Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion Archive [2010]

[Laa-Yosh]

That side by side comparison of the Halo 3 and Reach landscapes is impressive. Bungie's tech came a long, long way and people just don't seem to appreciate it enough.
Looking forward to the interview, too!

 

[nightshade]

Pretty strange that they mentioned about Reach having a better Water shader but didn't talked about how pared back the Water interactivity & effects are compared to Halo 3. They also didn't talked about the performance in splitscreen (split screen campaign is considerably worse in performance)

Anyways...it was the usual DF stuff nice as always & ofcourse an interview with Bungie would be great, I'd love to know how they managed to increase the pixel count yet maintain the same framebuffer.

 

[warb]

Water interactivity & effects are improved over Halo 3, but it depends where you look. Some areas the water/ripple geometry is very pronounced while in other areas it's a bit flat.

 

[nightshade]

I never found the rippling/physics to be as good as Halo 3, also there are areas in Halo 3 which have water shaders just as good as the one seen the Reach picture fromt eh article.

 

[KKRT]

Pretty strange that they mentioned about Reach having a better Water shader but didn't talked about how pared back the Water interactivity & effects are compared to Halo 3. They also didn't talked about the performance in splitscreen (split screen campaign is considerably worse in performance)

Anyways...it was the usual DF stuff nice as always & ofcourse an interview with Bungie would be great, I'd love to know how they managed to increase the pixel count yet maintain the same framebuffer.

And no mention about shadows, where for me, Reach the most lacks.

 

[Gitaroo]

I also thought the water tech was downgraded, everything else is a step up.

 

[i nerini del buio]

that's weird.
the shipyard scene (second DF's performance video) on my console is not that smooth. in fact, it's almost unplayable, while the DF's video shows a rock solid 30fps

 

[Tap In]

From a technical perspective, Halo: Reach is undoubtedly a colossal improvement over the previous games in the series: higher resolution without sacrificing HDR, tangibly improved poly counts, insane use of particles and alpha, far higher levels of dynamic lighting, four times the draw distance, four times the amount of enemy units... the list is seemingly never-ending. But for all its technical achievements, it's clearly still a Halo game. It looks like one, it plays like one - and that's all by design.

very well done Bungie

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Nice that they made note of the full res. alpha for the rain in the first level. I myself was immediately struck by just how nice the rain looked falling out of the sky. Especially if you looked up. It was immediately noticeable compared to games that use quarter res. alpha. And I'm glad Bungie kept full res. alpha for everything else as well rather than reducing the quality. It's definitely noticeable in most cases.

And liked the part on temporal aliasing. I was wondering if it was just my eyes getting old and wonky on me during some cutscenes with characters relatively close to the camera. Turns out it's just an artifact of the temporal AA. On the plus side it's nice to know that it's also responsible for the lack of obvious specular aliasing, something that normally drives me absolutely batty with console and PC gaming, but which in Halo: Reach hasn't been bugging me nearly as much. Nice.

Fantastic writeup. And hopefully their plans for a Reach Technical discussion with Bungie comes to fruition.

Regards,
SB

 

[Rangers]

Pretty strange that they mentioned about Reach having a better Water shader but didn't talked about how pared back the Water interactivity & effects are compared to Halo 3. They also didn't talked about the performance in splitscreen (split screen campaign is considerably worse in performance)

Anyways...it was the usual DF stuff nice as always & ofcourse an interview with Bungie would be great, I'd love to know how they managed to increase the pixel count yet maintain the same framebuffer.

Of course some people cant be happy with an X360 exclusive being painted in positive graphical terms. It must be teh DF bias....but not when they effusively praise other titles...

If you dont believe what a big upgrade Reach is, play it for a while, then pop in ODST or Halo 3.

 

[nightshade]

Of course some people cant be happy with an X360 exclusive being painted in positive graphical terms. It must be teh DF bias....but not when they effusively praise other titles...

what are you trying to imply here ?
I only mentioned about two things, first being water physics/interactivity compared to Halo 3 & other being the split screen performance....you seem to have looked at it from an entirely different context.

