Wardevil resurfaces..

[ultragpu]

I blame the CG film they're making which would take up a huge chunk of the dev time. And from the article it seems to me like the game employs some static lighting for baking everything into textures hm.

 

[Prophecy2k]

I really don't think they're far along with the game development at all as far as I'm aware.

I'm sure all their performance claims come from them rendering very simple geometry in-engine, and once they begin production on the game, having multiple enemies on-screen with AI and all the rest running, they very likely won't be seeing the kind of performance they've been mouthing off about... well... at least that's the skeptic in me speaking...

I love to be proved wrong however

 

[sunscar]

Yeah, wasnt this like the first nexgen title announced years back for the xbox360/ps3? It also had a better art style in the first trailer before they introduced the Knight style main character. (if thats who he is)

I think it was actually beat out by Heavenly Sword, and the original Dark Sector teaser (OT, why the hell did they not just give us that as a bonus?!). It also may have been beaten out by *VERY* early UE3 tech demos (around 2003 IIRC), and a few others, but my brain is skipping right now and I can't remember their names. Oooo, I think "City of Metronome" was one of those!

 

[slapnutz]

I think it was actually beat out by Heavenly Sword, and the original Dark Sector teaser (OT, why the hell did they not just give us that as a bonus?!). It also may have been beaten out by *VERY* early UE3 tech demos (around 2003 IIRC), and a few others, but my brain is skipping right now and I can't remember their names. Oooo, I think "City of Metronome" was one of those!

Please dont remind me of City of Metronome.

I still dont think any UE3 games look better than the original Reality Engine trailer before Epic bought them out... but thats another story for another topic.

 

[Holborn]

http://www.develop-online.net/news/32943/Sonys-HD-development-hype-was-right

What they are saying is they use baked shadows and lights, or is there something else?

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Actually, the article doesn't really make much sense...

There are some optimizations where you pack specular intensity, highlight size/glossiness, and maybe reflection intensity maps into a single texture's RGB channels, as they're all greyscale information and do not need a separate 24-bit map. But this is pretty basic stuff and most console games have probably been using it since the first Xbox.

Grade, as in color grading, is a post process applied to the final, complete image, basically color correction using a lookup table (shift darker tones to red, lighter tones to blue, intensify highlights etc.) - so it doesn't need a map for each surface.

Lightmaps are usually saved at a significantly lower resolution, 1:10 to 1:1000 even, and so they're using a separate UV coordinate set for each. Now if you're using id tech5, this is all different, but I doubt that they'd describe a virtual texturing system this way.

So IMHO it's just some new kind of bull**** and I'll only change my opinion after seeing some direct feed realtime footage.

 

[Crossbar]

Don´t know if this has been posted elsewhere but I found it to be an interesting read. I cannot really comment on the tech, as I am not that knowledgeble, but what I find most intriguing is that it seems like they have just entered full production.

It must be the wet dream of many developers to be able to spend 4-5 years just developing the engine before going into production. Is Sony sponsring them in the same fashion as Quantic Dream?

 

[AlNom]

It's a multiplatform game still IIRC.

 

[Crossbar]

It's a multiplatform game still IIRC.

It could be, the article says that the PS3 is the lead platform, and they comment on the filtering capability of the 360.

Anyways it seems very geared towards the PS3 with all the talk of blu-ray and their recruitment page only ask for PS3 experiense.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Here's an EDGE studio visit to Digi-Guys. It talks of a 2005 demo akin to Rage running on an orginal XB. I've hacked down the original article here just to illustrate EDGE saw something impressive, but please do read the original for a little on the tech and approach.

We know what you’re thinking. And had we not just seen something comparable to id Software’s Rage running on an original Xbox, we’d be thinking it too.
...
Such is the nature of Digi-Guys’ new pipeline, though – designed as it is to render Hollywood-grade visuals at true 1080p, at an unbroken 60 frames per second, using just one core of a modern console CPU – that the demo would have to do much more with much less to be a valid proof of concept. “Hold me to it and hang me, because the reality is that if we don’t do it this way, it’s not a project,” says Whitehurst. “If we reduce the textures, there’d be no point in doing it.” So on comes the black block of a chipped retail Xbox, and his words are put into action.
...
It’s a persuasive piece of work, to say the least, and tells you as much about the last five years as it does about Whitehurst’s concept of ‘Hollywood grade’. The crux of it is the use of such high-resolution textures that it avoids the traditional break in fidelity from feature film standard to in-game. So what you’d expect to see even in modern games – textures that turn to porridge if you look too close – doesn’t happen here. Then there’s motion blur, of the kind seen in Jurassic Park rather than the harsh, sometimes nauseating vector blur used in modern games. Add to that many of the light and particle effects you’d expect to see today, and a healthy layer of anti-aliasing. All on an original Xbox which then has the pleasure of rendering it twice, a debug menu bringing two separate cameras to the scene.

How is this possible? Whitehurst is cagey, probably to protect his work rather than hide some inconvenient truth, which given the evidence would seem unnecessary...
...
Let’s return to what this means for WarDevil itself, and another demo that brings things bang up to date. The background for this one is a visit by Sony reps in October 2005, by which time Whitehurst had built the kind of HD studio that was still having to be described to most developers. They saw the Xbox demo – and remember, this is the same year that Doom 3 struggled its way on to the same console – and were suitably impressed. “They said: ‘Here’s some devkits. Let’s see what you can do’

So a first-hand account of impressive tech in action, which was enough to get Sony to select WarDevil for their E305 showcase. I hope we get to see some real media soon.

