easy to mark a directional light source (i.e just the Sun/Moon) as a shadow caster. There have been some games released tha does this (i.e. Dying Light comes to mind). I think the bottleneck in hardware comes from creating multiple shadow casting local light sources. In this example, the Titan X would of course destroy the PS4 @ 1080p, but would still become a problem rendering at a good frame clip the more lights you include in the scene.

I said a Titan X would be bottlenecked if you cast every shadow on that scene at full res for every frame, which ND is clearly not doing

Just an example of how you can be smart with rendering. And while it doesn't look as good as rendering at full res for every frame it gets pretty close to that with the temporal pass.

 

[VFX_Veteran]

I said a Titan X would be bottlenecked if you cast every shadow on that scene at full res for every frame, which ND is clearly not doing

What do you mean? Sorry, not understanding your terms.

Cast every shadow on that scene at full res? Meaning creating 1k shadow maps for every light source?

 

[Clukos]

What do you mean? Sorry, not understanding your terms.

Cast every shadow on that scene at full res? Meaning creating 1k shadow maps for every light source?

ND is -probably- rendering shadows at a lower than native res then upscaling through a temporal filter (whatever that is, temporal reconstruction, reprojection etc.). You can see that in the example i posted with Drake, when he moves his head the shadows are dithered for a sort amount of time (4-8 frames). Basically distributing rendering load over consecutive frames (perf optimization).

 

[RenegadeRocks]

I agree with that! They have very good talented teams (often a lot of them taken from film companies).



That's such a silly argument dude. If anything I would be used to seeing the "correct" solution for any/all graphics features. Real time uses tricks that in 99% of the cases yield inaccurate results compared to the true solution. Differences may be subtle (depending on the solution) but they are there.

Like I said , there is no true solution in CG either. We are not doing the calculations nature does. CG just uses more time consuming tricks which approximate light's behavior better. realtime goes for cheaper tricks for faster results, like 30 times a second.
What is this discussion about?:neutral:

 

[VFX_Veteran]

Like I said , there is no true solution in CG either. We are not doing the calculations nature does. CG just uses more time consuming tricks which approximate light's behavior better. realtime goes for cheaper tricks for faster results, like 30 times a second.
What is this discussion about?:neutral:

Of course there is no true solution other than real life. But Monte Carlo rendering is most certainly considered a "control" for rendering features for games. And my point is, tricks are done because the hardware isn't powerful enough. Eventually, we'll have monte carlo real-time rendering hardware where cheats won't be so in abundance and solutions will look closer to the "control" AND run at 30FPS.

 

[chris1515]

Of course there is no true solution other than real life. But Monte Carlo rendering is most certainly considered a "control" for rendering features for games. And my point is, tricks are done because the hardware isn't powerful enough. Eventually, we'll have monte carlo real-time rendering hardware where cheats won't be so in abundance and solutions will look closer to the "control" AND run at 30FPS.

I doubt we will ever see monte carlo rendering solution in real-time rendering it is not cache friendly.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

One day somebody will post something about the game. One day..

 

[Clukos]

One day somebody will post something about the game. One day..

May 10th is that day

 

[chris1515]

One day somebody will post something about the game. One day..

https://mobile.twitter.com/AngLopezCast/status/714464040974688257

Preview will come next week. Back to the topic

 

[Ron Burgundy]

What's irritating about some PS4 fans is that they want to somehow paint a picture that ONLY Naughty Dog can make a PS4 rival and even supersede a PC with high end graphics hardware with ANY game from ANY company that is developed for it. It even goes beyond PC to even covering every game ever put out on the next-gen consoles. It's just not true and speaks volumes to the fact that people are only interested in their particular hardware of choice using ND as a basis for argument because they make stellar games.

Naughty Dog is a incredible company. They make very good games and they have extremely talented staff. But they aren't the only talented staff around that make good games and they certainly don't have developers that can make a PS4 out-render a high end PC graphics card with 4-5X the bandwidth. Art is subjective and can't be argued, so if someone says, "UC4 looks better than any game out".. no one can refute that. However, 3D tech and features can absolutely be debated. And here is where most of these arguments fall short. Screenshots are used as a basis for argument (which is again subjective) instead of actual facts. Calling out "UC4 has tremendous detail" several meters in the distance when you don't know the context of the shot is very misleading. It makes it sound like ND has somehow extracted TitanX capabilities from a lowly 1.86TFLOP hardware. Hence the famed nickname 'Naughty Gods'. It's a tone of fanboism and shows a lack of understanding on how realtime graphics work and/or it's limitations. The comments are "loaded" with extreme bias towards ND in particular and is the reason you get so much backlash from others who aren't so biased.

