Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion Archive [2010]

[goonergaz]

Dunno that I agree with that. I don't take games online that much, but Uncharted 2 is a monster for patching. It'll download patch after patch, all of which seem to do nothing. Then there's the syncing of LiveData or whatever they call it, which does what exactly?! I remember they said they could change server parameters on the fly, but the reality seems ot be epic delays if you haven't taken the game online for a while which make no changes to the game.

IIRC patches are also game updates hence the bigger size (new maps etc) that you have to have even if you don't buy.

 

[Gradthrawn]

At least that's been my experience. But I'll try Uncharted, haven't tried it in a while. Will be an interesting test-case as apparently PSN+ is also supposed to update some of your games automatically at night. I don't know if it notifies you of this (apparently it looks at your 10 most recent games and then goes down the list from there), but it's been a long time for Uncharted 2 for me so I'll pop it in.

It does notify you, but it's a generic message. Such as "Content for Mod Nations Racers has been downloaded", or something like that. Like the video editor feature it also only seems to apply to games you've played since the 3.4 firmware update, even if the game data is on your system. I rather like this feature. I find myself popping in a game, seeing that it needs an update, exiting and playing another game that doesn't need an update knowing it will be patched tomorrow when I log back in.

Unchartered's "Updating Live Data" also through me off. I just recently started playing online again and it was at that point for a very long time before it let me in. This process should be a bit more transparent with a more accurate progress indicator.

 

[DJ12]

I have not noticed any messages saying stuff has been updated.

I put the Uncharted 2 disc in over the weekend and had to download 6 updates.

I am wondering if Playstation plus is working as it should at present.

 

[nightshade]

There is a discussion about a similar topic at Neogaf, and one of the things argued there is that patches aren't allowed to exceed 5Mb on the 360. Is that true? Surely there are games that have been allowed exceptions here (Burnout Paradise, I guess, would be one?)

The thing is the patch itself should not exceed 5MB (which is considerably less imo).
Most of the time the PS3 patch will include the additional contents...like in the last BFBC2 patch there were these extra stuff which were available for free but on 360 you needed to download them separately from marketplace...if you didn't then you'd be unable to use those features which require those contents.

 

[cal_guy]

The 32MB is the memory footprint of the 360 OS, not the size on disk, which went up to about 150MB with the NXE update.

That I believe was for the installation of the update, I've been able to use the NXE enabled original Xbox 360 (which only has 16 MB of flash NAND) without the hard drive.

 

[AzBat]

That I believe was for the installation of the update, I've been able to use the NXE enabled original Xbox 360 (which only has 16 MB of flash NAND) without the hard drive.

The NXE update itself required at least 128mb of free storage space. Once it is updated you can use it without a hard drive or memory card, but you won't be able to use avatars since it needs storage space for that.

Tommy McClain

 

[Trejser]

LucasArts' 60FPS Force Unleashed II tech demo

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-force-unleashed-60fps-tech-article

 

[Billy Idol]

Great article and very interesting!

 

[Neb]

Read this in the article, very interesting. Though results are quite bad. Aside from artifacts it looks like running in fastforward mode. Like watching a movie made in 30fps at 60fps, everything just moves to fast. Might be good in selective type of games like say arcade racers or such.

While the system may not immediately be seen in doubling 30FPS frame-rates, variants of the technique itself can be used to bring about other enhancements to image quality, and indeed, we can expect to see something of this working in the forthcoming Crysis 2, if Crytek's recent presentation is anything to go by. Here we see how a different implementation of much the same principle smooths out aliasing issues (not just edged based) in the far distance of the scene.

CryEngine 3 anti-aliasing demo. Use the full-screen button for full resolution.In addition to a more common edg- detect/blur for close-up objects, they use a pixel re-projection approach for anti-aliasing far away elements of the scene. They render the current frame, then using the last frames camera they reverse project each pixel into the screen space of the last frame. Then they compare the current depth value with the last frames depth value and if they're similar, they blend the two colour buffers together.

Combining this with some per-frame jittering gives them an additional layer of anti-aliasing, and it's Crytek's belief that the overall result is better than Sony's extremely impressive MLAA solution which is now available for all developers to insert into their games as part of the PS3 SDK. Over and above this particular application, pixel re-projection could also have a part to play in producing a low cost (in terms of system resources) approach to stereoscopic 3D. Indeed, RedLynx's Sebastian Aaltonen, key tech guy behind Trials HD, has talked to us about something along these lines that he has experimented with in the past.

According to his figures, The Force Unleashed II's motion blur eats up 2.2ms of resources on Xbox 360 (give or take 0.4ms), while the five-SPU-powered PS3 version is much faster at 1.4ms (give or take 0.5ms). Compare this with the frame-rate upscaler, which runs at 1.5ms on 360, and 1.4ms on PS3 (again parallelised over five SPUs).

