Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion Archive [2011]

[jlippo]

I don't have a game background, so bear with me, but where are these numbers coming from? They seem completely off to me.

Numbers usually contain all different passes.
IE. depth buffers for shadows, if same polygon is rendered again due to multipass effects, reflections, generated shadow volumes and so on.

Basically game can render a lot more 'invisible' polygons than visible ones.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

BF3 was on PC. Btw you haven't really seen real high nor let alone v.h for C2 so to compare it right now aint really fair.

You should know by now what parts are the most impressive to me. I'm not looking at poly counts or texture detail or such, it's the general contrast and tone and realism of the entire image that's pretty much the best of any realtime 3D game so far. It is somewhat related to the underlying technology's ability to enable lighters and level designers to achieve it, but it's still a mostly artistic achievement. It's also the part that'll more than likely transfer without any losses.

No detail settings in C3 will help that game to overcome this disadvantage, especially so close to its release.

 

[Neb]

I don't have a game background, so bear with me, but where are these numbers coming from? They seem completely off to me.

They are out of thin air and the debuginfo for the KZ3 capture shows it well to. Such a 'big' scene like the oilrig in view with landscape yet asset geometry is barely 300k polys while rest is for shadows and might even be multipass number.

Exhibit b): I believe Crysis 1 uses around 1 million triangles per frame, but we're talking about dense vistas with tons of foliage and objects.

Vanilla very high avg 2m polygons per frame with peak 3m polygons per frame. Numbers are from Crytek and can be verified ingame by enabling debuginfo. Numbers include both asset and shadow pass polygons.

However C2 on consoles, atleast the Rooftop map is roughly around 0.7-1m polygons counting asset and shadow pass polygons.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

As for poly counts, when discussing the general looks it doesn't matter how many triangles have to be processed. We should not be concerned with shadow buffer renders and such, those are performance related issues.

And even total visible triangle count isn't necessarily enough, just think about the use of impostors, which are only going to get more common in future games. So if we really want to have something to compare, it's probably the number and individual detail of the actual assets...

 

[Neb]

You should know by now what parts are the most impressive to me. I'm not looking at poly counts or texture detail or such, it's the general contrast and tone and realism of the entire image that's pretty much the best of any realtime 3D game so far. It is somewhat related to the underlying technology's ability to enable lighters and level designers to achieve it, but it's still a mostly artistic achievement. It's also the part that'll more than likely transfer without any losses.

But shader quality and rendering features makes for drastic change, so does different maps/levels. It doesn't help all PC footage been stuck at medium shaders and gimped DX9 mode. Anyway you'll see what I am talking about once the game comes out, techwise and artistically (tonewise/realistically), SP and MP. Bookmark this post.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

I've seen quite a few minutes of PC SP footage from the early parts of the game and they look the same as all the screenshots - not quite there, missing just the last few but most important percents of what makes BF3 so much better. I would be happy to get surprised but it is just highly unlikely at this time.

 

[Neb]

A couple SPU centric tasks does not necessarily make a great overall PS3 resource usage, right? But, it's probably the best multiplatform effort by far. Wouldn't you agree, from their presentation? Like you, I'm anticipating the visual end results.

C2 has tons of stuff done on the SPUs, atleast 5 SPUs are tasked with work. There are many workarounds/hacks to achieve more. It's in black and white in the shaders and configs. I dont even have to name RSX, if anyone can tap that to it's limit it's Crytek with their previous extensive experience with G7x architecture.

 

[AlNom]

I would like to see more than Sony 1st party studios being open with what they are doing/achieving on these systems.
...I think the interviewer should ask for all the details (without breaking NDA of course).

Oh there's definitely interest beyond the usual conference proceeding or behind-the-scenes sharing (repi has certainly been quite enthusiastic as of late regarding FB2).

The problem, for starters I think, is gauging interest. At GDC or Siggraph etc, folks are expecting the cutting edge algorithms, not necessarily post-mortems (unless there were extraordinary circumstances the devs felt sharing). Afterall, there are only so many days and slots for these conferences.

So then there are sites like DF (and possibly B3D *ahem*) going after these sorts of interviews, and it's a problem of getting ahold of the right folks and finding out if there's interest within the dev team; a lot of questions span more than the scope of an individual's work on the dev team, so things can take time. Keep in mind we are also putting them on the spot, so they do have to be quite careful for PR approval.

Regarding "processes <-> end results" I think the best we could hope for are these debug captures beyond the usual descriptions (PR or not), but they are still only individual frames, enlightening as they are, compared to the scope of an entire game.


-----

Quite frankly, the revealed info should take precedence over PR-speak. Arguing and trying to match the two are just wastes of time when we can simply observe the data being shown.

 

[ct03]

I've seen quite a few minutes of PC SP footage from the early parts of the game and they look the same as all the screenshots - not quite there, missing just the last few but most important percents of what makes BF3 so much better.

I wonder how much of it has to do with their choice of color scheme.

When I think of Crysis 2, I think of green/yellow, which seems completely artificial and weird to me.
When I think of Battlefield 3, I think of grey/dusty, which seems very convincing and real.

