PeterT said:
I took a closer look at the pic, and this is what I think:
But in the end, I have to agree that the most probable explanation may be that it's just not realtime
Not that I'm saying this is realtime, and the technical reasons against are quite clear. BUT...there's only one picture for assasin and it shows nothing but some chainmail, in which half is readily attainable. Why would a developer show something so limited in content where all attention will be focussed on the quality of that mail helm if it was nothing but a fabrication? It's not like the picture makes you stop and wonder what the game is about, or what the gameplay is, All they've offered is some amazing chainmail and if that's totally fictitious then they're offering nothing at all.
With concept renders and promo shots, they bear some resemblance to the final product and are they're in essence to showcase the product. There may be lods of AA that the final doesn't have, and concept renders may have smoother animation then the real product. But you don't get Halo screenshots with fantastically detailed 100,000 poly models, or GT screenshots with 24 cars on the track. They are created within the conceptual boundaries of what is being advertised and delivered.
Focussing on some amazing chainmail, all Assassin is offering at the moment is amazing chainmil. Perhaps the entire game is you have to manufacture you're own mail coat? But if fantastic looking mail isn't in the game this isn't a promo shot like other 'enhanced' promo shots, but a bald-faced lie.
I'm not so ready to accept a company decided to offline render something so detailed as a teaser if it's not in some way part of their product. If they've gone to that trouble for the mail helm, why produce such uniform shirt mail? Why not use the same offline rendering process to make the whole lot look fantastic? Limiting the effect to just the helm is something they'd have to do if it's demanding of the system to the point they can't create that effect across the whole model, which isn't a problem with an offline renderer.
It might be phoney, but I'm not happy with that idea. Perhaps they've developed a procedural bump system, where the rings are calculated per pixel? Perhaps they're HOS/CSG donuts with no vertices whatsoever linked to a fabric-simulated mesh? As it's a simple repeated ring structure I imagine it would be efficient to use a SPE to render them as CSGs rather then transform vertices to fit and pass it to the RSX to render. Maybe a ray-traced normal-map?
But showing such a detailed model to gain attention when it's a total fabrication...well, marketting does some pretty wierd things on occassion... But when the publisher or whoever says 'let's see that amazing chainmail' and the dev replies 'there never was any, we just rendered that picture to get your attention, the actual game only has the simple bumps shown in that first image' it's gonna make the dev's name Mud. I'm more inclined to think the devs were showcasing their engine's capacity to do some clever render work that every other game's HDR, high poly, detail texture+normal mapped engines can't do. They're certianly not marketting their gameplay with this shot!
