Forza Motorsports 2 60fps, 4xAA, HDR, MB

[rusty]

Huh? In what aspects did you find it lacking? Forza had one of the most comprehensive physics simulations of any racing game.

i agree, although i am still slitghly worried as to just how good it's going to be when they've had such a short development cycle.... with all the features they want to try and squeese into such a short dev time (most notably perhaps 60fps!), surely that's going to entail some serious recycling of current assets?

i just hope that we don't end up with a jazzed up version of the original Forza because microsoft wants a racing sim out by xmas.... would be a damn shame.

 

[ihamoitc2005]

Physics

Huh? In what aspects did you find it lacking? Forza had one of the most comprehensive physics simulations of any racing game.

Advertising for Forza physics is very good with very nice words but actual physics is not so great. Look at Nurburgring. Why is Forza Nurburgring track very incorrect shapes and length? Because if Forza Nurburgring had correct shape and length then track time is very incorrect. So they change track to make Forza track time not so incorrect.

I hope for Forza 2 they do not need to do this. I think because of amazing Xbox360 CPU power they can make correct Nurburgring with correct driving speed.

 

[winterbird@nerdshack.com]

Advertising for Forza physics is very good with very nice words but actual physics is not so great. Look at Nurburgring. Why is Forza Nurburgring track very incorrect shapes and length? Because if Forza Nurburgring had correct shape and length then track time is very incorrect. So they change track to make Forza track time not so incorrect.

I hope for Forza 2 they do not need to do this. I think because of amazing Xbox360 CPU power they can make correct Nurburgring with correct driving speed.

Wow. Tweak value in the physics engine?, or change the geometry of an entire track?

That's a bad argument you have there.

 

[Graham]

If you watch the MS presentation about Live anywhere (or whatever it was called...) they show forza 'on your mobile', etc. During this, they also have a looping video of forza, which looks rather 'real-time' because it's has a terrible camera.
The assets are clearly the same as those in the video, however the rendering is naturally not quite as good (however it's hard to tell as it's small).

 

[rabidrabbit]

That looping Forza looks just like that, a video taken from the Forza prerendered cgi displayed on the phone.
A concept you might say, and that's what's expected really, as a concept was what they showed of Forza 2 on the big screen too.

"Live Anywhere" is a neat idea, though I'm not so sure if I personally would like to play parts of my next gen games on inferior machines, even if those parts were just for gaining some "achievements" for the main game in form of some themed mini games.
Though, a cellphone is good for following some stats, and tracking your online "buds" and such.

I rather have the "full" experience on big HD screen, than transfer parts of that experience to much inferior platforms like cellphones.
Live integration between PC and xbox360 is different matter of course, as the experience can be made much closer to the original. "Painting and tweaking your car on PC" sounds a bit silly though, unless you really are that consumed in some game you must have some access to it even when away from your xbox360, I'd rather take a mouse and kb for xb360.

How does "Location Free" compare to "Live Anywhere"?
Edit: Oops, going a bit off topic,maybe a separate thread for "Live Anywhere" and "Location Free" would be in order...

 

[!eVo!-X Ant UK]

One 360(Launch game at that) game comes out in slightly less that 720p and all of a sudden everyone questions every game comming out. Well it must be less than 720p if it's using HDR, 4X AA 60fps right?

The watchimpress article gave the impression that ALOT of games will be rendered at a lower resolution.

 

[c0_re]

The watchimpress article gave the impression that ALOT of games will be rendered at a lower resolution.

Don't belive everything you read on the internet, I'm not aware of any other game rendered in less than 720p. Wow a clueless Japanese video site downplaying XB360 I'm shocked. Thats like me get all my Playstation news from www.teamxbox.com

 

[!eVo!-X Ant UK]

Don't belive everything you read on the internet, I'm not aware of any other game rendered in less than 720p. Wow a clueless Japanese video site downplaying XB360 I'm shocked. Thats like me get all my Playstation news from www.teamxbox.com

You ignore the fact that implementing tile redering into a game engine is ALOT of work and thus expensive, some smaller studio's wont be able to afford or have the experience to use the feature, resulting in games either with no AA or lower res+AA. Multiplatform games that are made on and have there game engine created on PS3 are another problem, can you see Dev's rewriting the Engine for 360?? Knowing how much work and money will be involved, i no i dont.

 

[Bad_Boy]

Who the heck is "watchimpress" anyways, I've never even heard of it.

http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/game/

edit: ahh nice edit there.

