Can high resolution textures substitute more polygons?

[Inuhanyou]

I don't think a thread like this was made before, but i'm pretty curious about it.

Based on the specs we have of Orbis and Durango, it seems we will be a pretty good upgrade of ram, along with GPU power and CPU power.

On the subject however, i've heard many people saying that these two future consoles would not match or even get close to the level of graphical fidelity seen by high end PC ports of games today.

I generally disagreed with that notion, but started thinking about it again after NFS Most Wanted's Wii U version was revealed to be enhanced by the PC version's high resolution textures and assets with help from the added 1GB of ram, hence becoming by far the best console version visually with supposedly extremely minimal work from Criterion(they said they just "flipped a switch").

My question is basically this, going into next gen, can much higher resolution assets for games substitute the need to push more polygons or more advanced rendering techniques, or is it an apples to oranges scenario?

 

[fehu]

I'm no expert, but to be able to use bigger texture you need bigger bandwidth, and both consoles apparently lack it

 

[Inuhanyou]

Your saying even PS4 with GDDR5 is lacking bandwidth? hmms, something makes me doubt that

 

[Scott_Arm]

Isn't this what Normal Maps are for?

 

[Jedi2016]

Textures alone can't help a low-poly object (Battlefield 3, I'm looking at you). Polygons on their own aren't really all that taxing, using something like DX11 tessellation (which the next-gen consoles will support).

The trick is to find a good balance. Give it enough polys to keep away from the blocky look of low-poly objects, round off all the edges and stuff, then add the rest of the detail with a normal map or parallax occlusion mapping.

 

[Inuhanyou]

I don't know how BF3 on PC was, but wasn't it generally helped by higher resolution assets? Or no?

 

[3dcgi]

High resolution textures don't really substitute for polygons, but as Scott_Arm said normal maps can. They work great to simulate detail geometry, but they don't alter silhouettes so there's only so much they can make up for. Even high end PC GPUs need normal maps to substitute for detail geometry. There are other techniques like parallax occlusion mapping.

 

[Jedi2016]

I don't know how BF3 on PC was, but wasn't it generally helped by higher resolution assets? Or no?

There's a lot of meshes, rocks and debris and such, that are exceptionally low-poly, and look really bad up close. Kind of brings down the overall experience when you come across stuff like that in an otherwise amazing-looking game.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

High resolution textures don't really substitute for polygons, but as Scott_Arm said normal maps can. They work great to simulate detail geometry, but they don't alter silhouettes so there's only so much they can make up for. Even high end PC GPUs need normal maps to substitute for detail geometry. There are other techniques like parallax occlusion mapping.

Yeah, the illusion for them isn't too bad as long as you don't see silhouettes or get too close. For most things it suffices.

Detail geometry kind of falls apart thought. While they work great for character models, I haven't seen convincing normal maps for geometry. It's still better than what we had before, of course. POM goes a long ways to increasing the illusion, and will suffice in many cases, but even that falls apart. Tessellation of geometry still does the best job, but even that currently has some limitations.

I'm greatly interested to see which way game rendering goings for the next gen. At the very least I would hope for POM, at best tessellated geometry.

For character models and such. I have a feeling we'll still have relatively low poly models combined with normal maps. And that's likely to be good enough. Perhaps they'll bump up the poly budget though so that things don't go very very wrong when you view them at relatively close distances (2-3 meters).

Regards,
SB

 

[fehu]

Your saying even PS4 with GDDR5 is lacking bandwidth? hmms, something makes me doubt that

You mentioned high end pc, so yes, ps4 is lacking bandwidth

 

[onQ]

I'm no expert, but to be able to use bigger texture you need bigger bandwidth, and both consoles apparently lack it

176GB/s is a lack of Bandwidth?

 

[Inuhanyou]

You mentioned high end pc, so yes, ps4 is lacking bandwidth

"high end", not "enthusiast market" If its fine for a 680 its fine for what i'm referring to

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Er, is this thread time traveling from the past or what?

 

[Strange]

Er, is this thread time traveling from the past or what?

We all time travel from the past. :smile:
Where do you come from? The future?

 

[fehu]

176GB/s is a lack of Bandwidth?

If the purpose is to beat high end pc card in bandwidth, a littler bandwidth is littler than a bigger bandwidth. But I must consult wikipedia about this bigger littler stuff...
If the premise is "compensate TF with BW", 176GB/s is even more lacking