Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion Archive [2011]

[Rangers]

Al,you wrote this one?It seems a bit different than usual but it's great read.
Yeah...AA solution definitely gets rid of the jaggies.Possibly FXAA?

Actually looks like they have a new writer.

Article by David Bierton.

Must be the new guy they put out a call for recently. Hope he keeps up the high standard. Honestly this article seems just like a Leadbetter one.

I did notice that here, he redundantly supplies the rendering resolutions in successive paragraphs.

The Cartel's predecessor, Bound in Blood, employs a sub-HD rendering resolution on the PS3: 1152x640 upscaled to 720p, while a cropped 1280x672 is present on the 360, framed by borders. On both versions, a custom anti-aliasing solution provides a decent alternative to the standard use of multi-sample anti-aliasing (MSAA).

In Techland's latest, both consoles now adopt vertical 720p framebuffers - horizontal resolution has been slightly reduced on the 360 (1200x720 on the Microsoft platform compared to native 720p on the PS3), thus allowing the framebuffer and render targets to fit into the system's 10MB eDRAM, without the need to "tile out" mid-frame to main memory, sapping peformance. The difference in image quality between the two is fairly minor: the game isn't quite as sharp on 360 but it's hardly an issue and it's definitely an improvement over The Cartel's predecessor, Bound in Blood, which employed a sub-HD rendering resolution on PS3 (1152x640) and a cropped 1280x672 on 360.

 

[assurdum]

I'm most interested to see how this engine handles running Dead Island. I can't wait to play that game, so I hope it turns out ok.



I'm only able to read the first page at work, other than the slight boost in resolution and texture streaming, so far it looks like most of the cut backs are on the ps3.

I don't have the game but judging the video comparison & screenshot from the site I rarely noticed great differences or impressive lack to talk of 'lot of cuts incoming on the ps3', I have just remarked that. It seem an average job but not so mediocre to choose 360 version over ps3 at all cost imho. Obvious it's just matter of personal sensibility, of course. The curious tech thing to my eyes are those cuts appears more like a mixed bug than real tech decision but I could wrong.

 

[N_B]

I don't have the game but judging the video comparison & screenshot from the site I rarely noticed great differences or impressive lack to talk of 'lot of cuts incoming on the ps3', I have just remarked that. It seem an average job but not so mediocre to choose 360 version over ps3 at all cost imho. Obvious it's just matter of personal sensibility, of course. The curious tech thing to my eyes are those cuts appears more like a mixed bug than real tech decision but I could wrong.

Just going by what the article says. There are numerous cuts on PS3, whether they are intentional or not.

Anyway..

Resistance 3 preview code analysis

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-vs-resistance-3

The lighting improvements are really noticable to me. Even by 2008's standards Resistance 2 had some glaring issues with it's lighting, especially in dark areas.

 

[AlNom]

The lighting improvements are really noticable to me. Even by 2008's standards Resistance 2 had some glaring issues with it's lighting, especially in dark areas.

Indeed. It's quite a jump compared to it, though I have to wonder if there's some other reason for the resolution deficit. Memory perhaps? Though I'd think they could just get rid of QAA if that were part of the problem (and especially given how broken it can be). The camera motion blur looks pretty good.

I'd be curious to know what the stats are for HD vs SD players...

The curious tech thing to my eyes are those cuts appears more like a mixed bug than real tech decision but I could wrong.

Yeah, given that there are more scenes that have identical lighting and shadowing, those areas where the shadows seemed missing may have just been a bug. We've seen such things happen before. It does point to the 360 being the lead platform as well.

 

[assurdum]

Indeed. It's quite a jump compared to it, though I have to wonder if there's some other reason for the resolution deficit. Memory perhaps? Though I'd think they could just get rid of QAA if that were part of the problem (and especially given how broken it can be). The camera motion blur looks pretty good.

I'd be curious to know what the stats are for HD vs SD players...



Yeah, given that there are more scenes that have identical lighting and shadowing, those areas where the shadows seemed missing may have just been a bug. We've seen such things happen before. It does point to the 360 being the lead platform as well.

It's a big mistery this drop of resolution to me... I don't catch the reason behind that controversial choice, from what I remember the same insomniac complain about the 60 fps of Ratchet which caused a notable sacrifice of framebuffer & now this... my heart is really hurt about the IQ of Resistance 3, never expected something of this to insomniac

 

[Gitaroo]

especially when the game even got an extra year of dev time. I am still wondering if they can get rid of QAA to free up memory like KZ2 - KZ3, up to 18 mb and rendering time? Bump up the resolution and implement FXAA. FXAA blur + higher res should still give it a much better IQ than current 960x702 + QAA combo. But I think it may be too late to make changes like this.....

 

[joker454]

Indeed. It's quite a jump compared to it, though I have to wonder if there's some other reason for the resolution deficit.

Maybe overdraw? One of the levels they were showing at e3 (the one that was running around ~20fps) had significant amounts of overdraw.

 

[Kameradschaft]

It's a big mistery this drop of resolution to me... I don't catch the reason behind that controversial choice, from what I remember the same insomniac complain about the 60 fps of Ratchet which caused a notable sacrifice of framebuffer & now this... my heart is really hurt about the IQ of Resistance 3, never expected something of this to insomniac

Insomniac IIRC said that the average gamer can't tell the difference between 30 & 60fps so it was not worth it when you can make a better looking title at 30fps instead of making a 60fps game with inevitable sacrifices in the visual department.