 

[Neb]

So IMHO it's just some new kind of bull**** and I'll only change my opinion after seeing some direct feed realtime footage.

I saw some promo or bullshots of their game some year(s) ago. Was not impressed at all and certainly no traces whatsoever of what they claim to have now.

 

[Neb]

Here's an EDGE studio visit to Digi-Guys. It talks of a 2005 demo akin to Rage running on an orginal XB. I've hacked down the original article here just to illustrate EDGE saw something impressive, but please do read the original for a little on the tech and approach.

So a first-hand account of impressive tech in action, which was enough to get Sony to select WarDevil for their E305 showcase. I hope we get to see some real media soon.

Did I get it right? Are they saying super high detailed textures, object motionblur, modern games particle and light effects and AA rendered twice on an xbox? hahaha... Either an extremly limited test scene or 2005 E3 all over again... oh dear what is wrong with the world...

So what you’d expect to see even in modern games – textures that turn to porridge if you look too close – doesn’t happen here. Then there’s motion blur, of the kind seen in Jurassic Park rather than the harsh, sometimes nauseating vector blur used in modern games. Add to that many of the light and particle effects you’d expect to see today, and a healthy layer of anti-aliasing. All on an original Xbox which then has the pleasure of rendering it twice, a debug menu bringing two separate cameras to the scene.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Did I get it right? Are they saying super high detailed textures, object motionblur, modern games particle and light effects and AA rendered twice on an xbox? hahaha... Either an extremly limited test scene or 2005 E3 all over again... oh dear what is wrong with the world...

Unlike previous questionable promises of the impossible though, this is independently 'vertified' by the EDGE reporter. The question now is how much do we trust this reporter and what he saw?

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Anyone mentioning "Hollywood quality" in relation to console graphics is suspicious

The game industry doesn't seem to know much about the game either and everyone's pretty sceptical too...

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I presume he means regards textures fidelty, and id's Tech 5 is doing similar isn't it? So that's not such a far reach. OF course CGI is a heck of a lot more than just high fidelity assets. If their game could render CGI quality lighting, they'd really have something to talk about.

Oh, another point is perhaps scalability. Apparently mid game he was firing off screen-captures at print resolution, and he talks about rendering CGi frames in 45-180 seconds. He also talks about non-photo-realism and stylised rendering that you normally get with 2D graphics. So it could be in his mind, the CG targets aren't perhaps what we expect from ILM or Dreamworks or even Pixar, but instead a stylised art suitable for film.

I'm just suggesting ideas here though, from what I read. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and they've shown us nothing by way of a taster, so we should be sceptical. This is just one itsy-bitsy suggestion that it's not as bunkum as it could well be.

 

[assurdum]

Here's an EDGE studio visit to Digi-Guys. It talks of a 2005 demo akin to Rage running on an orginal XB. I've hacked down the original article here just to illustrate EDGE saw something impressive, but please do read the original for a little on the tech and approach.

So a first-hand account of impressive tech in action, which was enough to get Sony to select WarDevil for their E305 showcase. I hope we get to see some real media soon.

I really hope so. They have promise to show something in october and to the Edge they have add some specs about the texture. It's time, come on

 

[FirewalkR]

In Edge they claimed they reached > 42 FPS at 1080p using only 1 PPU thread and the RSX...

Seems like that part didn't make it into the online article, here's the excerpt from the mag, I hope there's no problem in posting it:

"Even now, if we run the base code system and don't put in any culling or LODs - which is a crazy thing to do but helps illustrate what we're talking about - we're still getting a framerate of 42-52fps on our PS3 build," claims Whitehurst. "That's drawing at full native 1080p with motion blur and filters, with the player-controlled WarDevil and up to ten NPCs. And we're still only working on a single thread, with the GPU and no SPUs. This means we have an incredible amount of code bandwidth left which will have a significant amount of background tasks offloaded to them - and we can go multi-threaded on the 360."

 

[assurdum]

Seems like that part didn't make it into the online article, here's the excerpt from the mag, I hope there's no problem in posting it:
"Even now, if we run the base code system and don't put in any culling or LODs- which is a crazy thing to do but helps illustrate what we're talking about - we're still getting a framerate of 42-52fps on our PS3 build," claims Whitehurst. "That's drawing atfull native 1080p with motion blur and filters, with the player-controlled WarDevil and up to ten NPCs. And we're still only working on a single thread, with the GPU and no SPUs. This means we have an incredible amount of code bandwidth left which will have a significant amount of background tasks offloaded to them - and we can go multi-threaded on the 360."

Uh? 360? I don't understood ... We don't talking of the ps3 developing? What means 360 at the end of the explanation?

 

[Laa-Yosh]

So, not only are they claiming to have outdone devs like Naughty Dog - but they can do it with just the weak little PPU and the RSX?? Do we look like we're that stupid or what?

 

[liolio]

Uh? 360? I don't understood ... We don't talking of the ps3 developing? What means 360 at the end of the explanation?

This one is strange too:

TThat’s not the only reason for PS3 becoming WarDevil’s lead platform. “Sony’s hype was right,” says Whitehurst, echoing those old, oft-forgotten claims that the architecture of Cell and its satellite SPUs is ideal for the future of HD gaming, as opposed to the present, which is ruled by DirectX. “It’s advantageous for our thought process. There’s better filtering on 360 but the whole thing comes together better on PS3.”

Edge makes it sound like a 360 version is possible or that their tech is clearly designed to be multi platform.
Between Edge read a bit too much in "Sony's hype was right".