Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion Archive [2011]

[patsu]

The biggest problem with 3D is not the slowdowns, I really did not perceive any when I played it. The low resolution is obviously perceivable, but thanks to MLAA the jaggies are minimized, and the resolution tradeoff is worth it to achieve a proper 3D effect. The biggest problem is being able to play it for more than half an hour at a time.

Yeah, user reception should be a big problem. Either some can't see the effect, or some get headache. >_<

I'd be curious to know if they did user feedback trials to determine which 3D method they should use. i.e. 2D+ depth @ full resolution vs half-res per eye.

That's partly why I thought DF should have interviewed GG (again !). I think earlier on, they said Sony evaluated all the options. We don't know what they tried on KZ3.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

The biggest problem with 3D is not the slowdowns, I really did not perceive any when I played it. The low resolution is obviously perceivable, but thanks to MLAA the jaggies are minimized, and the resolution tradeoff is worth it to achieve a proper 3D effect. The biggest problem is being able to play it for more than half an hour at a time.

MLAA certainly isn't doing anything to help with the jaggies in the eurogamer shot posted above. The jaggies are absolutely huge and look like they could saw through a log, I'd really really hate to see those in motion. And they are everywhere in the scene and helps give it a feeling of being a quarter of the resolution and then upscaled. There's still a lot of jaggies in the regular 2D shot but at least they are smaller and relatively less noticeable.

Regards,
SB

 

[patsu]

I think they want good AA that doesn't shimmer ?
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-making-of-ps3-3d-article

"Inevitably there are problems in achieving that performance, hardware upscaling is available and actually the good news is that upscaled 3D images look a lot better than upscaled 2D images," explains Bickerstaff.

"It's the way the brain perceives the world. But if you're going to do that, you need really good anti-aliasing. If in doubt, it's better to have low-resolution images with great anti-aliasing than higher-resolution images with a lot of scintillating pixels going on." With the setup in place for generating the two discrete images, it's time to begin the process of generating the stereoscopic 3D effect, and that begins with the introduction of depth to the scene.

May be in 3D, the left and right AA'ed images should match up too. Someone here should know more.

Will check out GT5 3D later since it has shimmering. MotorStorm 3D is supposed to be awesome.

 

[jlippo]

Do we have some technical indication of how bad/good Bink is ? Also what's the bitrate used in KZ3 ?

not really, but from what I tested long time a go it did quite nicely when compared to old mpeg2 or even mpeg4.
They have free packing program, so everyone can test it.

 

[AlNom]

That's partly why I thought DF should have interviewed GG (again !). I think earlier on, they said Sony evaluated all the options. We don't know what they tried on KZ3.

Hey, it's not in our hands whether Sony is going to allow it or not, like I mentioned already. We aren't that daft so as to not consider it.

 

[patsu]

They rejected your request for interview ? Shame on Sony. Missed those early days tech interviews.

They should like DF's latest KZ3 write-up. It's very well done.

 

[AlNom]

They rejected your request for interview ? Shame on Sony. Missed those early days tech interviews.

It's in limbo at the moment. And that's no guarantee they'd answer every question as well. I assure you, the idea for doing the interview goes back quite awhile.

 

[patsu]

May be they are too busy. People are crying for my blood at work as well because I have not gotten back to them

 

[AlNom]

Stay tuned. These things usually take some time because of PR or the devs are on break with the game about to launch. Same thing happened for the Halo: Reach interview. Just because it doesn't happen day one, doesn't mean we haven't tried.

Guess you missed it a few pages back.

 

[ct03]

not really, but from what I tested long time a go it did quite nicely when compared to old mpeg2 or even mpeg4.
They have free packing program, so everyone can test it.

Every Bink video I've seen has had horrible macroblocking. Blu-ray bitrates should help, but according to the article the videos still aren't that clean.

Why don't video game developers use good quality video? The latest offender is Crysis 2. The few video cutscenes it has are awfully encoded and look worse than the realtime cutscenes.

 

[NotTarts]

Why don't video game developers use good quality video? The latest offender is Crysis 2. The few video cutscenes it has are awfully encoded and look worse than the realtime cutscenes.

Not badly encoded, just using an incredibly low bitrate. The 3 minute intro video (encoded at 720p) comes in at only 143MB, which is ridiculous. I can understand that they're trying to save disk space (the video data is 20% of the total game data already), but the quality compromise just isn't worth it. Hopefully the PS3 version will have higher-bitrate encodes.

Most of the loading screens (which are encoded as videos, and probably the most noticeable in terms of quality) could easily be done in Flash. They take up about 700MB, too.

 

[ct03]

This is where DVD takes its toll. The last time I bought a physical game was about three years ago, nowadays I only use Steam and couldn't care less whether the game has 9GB or 20GB.

Unfortunately, the publisher wants to avoid two DVDs for the retail copies, so the digital downloads get compromised as well, along with the PS3 copy (as seen in Mass Effect 2).

 

[patsu]

Guess you missed it a few pages back.

Yeah, my apologies. I seldom visit this thread. Will spend too much time drilling down.
Or zero in on a twig and miss the forest entirely.

EDIT & EDIT 2:

The 3 minute intro video (encoded at 720p) comes in at only 143MB. I can understand that they're trying to save disk space (the video data is 20% of the total game data already), but the quality compromise just isn't worth it. Hopefully the PS3 version will have higher-bitrate encodes.