 

[i_am_interested]

very interesting article, maybe i missed it but did they mention how they would clean up the character portion of that interpolated image?

on another note, dont know why that crytek/sony comparison was thrown in there, "better than sony's" mlaa was not the context i got reading that crytek presentation, especially when comparing their close distance edge blur portion to mlaa

Didnt they just say they didnt want to spend the computing resources for a process that didnt cover all aliasing, specifically sub pixel aliasing issues? and that they went with a process that was less compute intensive and comparable (in their opinion)?

 

[Ruskie]

Wow...very impressive indeed.Here is site with his slides and videos.
http://and.intercon.ru/releases/talks/rtfrucvg/

 

[patsu]

very interesting article, maybe i missed it but did they mention how they would clean up the character portion of that interpolated image?

on another note, dont know why that crytek/sony comparison was thrown in there, "better than sony's" mlaa was not the context i got reading that crytek presentation, especially when comparing their close distance edge blur portion to mlaa

Didnt they just say they didnt want to spend the computing resources for a process that didnt cover all aliasing, specifically sub pixel aliasing issues? and that they went with a process that was less compute intensive and comparable (in their opinion)?

It's probably unavoidable to compare since people need a reference. As long as the same people keep their cool, and understand the context, it might not be a bad thing.

In the article, it is unclear what "better" means. Speed, quality, versatility (best/average/worst cases) and compatibility with the rest of the engine are all important. I like a good spread of tech covering all attributes since we may need the resources for something else sometimes.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Nice that's someone's trying this. I was suggesting as much a few years back, although I was think the before-and-after interpolation adding a (sub)frame of lag. And again, this is one of the reasons why I like the idea of a software-renderer architecture. It's the programmability of the hardware that enables tricks like this, where static hardware would just have to render more stuff. More programmability = more options. We also see how deferred rendering looks like being the way forward. The more buffers you have describing aspects of the scene, the more you can repurpose them to better effect

Regards CryTek's AA approach, I don't see anything there that precludes the use of MLAA in addition, if you have cycles to spare. MLAA edge on each framebuffer prior to the interpolated blend from last frame, and you'll have the best of both worlds.

 

[scently]

One thing I know about devs, especially this gen is, never say its impossible.

 

[patsu]

It depends. Impossible to do what ? ;-)

Shifty, there are assorted MLAA variants to use, so I think they can experiment with some to see how they complement the existing stack. They don't have to stick with the same GoWAA code since they have access to the source as part of the SDK provision ? I want to know what KZ3 does with it too since a few people said the AA there is not quite done yet (Got jaggies).

 

[corduroygt]

I love the fact that the lack of GPU power in both consoles is forcing developers to find ingenious solutions like this, since I despise the fact that modern GPU's are just too many power hogging/heat generating transistors clumped together. I eagerly await 720p 60fps MLAA+Temporal AA titles...since after watching the Crysis 2 demo, I clearly see that MLAA is better than edge blur, but temporal AA via reprojection can be nicely added to both and actually helps with subpixel detail.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I love the fact that the lack of GPU power in both consoles is forcing developers to find ingenious solutions like this...

Well, I wouldn't call it a lack of power that's forcing their hand, but a closed box where you know exactly what hardware you have to play with, plus a massive install base and a long shelf-life, giving lots of opportunity to explore and innovate. That's the upside of consoles.

 

[Gitaroo]

anyone remember LP1 use motion blur to fake 60 fps?

http://game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/20070926/lp21.htm

 

[i_am_interested]

having watched the video, its a very impressive technique but it makes you wonder whether or not this is a viable technique for developers out there, especially those who are concerned with image quality

playing the game full speed with the interpolation without knowing what had been done to achieve the framerate beforehand you would probably never know anything was wrong or what was going in regards to all the "cleaning up" thats being done

but for those concerned with image quality, you have issues like this

http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/7251/vlcsnap2010082811h52m01.png

but who knows, maybe the benefits of a 60fps feeling with more detail than actual 60fps rendering far outweigh little things like that

not to nitpick but for those just interested in a little laugh

http://img266.imageshack.us/img266/849/vlcsnap2010082811h52m52.png

 

[nightshade]

I remember some people with 120hz TV sets claiming a few months back about how their 30FPS tittles "feel" as if its running at 60FPS on their TV. I donno if its true but if its indeed the case then I assume its nothing more than duplicating the frames ? And doesn't this obviously means an increased perception to input lag experienced by the observer/user, since the game will still respond like a 30FPS title. ?