Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion Archive [2009]

[joker454]

You mentioned vertical elements as a problem in tiling - but surely you can use a vertical split of the screen when tiling, if most of your polygons come from vertical elements?

You can, but it doesn't help much with buildings anyways. Plus it can actually be worse with humanoid models. Say a human model is split up into 3 separate parts, head, torso and legs. With horizontal tiles there is little chance that a given human (all three of those models that comprise him) will ever need to be completely vert processed twice because at most only one of those parts will straddle a tile boundary (unless everyone is crawling around in prone form all the time). With vertical tiles though, it would be common for an entire human to straddle the tile boundary. So horizontal tiles with humans broken up into parts is the way to go for an fps.

 

[assen]

You can, but it doesn't help much with buildings anyways. Plus it can actually be worse with humanoid models. Say a human model is split up into 3 separate parts, head, torso and legs. With horizontal tiles there is little chance that a given human (all three of those models that comprise him) will ever need to be completely vert processed twice because at most only one of those parts will straddle a tile boundary (unless everyone is crawling around in prone form all the time). With vertical tiles though, it would be common for an entire human to straddle the tile boundary. So horizontal tiles with humans broken up into parts is the way to go for an fps.

Sorry, maybe there's a misunderstanding. What do you call "horizontal tiles", splitting the width or the height of the screen? I think for a shooter it would make sense to split the width, and you seem to think the same as indicated by the "unless everyone is crawling" comment - I would call this "vertical tiles" - how do you call it?

 

[joker454]

Sorry, maybe there's a misunderstanding. What do you call "horizontal tiles", splitting the width or the height of the screen? I think for a shooter it would make sense to split the width, and you seem to think the same as indicated by the "unless everyone is crawling" comment - I would call this "vertical tiles" - how do you call it?

Oh, I use it to describe the look of the tiles themselves. So this is a horizontal tiling:

-------------
|..............|
8888888888
|..............|
-------------

...and this a vertical tiling:

-----------
|.....8.....|
|.....8.....|
|.....8.....|
|.....8.....|
-----------

With the second one, vertical tiling, you could potentially get many entire bodies and all their parts all lined up on that tile line. With the first one though, horizontal tiling, you are more likely to just get assorted limbs on the tile line, like maybe a bunch of legs. Plus with the first one, the tile line is very far down the screen (row 512) so lots of stuff can entirely fit in that top tile.

Edit: Ok my ascii art isn't coming out quite right, the '8' character is used to draw the tile line, hope that makes sense.

 

[Neb]

Thank you for the link.

Infamous also has HDR, multiple lightsources and particle physics with world/dynamic objects, no? You can even go above the buildings and jump down to the street from the top.

But textures and shaders are much more pretty and detailed. Even characters are better. What I wonder is why there is this difference.

But remember GTAIV has to handle a lot more dynamic stuff. Pedestrians, cars, events etc. Add to that the advanced procedural animation system, reflections (even car rims reflect surroundings) etc. I think DF has an article about tech stuff in GTAIV.

 

[djskribbles]

I thought inFamous had all those things too (pedestrians, cars etc.)?

 

[Neb]

I thought inFamous had all those things too (pedestrians, cars etc.)?

Those videos dont show anywhere near the same amounts.

 

[assurdum]

Thank you for the link.

Infamous also has HDR, multiple lightsources and particle physics with world/dynamic objects, no? You can even go above the buildings and jump down to the street from the top.

But textures and shaders are much more pretty and detailed. Even characters are better. What I wonder is why there is this difference.

Also? If you refer to GTA 4 not have HDR I knew, but deferred light.

 

[brain_stew]

does the pc version have different set of textures or is it because the low resolution of the console version that makes the game appear less detailed?

@Silent_Buddha
blu-ray 2x is 8MBps, while 12xdvd(1st layer) is 8.2-16.5MBps, and 8xdvd(2nd layer) is on average 10MBps

but speeds can be improved by careful disc data layout and i think the inner rim of 360 discs are reserved for security data so most of the data is along the outer rim which skews the average read speed much higher. So double the read speed sounds very plausible.

Definitely higher resolution textures, see:

http://www.pcgames.de/aid,699195/Mo...owser&image_id=1220187&browsersize=fullscreen

Some take a pretty major leap.

 

[PhilB]

I noticed in the recent article on MW2 PC in the gallery section that there's a slight oddity in one of the shots. The third shot on this page shows the PC version is missing several objects in the scene that are present on both consoles.

I'm guessing since it wasn't mentioned anywhere in the article that this isn't a problem throughout the PC version?