 

[deepbrown]

Of course some people cant be happy with an X360 exclusive being painted in positive graphical terms. It must be teh DF bias....but not when they effusively praise other titles...

If you dont believe what a big upgrade Reach is, play it for a while, then pop in ODST or Halo 3.

What? Was a really positive read I thought - shows how far it's come. Very good looking game, and good to see full alpha on everything - very rare. Your comment is a little embarrassing...

 

[Rangers]

what are you trying to imply here ?
I only mentioned about two things, first being water physics/interactivity compared to Halo 3 & other being the split screen performance....you seem to have looked at it from an entirely different context.

Pretty strange that they mentioned about Reach having a better Water shader but didn't talked about how pared back the Water interactivity & effects are compared to Halo 3.

hmmm...

What? Was a really positive read I thought - shows how far it's come. Very good looking game, and good to see full alpha on everything - very rare.

Yeah it is. I'm not sure how much I noticed it. If I didn't know to look for these details I wonder if I would pick up on it. But knowing to look for it, the explosions are marvelous. As many plasma/electric effects as happen in this game, it makes sense they would prioritize that.

I like the idea of using some framebuffer that doesn't require tiling on the 360. It would seem to have an elegant simplicity and allow developers to seek maximum performance.

Can a full 1280X720 no AA FB fit in in the EDRAM? I know Reach is a little short of that. For AA, you could use a custom edge AA.

 

[messyman]

I agree with the water being cut back.
I was also expecting a split screen analysis compared to the beta.

 

[ultragpu]

I just finished the campaign and I agree the water is drastically downgraded from Halo 3, especially the ripples. AA seems to be improved but still jaggies are quite noticeable and the sub HD res doesn't help either. The HDR, full res alpha and the vast play-field are the main attraction for me despite the framerate dips down severely during later stages.

 

[sebbbi]

Can a full 1280X720 no AA FB fit in in the EDRAM? I know Reach is a little short of that. For AA, you could use a custom edge AA.

Yes it fits, if the color buffer is 32 bit (8888 or 10F-10F-10F).

However 1152x720 resolution points to them having a a 64 bit color buffer or two 32 bit color buffers (MRT). 1152*720*12 = 9953280 (bytes). That's very near the 10*1024*1024 (10485760) limit.

But I still don't understand why they didn't choose 1184x720 instead (32 extra vertical pixels)... That's 10229760 bytes.

 

[aselto]

Yes it fits, if the color buffer is 32 bit (8888 or 10F-10F-10F).

However 1152x720 resolution points to them having a a 64 bit color buffer or two 32 bit color buffers (MRT). 1152*720*12 = 9953280 (bytes). That's very near the 10*1024*1024 (10485760) limit.

But I still don't understand why they didn't choose 1184x720 instead (32 extra vertical pixels)... That's 10229760 bytes.

Maybe because 1152 is exactly 90% of 1280? Just a wild guess.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Maybe because 1152 is exactly 90% of 1280? Just a wild guess.

Nine 128's instead of 10. That makes sense, as a thought process. If they thought in terms of 16:9, smaller resolutions would be 1200 (too large) or 1120. To come up with 1152, you'd need to think more bytewise, unless you're comfortable thinking in terms of 1/32ths!

I hope DF's tech interview goes ahead and Rich uncovers the reasons, if there's a technical one or just a 'nice' figure.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I agree with the water being cut back.
I was also expecting a split screen analysis compared to the beta.

I must be the only one impressed by Reach's water compared to Halo 3, as it appears much more realistic here and the tesselation on it is just right, IMO.

In the Package level it was particularly good at representing a somewhat rough water surface disturbed either by the wind or ocean actions.

In earlier levels with streams the tesselated surface was appropriate to the source.

And while the surface in New Alexandria wasn't impressive to look it, it was certainly appropriate for a calm undisturbed water surface.

May not be the best water tech available, but it can certainly be quite impressive, especially the part at the start of The Package.

Regards,
SB

 

[nightshade]

Where does it says that its using tessellation ?