Criterion's thoughts on the Burnout 3 engine.

[Jabjabs]

I got a new Hyper magazine today (Australian multiformat mag) and it had a little information on the engine they are bulding for Burnout 3 and how it is diffrent for Burnout 2.

It's only small but enjoy.

HYPER : Tell us about the technology behind the game. How much has been carried over from Burnout 2 and how much in new?

Alex ward : The graphics team thought they had hit the wall was B2. They where pushing the hardware pretty hard. In fact, if you go ask Sony themselves and ask them which titles have pushed the machine the hardest, well, they'll yell you that it's Jak 2 and Burnout 2. Their Performance Analyzer tool doesn't lie. But after B2 was done, the team had a good look around inside and then started to tweak and tune. And then they started off improving performance in all manner of areas.

The whole graphics engine is between 50 and 100% faster this time that we did for B2. This has given us the performance to do real-time radiosity lighting and proper enviroment mapping effects (the type of which you've only ever seen so far on the best Xbox titles) on the vehicles which makes them absolutely real and better than ever before. Add to that more complex and ticher detailed courses and you'll notice the improvements. And all that is before we begin to mention the amazing and incredibly complex deformation and particle effects such as sparks, volumetric smoke and shattering glass. To top it all, we're pushing more polygons around than ever before.

HYPER : How much more room is there to push the performance of the Xbox and PS2? Are both versions being developed simultaneously?

Alex ward : Yes, this time it's a parallel development so Xbox is being done right alongside the PS2 version.

I'm sure we all know that the radiosity is just them refuring to pre calculated maps but, it's still looks to be a huge improvment over Burnout 2 which was no slouch to begin with. Especially after the comment about the performance analyzer, but that could just be them blowing their own horn a little to much.

 

[Guden Oden]

I got a new Hyper magazine today

A hyper is someone who hypes, right?

I'm sure we all know that the radiosity is just them refuring to pre calculated maps

Well the guy did say REALTIME radiosity... Doesn't quite fit with precalced light maps methinks, though neither does realtime radiosity fit with reality either. It's likely some kind of faked approximation I'd say.

 

[VNZ]

Well the guy did say REALTIME radiosity... Doesn't quite fit with precalced light maps methinks, though neither does realtime radiosity fit with reality either. It's likely some kind of faked approximation I'd say.

Judging from the screenshots, it's hard to find anything to support that claim. Perhaps this Ward character confuses radiosity with what might be an enhanced blooming routine. Or perhaps they're doing something nice with a set of pre-baked vertex lightmaps.

 

[darkblu]

HYPER : Tell us about the technology behind the game. How much has been carried over from Burnout 2 and how much in new?

Alex ward : The graphics team thought they had hit the wall was B2. They where pushing the hardware pretty hard. In fact, if you go ask Sony themselves and ask them which titles have pushed the machine the hardest, well, they'll yell you that it's Jak 2 and Burnout 2. Their Performance Analyzer tool doesn't lie. But after B2 was done, the team had a good look around inside and then started to tweak and tune. And then they started off improving performance in all manner of areas.

The whole graphics engine is between 50 and 100% faster this time that we did for B2. This has given us the performance to do real-time radiosity lighting and proper enviroment mapping effects (the type of which you've only ever seen so far on the best Xbox titles) on the vehicles which makes them absolutely real and better than ever before. Add to that more complex and ticher detailed courses and you'll notice the improvements. And all that is before we begin to mention the amazing and incredibly complex deformation and particle effects such as sparks, volumetric smoke and shattering glass. To top it all, we're pushing more polygons around than ever before.

given that burnout2 had one of the worst environment mappings known to mankind (or did it have any? can't recall), here comes alex implying that it's a matter of computational power of the scale only the xbox can provide, and that 'they would try to match that'! pardon me, but that's an offence to their audience's intelligence - people need to look no further than MH's lm24h on the dc to see convincing specular/env mapping effects (not to mention there are enough examples of native ps2 racers with nice env mapping). man, how i hate pr talk..

 

[Jabjabs]

Perhaps this Ward character confuses radiosity with what might be an enhanced blooming routine.

Yeah for a while some devleopers where calling Bloom lighting radosity.

And to Darkblu, I don't think he was implying that B2 had enviromental mapping, he was more implying that it didn't. The rest of your post is valid.

 

[marconelly!]

BO2 did already have bloom lighting, so that wouldn't be a new thing...

given that burnout2 had one of the worst environment mappings known to mankind (or did it have any? can't recall), here comes alex implying that it's a matter of computational power of the scale only the xbox can provide, and that 'they would try to match that'! pardon me, but that's an offence to their audience's intelligence - people need to look no further than MH's lm24h on the dc to see convincing specular/env mapping effects (not to mention there are enough examples of native ps2 racers with nice env mapping). man, how i hate pr talk..

I wouldn't take this guy's comment's lightly, as BO2 really *was* a game that pushed PS2 beyond anything I frankly thought possible.

AFAIK, BO2 did plane env mapping on the car. It would take an overhead snapshot of the scene and map it onto the car. Or something even simpler, I don't know. However, it was definitely not on the level of what GT3 was doing (which was sphere mapping of calculated env scene), so they probably refer to matching what GT3 was doing or something better than that. LM24h, wasn't really doing anything of that kind, so I'd put that out of equation. Other than GT3 (and I think faf's racer) I don't think there's anything else even on PS2 that does that kind of spherical env mapping. If BO3 does that (and screens suggests it does), it would be one of the very few PS2 games to do it.

 

[Fafalada]

man, how i hate pr talk

You should try speaking to marketting people in person some time. Now THAT can be a frightening experience :?

BO2 did plane env mapping on the car. It would take an overhead snapshot of the scene and map it onto the car.

No, they used the rendered view you see on the main screen as reflection texture (before the cars are rendered into it).

 

[SteveHill]

Well the guy did say REALTIME radiosity... Doesn't quite fit with precalced light maps methinks, though neither does realtime radiosity fit with reality either. It's likely some kind of faked approximation I'd say.

Judging from the screenshots, it's hard to find anything to support that claim.

Likewise, but the screenshots may not be representative of the current state of the game. Lack of evidence accepted, he could be talking about something like this:
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20030813/hargreaves_02.shtml

This is just a rough approximation of course (and the light transfer is only one-way, yadayada), but it can look good so who cares? I would add an occlusion term though.

 

[Ug Lee]

The approximation seen in MotoGP2 wasn't too bad. Did the job given that you didn't (or shouldn't ) see much grass under your bike.