I guess Insomniac had their reasons to use a lower-res than before framebuffer, it's weird though that they chose to go with QAA instead of MLAA or FXAA assuming that they didn't have the resources from RSX for MSAA.

BTW is QAA more expensive than FXAA? if yes I guess it can't be that hard to try out FXAA (if they haven't already) even if the game is too far in development.

 

[AlNom]

Maybe overdraw? One of the levels they were showing at e3 (the one that was running around ~20fps) had significant amounts of overdraw.

Possibly... there is quite a bit of fog and the sort.

Btw, they've actually improved the FPS in that area.

BTW is QAA more expensive than FXAA?

Should be - if not performance, then memory consumption (as lighting/shading is single sample per pixel anyway). Dunno what their rendering pipe looks like now, so maybe adding another post-process at the end isn't good. *shrug*

 

[Gitaroo]

assuming the time when one of the ice team member said he got FXAA running on PS3 was the first time someone ever did it on real PS3. And follow by the IG podcast which said the game is pretty much done which is like 2 weeks ago if I remember correctly; probably a little too late to switch to FXAA now right? Should be going gold any time now.

 

[egoless]

Delete

 

[AlNom]

Resistance IP is owned by Sony, I'm pretty sure.

 

[Gitaroo]

all sony funded projects are own by sony even if you are not a 1st party dev.

 

[egoless]

Delete

 

[2real4tv]

I was hoping for more comparisons between R2 and R3. The textures on the enemies seem like they were downgraded also. Curious to see how there multiplat title turns out.

 

[N_B]

Be interesting how the new Ratchet game turns out considering it's the same engine being released at about the same time.

 

[kagemaru]

Just going by what the article says. There are numerous cuts on PS3, whether they are intentional or not.

Anyway..

Resistance 3 preview code analysis

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-vs-resistance-3

The lighting improvements are really noticable to me. Even by 2008's standards Resistance 2 had some glaring issues with it's lighting, especially in dark areas.

Yeah the lighting was one of the most obvious improvements in all the Comicon footage I've seen.

Great article, but would love to learn more. Wish Insonmiac would release some documentation on the changes they've made.

... my heart is really hurt about the IQ of Resistance 3, never expected something of this to insomniac

You may not want to get that emotionally invested in these games. I'm sure it'll still turn out to be a great game. I know it's caught my attention more than any prior Resistance game before.

Sub-HD didn't really negatively effect the quality of CoD, Halo, or R&C titles. :smile: Most of the people that were really harping on these resolution numbers were the console warriors anyways.

 

[assurdum]

Yeah the lighting was one of the most obvious improvements in all the Comicon footage I've seen.

Great article, but would love to learn more. Wish Insonmiac would release some documentation on the changes they've made.



You may not want to get that emotionally invested in these games. I'm sure it'll still turn out to be a great game. I know it's caught my attention more than any prior Resistance game before.

Sub-HD didn't really negatively effect the quality of CoD, Halo, or R&C titles. :smile: Most of the people that were really harping on these resolution numbers were the console warriors anyways.

I don't judge the quality of the game in itself, but really I hate the aspect of the subhd... I have in mind Ratchet & Clank or Vanquish; these look really muddy, even on 1024x720, it's one of the worst thing to me in a graphic to notice... I can't imaginated what will be 960x704p with QAA...but an other of my complaint is why with so low resolution insomniac can't reach even a better level of others thing like buffer of weapons effects or texture resolution? Just look crysis 2 & compare to resistance 3... I have a lot of suspect the insomniac leaving sony, has reserved a lot less developers for the ps3 titles because in some aspect the preview appears more 'advanced' in less time of development.

 

[djskribbles]

Sub-HD didn't really negatively effect the quality of CoD, Halo, or R&C titles. :smile: Most of the people that were really harping on these resolution numbers were the console warriors anyways.

Because I love Resistance, I don't care much of how it looks. I'm fine that it's sub-hd, but I hope they can replace the QAA with something like FXAA.

 

[kagemaru]

I don't judge the quality of the game in itself, but really I hate the aspect of the subhd... I have in mind Ratchet & Clank or Vanquish; these look really muddy, even on 1024x720, it's one of the worst thing to me in a graphic to notice... I can't imaginated what will be 960x704p with QAA...but an other of my complaint is why with so low resolution insomniac can't reach even a better level of others thing like buffer of weapons effects or texture resolution? Just look crysis 2 & compare to resistance 3... I have a lot of suspect the insomniac leaving sony, has reserved a lot less developers for the ps3 titles because in some aspect the preview appears more 'advanced' in less time of development.

So you suspect that R3 is the resolution it is due to Insomniac moving to multi-platform development? I really don't see that being the case.

Also, it probably wouldn't be best to compare R3 to C2 or any other game really since we're not aware of all the workings behind the R3 engine. It's easy to assume things when looking from the outside, but I'm sure there are logical reasons for the resolution reduction.

As Joker pointed out, it seems like there is a lot of overdraw in the game. One of the first gameplay videos I ever saw for the game indicated this with all kind of dust, fog, and smoke. Back then I was questioning how they were able to pull it off, well the lower resolution may be the answer.

Because I love Resistance, I don't care much of how it looks. I'm fine that it's sub-hd, but I hope they can replace the QAA with something like FXAA.

It would be great if they replaced QAA to FXAA, but do you think it's likely this late in development?