2nd gen Xbox360 hitting hard! Test Drive unlimited @hexus

[Bigus Dickus]

sorry 2nd gen doesn't come until after nov 06

Even with the smiley that's just dumb.

 

[Qroach]

Of couse not. People who make such comments aren't interested in the games themselves but rather in making you upset by pointing out flaws in games on your favorite console.

Um not quite... I just don't see a reason in pointing out somehting that would hardly make a difference to a game during gameplay. Even if the game had AF you likely wouldn't notice it at all.

 

[dukmahsik]

Even with the smiley that's just dumb.

what's the definition of 2nd gen games then?

 

[nintenho]

Looks good, but blows away PGR3? Not so much.

Have you ever wondered why no-one has made a game where you can just drive around a realistic location in as real a car as possible? If so, then here’s the answer to that dream. I could’ve spent most of the session just hopping between cars and bikes, cruising around and seeing how well I could drive a particularly tricky mountain road… but racing is a key part of the game, so I had a few of those too.

This game will own, respect it.

 

[see colon]

Um not quite... I just don't see a reason in pointing out somehting that would hardly make a difference to a game during gameplay. Even if the game had AF you likely wouldn't notice it at all.

i notice the lack of AF in most 360 games i've played, so he's not alone. it's extreamly noticable if you come from a strong PC gaming background, especialy if you've owned modern ATi cards*. the move from interlaced SD to progressive HD displays also make it stand out as well.


*every ATI card since the radeon has had screamingly fast AF, so it's something you'd enable and leave on unless it caused an issue in the odd game.

 

[dukmahsik]

i notice the lack of AF in most 360 games i've played, so he's not alone. it's extreamly noticable if you come from a strong PC gaming background, especialy if you've owned modern ATi cards*. the move from interlaced SD to progressive HD displays also make it stand out as well.


*every ATI card since the radeon has had screamingly fast AF, so it's something you'd enable and leave on unless it caused an issue in the odd game.

blame it on the devs?

 

[tema]

Is Xenos really that powerful?

 

[superguy]

Dave said this game is not supposed to have AF because of motion blur.

But it's always something. Either "screen tearing", or no AF supposedly, or 30 FPS alledgedly, or something.

 

[Dave Baumann]

Dave said this game is not supposed to have AF because of motion blur.

No, thats not what I said at all. I said that some of the texture blurring is coming from the fact that some of the images have motion blur on them, such as 3 of the 4 images here do have. However, the fact that the roadmarkings are not blurring into the screen would tend to suggest, on a modern title, that AF probably is being used. Here's an example of the type of differences between AF and no AF on a modern driving title:

http://www.beyond3d.com/news/images/20060416_nfs1.jpg
http://www.beyond3d.com/news/images/20060416_nfs2.jpg

 

[Titanio]

No, thats not what I said at all. I said that some of the texture blurring is coming from the fact that some of the images have motion blur on them, such as 3 of the 4 images here do have. However, the fact that the roadmarkings are not blurring into the screen would tend to suggest, on a modern title, that AF probably is being used. Here's an example of the type of differences between AF and no AF on a modern driving title:

The last time this was debated, the question was raised as to the treatment of road markings as special cases. They're not a fool-proof method of gauging the quality of filtering.

As for the article, it just seems slightly/overly hyperbolic..the concept of a hawaiian island to drive about is attractive, though.

 

[Dave Baumann]

The last time this was debated, the question was raised as to the treatment of road markings as special cases.

Expect that the details of the entire scene tend to suggest high quality filteing is enabled and the particular point that was raised in discussion was neither a recent title or on recent hardware that has the same types of AF costs as current hardware.

 

[Titanio]

Other details are other details, not road markings

I don't know, obviously there are a variety of blurs being used here, not only motion blur but DOF. Some of the blurring in certain shots doesn't seem to jive with the idea that it's just motion blur, certainly, but it's hard to tell without seeing it in motion (surprise surprise!). Regardless, whatever combination of techniques they're using doesn't lend itself as well to static screen captures as it might in motion. And I guess you might forgive people for pointing at poor texture filtering and/or quality when to the casual eye the effect looks similar in screenshots, and they've become used to seeing it in other titles.