 

[patsu]

For the polycounts in KZ3, it would be more educational if they also show us the stats for stereoscopic 3D and co-op. Did they half the poly of each view exactly or is it slightly more ?

I seem to remember another game doing 4+ mil triangles (Uncharted 2 ?).

 

[Trejser]

It certainly puts other linear titles on the system like Mass Effect to shame.
And this is from an independent, 30 people team, not the 200 plus, $50m budget teams you have at Sony - it certainly makes you wonder what would Uncharted made by ND running on 360 would look like.

SMH, Naughty Dog is <100 IIRC and both Uncharted games were made in 2 years for ~20m each. Only Guerilla during KZ2 development comes close to your numbers (140 GG + 50 from Sony, and ~45m budget) and maybe GOW3 dev team (I don't know the size of the studio, but budget was around ~44m). KZ3 took less time and resources than KZ2 (people moved to second studio).

Microsoft has huge numbers for some games too:

Halo 3 - "The total cost to Microsoft for "Halo 3": a little more than $60 million. Development costs will probably be just above $30 million, given an elite team of 300 full-time artists and programmers working for three years on the game at Bungie"

http://articles.latimes.com/2007/sep/24/business/fi-halo24/2

Forza 3 - "Then in Forza 2, we got up to about 250. We increased our [full-time] staff, increased our [contract] staff, and increased the number of people in India and Vietnam. And now, for Forza 3, we're just over 300, all-in, with again [contract], [full-time]"

http://www.experts123.com/q/how-has...ze-grown-from-forza-1-on-xbox-to-forza-3.html

For the polycounts in KZ3, it would be more educational if they also show us the stats for stereoscopic 3D and co-op. Did they half the poly of each view exactly or is it slightly more ?

I seem to remember another game doing 4+ mil triangles (Uncharted 2 ?).

Uncharted is ~1.2m/f Maybe you are thinking about Dead Rising, Capcom was talking about ~4m/f in this game and 3m/f for RE5. Is it even possible on current gen consoles?

 

[liolio]

4millions, per frame? @720P that means that we already entered the micropolygons era!

 

[Neb]

I seem to remember another game doing 4+ mil triangles (Uncharted 2 ?).

Debuginfo says otherwise. 1m rendered polys/frame for that scene in KZ3 and a quiet good gauge considering scene size. Thats some hard facts. Also in one of GG rendering presentations they said KZ2 peaked at 1.2m polys/frame. Interesting as ND said roughly the same in a presentation about U2 peaking at 1.2m rendered polygons per frame. All this can be found either in their released tech pdf/ppt files or interviews/presentation videos.

 

[ct03]

I wonder how much of it has to do with their choice of color scheme.

When I think of Crysis 2, I think of green/yellow, which seems completely artificial and weird to me.
When I think of Battlefield 3, I think of grey/dusty, which seems very convincing and real.

Just to expand on this: I took a Crysis 2 screenshot and made some changes to the colors as well as brightness curve. Eliminating most of the weird green/yellow and changing the tonemapping makes it look more real in my opinion.
Some of the highlights have clipped, and the colors are still off, but I think it's a clear improvement.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Yeah, quite close to what I've been talking about. BF3 does this very well, which is one of the reasons why it has managed to impress pretty much everyone who's seen it.

 

[Nesh]

What's Impressive: Killzone, Crysis, or this thread?

I started playing Killzone 3 it recently and I am extremely impressed!
I am blown away by the amount of extra performance they were able to squeeze out of the hardware.
The texture and environment variety is also second to none.
Each area is distinctively different than the other. From the buildings and destroyed structures, to the objects and the textures on each place.
the structure of the environments in K2 were often like rectangular blogs on parallel with corridors and routes connecting them.
But this one's environments is like Uncharted 2's with Killzone's art and additional variety. Also its crazy how many stuff are going on screen with all those light sources, bullet storming and effects without the slightest effect on framerate.
It also deserves lots of credit about its scale. The environments are often HUGE! And the textures on some of the characters appear to be high res and more detailed than what we got from some characters on the demo stage.
The AI continues to be amazing and the animations smooth and life like. There were a few instances where I shot a few Helghast standing on a structure who realistically fell and ended up hanging from the balcony below.
Truly amazing stuff.
The only lowlight so far were a few sound bugs here and there.
Why arent some of its aspects not praised as much from a technical point of view as other games?

 

[ct03]

Here's another attempt:

 

[AlNom]

Just like HDTV demo settings at the store... *shrug*

 

[Tea2]

Why arent some of its aspects not praised as much from a technical point of view as other games?

They're not? Some people go crazy over KZ3, not sure where are you getting this "not praised as much" bit.
And what are the other games you had in mind ? I think most technically impressve console games get their fair share of spotlight, here and on DF.

Here's another attempt:

Yeah, it definitely changes the overall impact of the visuals. Still, it's a matter of preference for a particular colour palette, not sure wether it means much from a console technology perspective.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Just like HDTV demo settings at the store... *shrug*

Not really, as the developers should have full control over this aspect of the presentation, unlike the TV settings.