babcat's favourite showing of E3

[hesido]

When they turned on the lights, it looked like an actual set... Hot damn!..

I agree with the concerns of tech demos not making it into a game, but Quantic did a good job of translating their "casting" tech-demo to heavy rain.

Also, the fact that we only need so much detail when you have characters up-close, and that we now have tesselation, characters far away may not need to be that much detailed, and even it may fall back to lower quality animation for those, that puts less strain on the GPU. That's of course only one part of the equation, but it may help a great deal. Their renderer seems to cope with different lighting conditions well, if they haven't baked stuff in for both scenes (like how MGS Phantom Pain can change time of day with exact same assets.)

And I don't agree with people telling QD to start doing movies instead. What they do is different, and I personally like it, we've got enough of other stuff already. It's not as if because they do such games, there are less games that you'd want to play.

 

[BadTB25]

What a misleading thread title. I thought it was actually voted Demo of the show and is it turns out it just forum poster opinion. Should have an "imo" in the title imo..

 

[Nesh]

Yea , I'm calling it now , you wont see quality like this outside of cut scenes on either system. Unless your going to have a game with only 4 characters in a box that is 4x4 like the stage these two interacted on.


You remember this ? old man demo

Never saw quality like that in an actual game for the ps2. Its nice to dream and its nice to know that it will be common place the gen after this one starting in the fall.

Silent Hill 3 did it

But of course due to the style of the game there werent many characters on screen and view distance was limited allowing probably the most detailed characters ever made on the system

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The only but that really impressed me was the goblin doing his little dancey move. That was close to CGI quality in terms of movement. The whole thing itself looked like an odd composite, with real-ish people superimposed on CGI backgrounds like a TV show that can't afford a movie's sets. Very reminiscent of the old X-Wing vs Tie-Fighter type cutscenes, although that's perhaps because I watched in low quality with the same sorts of compressions.

 

[2real4tv]

The only but that really impressed me was the goblin doing his little dancey move. That was close to CGI quality in terms of movement. The whole thing itself looked like an odd composite, with real-ish people superimposed on CGI backgrounds like a TV show that can't afford a movie's sets. Very reminiscent of the old X-Wing vs Tie-Fighter type cutscenes, although that's perhaps because I watched in low quality with the same sorts of compressions.

I thought of the Annoying orange show:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6l9NyXLPpw

 

[kalelovil]

When they turned on the lights, it looked like an actual set... Hot damn!...

Agreed. The movie set in my opinion looked photorealistic and more believable than the stereotypical fantasy environs which preceded it, perhaps that was the effect Quantic was trying to achieve.

The main character model and animation, although quite good at conveying emotion, had the uncanny valley factor to it unfortunately.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

True. The green-screen stuff looking out of place is part of making it look like a cheap TV show. I'd have to watch it again in HD.

 

[DieH@rd]

Fantastic demo, really stunning. I cant wait to see all 12 minutes of it and DF breakdown of visuals.

 

[babcat]

This is not my favorite showing at E3. It wss the only showing that is truly nextgen. Everything else looked like an extremely good PS3 game.

 

[hesido]

Here's the full version, and they throw in multiple characters for good measure!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqeuHGESZBA&feature=player_embedded

 

[babcat]

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2013/06/11/the-dark-sorcerer-a-next-gen-comedy/

Here is an amazing quote that says the ps4 game will look better than this demo!



The PS4 engine used for Dark Sorcerer is only in its first iteration, and most of the features scheduled for the final version of the engine haven’t yet been implemented. This demo is only a first test that is well below the visual quality we hope to achieve in our next game. The next game will not be based on this demo, obviously (I know, we’re a bit weird), but on an idea that is completely different from what we’ve done to date. It’s incredibly exciting, and I wish I could tell you more… but I can’t.

 

[babcat]

Here is a bit of tech info......

In the current demo, there are about a million polygons in the set, and a little less than a million per character on the screen (i.e. a total of 4 million when the three characters are on the screen). Each character has about 350 MB of textures and about forty different shaders. It’s all managed with Physically Based Shaders, volumetric lights, full HDR, Color Grading, Physical Lenses (particularly useful for chromatic aberrations and 3D depth of field), and translucence for more realistic rendering of the skin. The change of set and all the lighting (and the behavior of the shaders) between the dramatic version of the set and the “studio” version is done in real time. The same holds true for all pyrotechnical particle effects.

 

[babcat]

If they can make a game look as realistic as this tech demo, or better, I will apologise for calling the ps4 underpowered.

 

[onQ]

If they can make a game look as realistic as this tech demo, or better, I will apologise for calling the ps4 underpowered.

With 'Physically Based Rendering/Lighting' I think we will see a lot of photo realistic games over the next few years.

 

[Cyan]

Ahhh, true classic! The PS2's old man never fails to impress. :smile:

Microsoft's show impressed me the most.

 

[babcat]

So what do you tech people think of his technical comments? Do you think it is really possible for him to make a game that exceeds this level of visual quality?

 

[hesido]

Well like we mentioned, their track record says it all. Heavy Rain was slightly better than the Casting with more characters and open scenery, and Beyond seems as good as Kara demo with more objects and bigger sets. And I think this tech demo is under-rated, I'd imagine more people would talk about it. Their technical wizardry surprises me, I think they are dismissed way too easily just because "gamers want games not interactive movies" paradigm. But I'm so glad they are around making more games.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

As an aside, you won't be able to play any game like this on your old SD set, so you'll be needing a new TV.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

I thought this demo was just "ok". I wasn't that impressed by the facial animation and didn't find it that funny either, but story wasn't exactly the point of the demo...

 

[babcat]

As an aside, you won't be able to play any game like this on your old SD set, so you'll be needing a new TV.

Even if I do buy a hdtv at some point as a computer display, I refuse to play 1080p games. I personally think anything over 720p is a total waste. All I want is a game that looks real at standard resolutions. Increasing the resolution just uses up more gpu power.