I absolutely agree with this. It's always Sony fanboys for some reason. I'm a Playstation gamer but even I see that. Naughty Dog obviously do have some of the most talented artists and programmers in the industry, but not even close to all of them. Some work at Crytek, Dice, Remedy, Epic. That's why those companys produce just as eye pleasing games, if not more so in the case of Battlefront imo. And on PC, it's not even competition because not only is resolution and scalable assets increased, but there is additional lighting and shaders added.

PS4 just can't compete technically, but there's no doubt a PC version of Uncharted 4 wouldn't look too shabby.

 

[musichascolors]

Dreams looks just as good, imo.

 

[L. Scofield]

There's nothing barren about it, Halo 5 and MGSV is the very definition of outdoor barren landscape. You can clearly see tons of vegetation, wildlife and hills across the view, not to mention all rendered with volumetric lighting fogging and shadow. Also this is the nature of the African tundra, it's not a jungle, if you think UC4's engine is incapable of rendering dense geometry then you've clearly forgotten the PSX demo.

1) It is barren.
2) MGSV and Halo 5, both 60fps games. One of them is cross-gen. If that's your defense...
3) A dozen trees and a handful of animals can hardly be called "a ton".
4) No volumetric lighting/shadows shown in that scene. Volumetric fog is a feature already present in N64 games lol.
5) "Tundra"
6) The PSX demo definitely shows a lot more but there's also no indication to show it's an area as open as this one.

You missed the point, the comparison isn't with RotTR specifically but games on high-end PCs running at maxed out settings and still having problems with draw distance (shadow/lod rendering) for close proximity objects, games like The Witcher 3, AC:Unity, AC:Syndicate, RotTR and the list goes on. Running on a much more powerful CPU/GPU setup than a Ps4 and having more problems than U4 does with lod streaming and rendering distant shadows. I know, personal bias and all, you can't really praise ND for anything, but at least avoid the argument all together.

All those examples are actual open world games rendering FAR more on screen that that barren African landscape. But hey, if it surpasses a cross-gen game I guess it's an amazing achievement

Specifically regarding shadows, because the lighting is static you can pull off tricks like this:

Static shadow map:
-Takes advantage of increased memory on new platform
-Generate large shadow map with all static objects once at level load time or when transitioning into a different area
-Static map used as replacement for 4th and 5th shadow cascade
-Avoids re-rendering distant static objects every frame
-8192x8192 16 bit shadow map (128 MB) covering a 1km area of the game world provides sufficient resolution
-Saved 40%-60% of drawcalls in shadow map passes.

http://www.crytek.com/download/2014_03_25_CRYENGINE_GDC_Schultz.pdf

Not possible if you're running a full sky simulation though:

 

[chris1515]

1) It is barren.
2) MGSV and Halo 5, both 60fps games. One of them is cross-gen. If that's your defense...
3) A dozen trees and a handful of animals can hardly be called "a ton".
4) No volumetric lighting/shadows shown in that scene. Volumetric fog is a feature already present in N64 games lol.
5) "Tundra"
6) The PSX demo definitely shows a lot more but there's also no indication to show it's an area as open as this one.



All those examples are actual open world games rendering FAR more on screen that that barren African landscape. But hey, if it surpasses a cross-gen game I guess it's an amazing achievement

Specifically regarding shadows, because the lighting is static you can pull off tricks like this:

Static shadow map:
-Takes advantage of increased memory on new platform
-Generate large shadow map with all static objects once at level load time or when transitioning into a different area
-Static map used as replacement for 4th and 5th shadow cascade
-Avoids re-rendering distant static objects every frame
-8192x8192 16 bit shadow map (128 MB) covering a 1km area of the game world provides sufficient resolution
-Saved 40%-60% of drawcalls in shadow map passes.

http://www.crytek.com/download/2014_03_25_CRYENGINE_GDC_Schultz.pdf

Not possible if you're running a full sky simulation though:

And the trick they use in Ryse is clever... They don't need TOD or other things. The rendering time was used for other things and imo I find Ryse looking better than AC Syndicate but not than AC Unity PC version with baked GI.

 

[L. Scofield]

And the trick they use in Ryse is clever... They don't need TOD or other things. The rendering time was used for other things and imo I find Ryse looking better than AC Syndicate but not than AC Unity PC version with baked GI.

It's pre-calculated but not baked:

Pay attention to the ambient lighting @1:37. Particularly the ceiling.

 

[steveOrino]

Unity on the PC is a real visual treat if you have the hardware.