Based on your numbers, the intro video uses up about 47 Mb (= 143 / 3) of compressed storage per minute of video (on the average).

KZ3 has 70 minutes of videos occupying 32Gb. It should be roughly 32 x 1000 / 70 = 457 Mb of compressed storage per minute of video on the average. The video quality should be better assuming they are all 720p and 30fs (even if we factor in 3D videos).

People have already seen them in the demoes anyway.

 

[ihamoitc2005]

What a big drop in quality when activating 3D it seems. Performance isn't as good and it drops v-sync too.

http://images.eurogamer.net/assets/articles//a/1/3/3/0/0/9/7/2D_1.jpg.jpg
http://images.eurogamer.net/assets/articles//a/1/3/3/0/0/9/7/3D_2.jpg.jpg

It looks worse because you're looking with one eye so you only see half the information. It's like listening to a stereo track with one ear and saying the recording is bad.

Biggest problem with 3D is too many people have "preconceived" notion about it. Second biggest problem is existence of fake 3D like Crysis 2 which is just one image that is warped for left and right which is not 3D, it is only lower-res 2D+depth (lower res because of scaling).

With real stereo 3D, because of unique render for each eye, each eye sees different shading, colors, and objects (like real life) and also get better depth. Material sense is also better because brain takes unique information from each eye to determine what is the material. Lab tests show that with 3D, response is faster and even camo object is much easier to see. This is because of evolution. Our brain works best with 3D information.

 

[AlNom]

It looks worse because you're looking with one eye so you only see half the information. It's like listening to a stereo track with one ear and saying the recording is bad.

That's still not a completely accurate comparison because the texture fidelity has taken a fairly big hit in accordance with proper mip-mapping. You don't just magically gain back the resolution.

 

[L. Scofield]

It looks worse because you're looking with one eye so you only see half the information. It's like listening to a stereo track with one ear and saying the recording is bad.

So I take looking at the game proper the double sized jaggies and overall bluriness would disappear?

Biggest problem with 3D is too many people have "preconceived" notion about it. Second biggest problem is existence of fake 3D like Crysis 2 which is just one image that is warped for left and right which is not 3D, it is only lower-res 2D+depth (lower res because of scaling).

I don't know, people who have seen it in action says it's really good. Isn't that the whole point? Fooling the eyes into thinking it's 3D?

 

[Nesh]

It looks worse because you're looking with one eye so you only see half the information. It's like listening to a stereo track with one ear and saying the recording is bad.

Biggest problem with 3D is too many people have "preconceived" notion about it. Second biggest problem is existence of fake 3D like Crysis 2 which is just one image that is warped for left and right which is not 3D, it is only lower-res 2D+depth (lower res because of scaling).

With real stereo 3D, because of unique render for each eye, each eye sees different shading, colors, and objects (like real life) and also get better depth. Material sense is also better because brain takes unique information from each eye to determine what is the material. Lab tests show that with 3D, response is faster and even camo object is much easier to see. This is because of evolution. Our brain works best with 3D information. .

See it this way. If you put glasses that have one picture in front of your left eye and the same picture to the right eye, your brain wont be interpreting it as double visual information.

If you add completely different pictures though for each eye your brain will start mixing the information. This is something that some scientist have done in simple forms of videogames to cure stereoblindness but one image misses huge chunks of information that the other has and vise versa

The same happens with 3D games or movies. Your brain doesnt interpret the two images as double visual information because they are very similar and it has the ability to align the information. So it instead understand it as one and adds a different type of additional information which is associated to depth. People who play in 3D dont understand double visual information, they get additional but different information (depth). Real life is like that too. Either you have both your eyes open or just one the only information difference is depth. You dont see double the stuff or a better image.

The only way I can see this work in the way you suggest (double visual information) is if there is some smart implementation where each pixel is placed like a "chess" pattern where image A have the pixels where image B doesnt have them and vise versa, and even then I am not sure how this will work in producing a 3D image.

I agree that seeing only one low res image from the 3D and comparing it to one high res 2D is subjective and misinforming when comparing the total visual experience of the two but I disagree that with 3D, our eyes takes the resolution and detail from each eye and sums it up. You will still notice that the image is in lower resolution but the depth information will compensate for that unless the sacrifice in visual quality is large enough.

 

[corduroygt]

The lower resolution is there when watching 3D, but jaggies are really not a problem because you're moving too fast to notice them and they're really alternating between the two eyes. The biggest problem is sniping or aiming far away because it's very hard to discern the handful of pixels that an enemy takes.

I have seen a few seconds of C2 trailer in 3D from the E3 3D trailer available in PSN and the 3D effect didn't seem that great to me, hopefully there'll be a PS3 demo so I can evaluate it better.

 

[Nesh]

How does the 3D effect work on the 360 considering that its HDMI is of an older version?

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Biggest problem with 3D is too many people have "preconceived" notion about it.

If my 15+ years of real world experience is a preconceived notion then so be it. I'm not basing anything I say off pure speculation or wishful thinking (as some of you appear to be doing), but rather from experience both at home and in a research lab at the University of Washington. Back in the 90's a buddy of mine was working on direct projection of images onto the retina in an attempt to solve some of the bulk and comfort issues associated with HMDs. I got to see a lot of interesting things that have never become commercially available.

Considering my experience, I have a hard time taking much of what you say at face value.

Regards,
SB