 

[Dave Baumann]

Other details are other details, not road markings

What? They are also indicative of the likelyhood of higher quality filtering being used.

For instance, take a look at the power lines in the first image: two methods for those are going to be geometry or alpha textures. Most games currently will just render that type of detail as a texture, because its cheap and easy to do so, however if it were a texture it would be prone the filtering issues that texture have. If they are textures, without higher quality filtering, they would disappear fairly soon into the scene. [Edit] Taking a look at the high res images, these do appear to be geometry as they appear to have AA applied.

Alternatively, on the second image we have both a road sign and a tiled roof quite far into the draw distance, and they would probably be on their 3rd or 4 mip level that far in without AF, yet there is a surprising level of detail on them (its easy to distinguish that that is a road sign that has marking on it, rather than a green blur; its easy to tell that the house has a tiled roof).

 

[Titanio]

What? They are also indicative of the likelyhood of higher quality filtering being used.

Of course, I just didn't want to leave the impression that I was ruling out the relevance of "other details". I was replying to your post about road markings.

I'm certainly not coming to any conclusion about the quality of filtering yet. I can just see why some people might get the idea that it's poor from these shots, at least on parts of the scene (i.e. the road), because of the amount of blur present, for whatever reason. Some of the shots the blurring could be related to explicit effects going on, but in others I'm not so sure. For example, the shot you highlight with the road sign and tiled roof, looking at the higher res version, I'm not sure why the road texture blurs as quickly as it does going into the scene - I don't think it's DOF there, and if it was motion blur, you might think some other parts of the scene would be affected that don't appear to be.

 

[Tahir2]

From the way I understand AF, it does look like it is being used in the above shots of Test Drive.
I could be wrong of course.

 

[PeterT]

IMHO, these shots are just too small/few to accurately judge whether AF is used.
However, the upper left part of the road in the second shot makes it obvious (to me) that the road markings are geometry, not just textures. See for yourself.

 

[kyleb]

I not sure I follow what you are pointing at. In that shot the divide between the two types of roard that follows the X in the Hexus logo looks quite plainly like two textures slapped together to me, with the roard markings being part of one of those textures.

 

[Mintmaster]

Dave, I'm going to have to agree with nAo's assessment of the Test Drive shots. Not much if any AF being used here.

Your NFS screenshots on the PC are definately using textures for all road details, but the TDU screenshots show more evidence of using geometry for road details and keeping AF off/low. The grain in the road disappears in the distance, where the motion blur is less.

To some of the others in this thread, the reason I doubt the hardware is at fault is that Xenos can perform 144 texture lookups per pixel at 720P and still get 60fps. Enabling 8xAF for the base road texture is a piece of cake. Bandwidth can't be a problem. IMO, the devs just don't care because the vast majority of the target market doesn't care.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

IMHO, these shots are just too small/few to accurately judge whether AF is used.
However, the upper left part of the road in the second shot makes it obvious (to me) that the road markings are geometry, not just textures. See for yourself.

Look at the 720p source pics from the linked to website. eg...
http://img.hexus.net/v2/gaming/screenshots/tdu/tdu_large_51.jpg
Static camera, no motion blur or DOF, and the road texture is splodgy. That to me is no AF on the road. The break up of the road markings looks indicative of geometry. Looking at that picture and comparing it to the 'before and after' pics Dave linked to, how can the road be considered to have AF when detail is so absent, just like the example with no AF? What other explanation can there be for the road texturing when there's no other effects in play in that picture?

 

[Graham]

looks to me like the road markings are being done by multi-texturing. Probably using AF on the road marking texture unit but not on the actual road texture. I don't really see the problem honestly, it probably looks better in motion for this reason, you won't get a distracting sparkly road at high speed then, but will still get nice sharp markings.

I'll repeat, read the article, he states that the game looks considerably better in motion, 'screen shots not doing the game justice' etc.

Also a couple of the original shots are massive reductions of ultra-resolution images, which feature quite considerable depth of field blurring.