 

[Dave Baumann]

You ignore the fact that implementing tile redering into a game engine is ALOT of work and thus expensive, some smaller studio's wont be able to afford or have the experience to use the feature, resulting in games either with no AA or lower res+AA.

Predicated tiling (effectively, fairly automatic tiling) is built into the API now, and shouldn't be too much work - predicated tiling will limit the use of some more advanced features (i.e. geometry rendering from the CPU, etc.), but then the types of devs you are talking about are probably unlikely to be looking at this anyway.

As ever with something new, this is more of an education process.

 

[expletive]

Predicated tiling (effectively, fairly automatic tiling) is built into the API now, and shouldn't be too much work -

When you say built into the API 'now' I get the impression that this is something recent. Do you know when predicated tiling was made available as part of the API?

 

[Dave Baumann]

I was talking to Richard Huddy yesterday and we touched on the use of AA in XBOX 360 - the use of the word "now" in that manner was actually his. I believe it was the case that initial versions didn't have predicated tiling, but it may have been a few months since it was added (I think there was a presentation around that inidicated its addition).

 

[AlNom]

so... automatic predicated tiling: developers would have previously had to develop it from scratch? And now they can just call for it through the API? Simple as that

 

[ERP]

so... automatic predicated tiling: developers would have previously had to develop it from scratch? And now they can just call for it through the API? Simple as that

The situation is/was not quite that simple.

 

[Tap In]

The situation is/was not quite that simple.

yes, yes, please go on...

 

[Acert93]

Dave and ERP,

There are a number of tiling methods on the 360. I know the Xenos article covers some of them, but could we get a quick break down of the current options, roughly how they work, and benefit/draw backs?

e.g. You mention predicated tiling not working with geometry streaming (and presumably MEMEXPORT). What tiling methods do work with data streaming?

Maybe a new thread on this topic?

As an aside, while looking some info up this PPT seems fairly new (post GDC 2006) and covers some Predicated Tiling, Hardware Tessellation, and Procedural Synthesis on the 360.

 

[blakjedi]

Thanks Acert93 for the link!

Highlights:

- 338 Million trannies!?!?!?
- Alpha blending, Z - testing, Multi-Sample Anti-Aliasing, are all free even when combined? hmmm
- "FXLite" they never talk about this in the whole presentation...
- 8 Contexts in-flight
- Some confusion; slide 15 states:

"Separate memory buffer on GPU = Enough memory for 1280x720 2xMSAA"

Then slide 36 says "EDRAM is not large enough for 720p rendering with MSAA or multiple render targets."

Which one is it?

 

[TurnDragoZeroV2G]

"Separate memory buffer on GPU = Enough memory for 1280x720 2xMSAA"

Then slide 36 says "EDRAM is not large enough for 720p rendering with MSAA or multiple render targets."

Believe that was for the Hi-Z, not the eDRAM/daughter die.

Also, I don't think there would be any problems with MEMEXPORT for tiling, in whatever form. It's just a write to memory. Besides, doesn't MEMEXPORT basically handle most/all writes to main memory (at least those from the GPU, i.e. eDRAM resolve, and shader data), even though the more outstanding abilities involve the hardware taking data from anywhere in a shader and doing so?

That's the impression I've gotten from various slides, and the block diagram.

But if there is more to discuss regarding tiling it would be interesting to see it.

 

[Powderkeg]

Advertising for Forza physics is very good with very nice words but actual physics is not so great. Look at Nurburgring. Why is Forza Nurburgring track very incorrect shapes and length? Because if Forza Nurburgring had correct shape and length then track time is very incorrect. So they change track to make Forza track time not so incorrect.

Have you ever seen the real Nordschleife track?

They changed the track geomitry so that you could have side-by-side racing in multiplayer on the track, which you can't do on the real track because it's way too narrow. It had nothing to do with how accurate the physics engine is, and everything to do with trying to make the game fun to play, especially online against 7 other people.

 

[Powderkeg]

You ignore the fact that implementing tile redering into a game engine is ALOT of work and thus expensive, some smaller studio's wont be able to afford or have the experience to use the feature, resulting in games either with no AA or lower res+AA. Multiplatform games that are made on and have there game engine created on PS3 are another problem, can you see Dev's rewriting the Engine for 360?? Knowing how much work and money will be involved, i no i dont.

No, I see devs making their multiplatform games for the 360 to begin with, and porting it to the PS3.

After all, tile rendering doesn't cost nearly as much time and money as coding a game engine around Cell does. Especially when you consider how much better the 360 development tools are than what the PS3 has.