Does disk space affect graphics?

[George]

Thanks for that Joker, your contribution is as always very informative ;-)

You do make a very important and convincing point in the argument of in-game vs fmv for cut scenes, and when you think about it a little more in the context of most current gen-games FMVs generally won't cut it in most cases.

I must say though i am a bit partial to the old, "play a bit and get rewarded with a sexy FMV" model of yesteryear

I don't get what you are saying. Modern games are not all RPGs. that was exactly my initial point about what he was saying depending on the kind of game and he went ahead and gave an example with EXACTLY the kind of game I had in mind. Most games don't have that detail or requirement in their cutscenes. Even when they are realtime there is nothing to show that the cutscene was affected by gameplay

@buddha

FMVs I assume you mean CG not using actual game assets or the game engine. But like I said a situation can exist where the game is scripted through a scene and then recorded to be played back. This would require disc space similar to what CG would use and pretty much just require the game to run through the scripting once. It can be done in pleasing quality with no slow down for the user and with a greater variety of effects that limitations would prevent from happening in real-time >=30fps. Thats not quite as expensive as "fmv" is it? It also doesn't require optimizations so it might be cheaper.

advantages of greater storage I think are

higher quality sound
More variety in sound options (many languages on one disc, less physical localization?)
greater variation in levels, objects, characters throughout the created world
Higher quality game assets overall (textures, character models, more LOD options?)
More game content on 1 disc
Better video Quality
More videos
More extras

Yeah I remember Wing Commander, I loved that game and I told Chris Roberts that when I met him at CES way back then. Still have his business card actually But back then there was no choice. Now we have a choice, and continuity can be much better preserved with in game engine compared to fmv, without having to compromise game design to accommodate it. I think next gen will be strong enough to always stick with engine for cutscenes except perhaps for some launch titles when time is short, and perhaps for boot up movies.

doesn't in-engine take less time than FMV?

 

[Prophecy2k]

I appreciate (and agree with all you said George) but i also see how from Joker's post that using either in-engine or pre-rendered C.G. FMVs can be a bit more restrictive to a developer in terms of game design.

If you look at a great many examples of (non-RPG) games this GEN, you can ostensibly see how much "customisability" of scenes, characters and items in games this gen have been a huge selling point (e.g. Assassin's Creed, MGS4 etc). Considering the fact that it seems like something that's only going to continue expanding through into the next generation, sadly enough for me, I think the reality is that FMVs, from the game designer's own perspective, probably carry more negatives than positives in most cases.

I'd personally love FMVs to be used more, in cases where it won't destroy my suspension of disbelief by breaking continuity in a game. Games not really built around customisability would be a great fit (in particular our current gen stable.... FPS games), and i can't tell you how many times i've been iritated this gen by in-engine cut-scenes that really should have been nice clean and smooth FMVs.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

We should have some more precise distinction here between video that's been rendered with the game engine, and video using offline CG animation... Which could also be divided into using game assets and completely rebuilt new assets. Obviously price and quality are all dependent on all these factors.
And there's sometimes the other way around, where assets produced for offline CG are the baseline for the ingame counterparts, like it's the case with Starcraft 2 and - probably - FF13.

 

[el_rika]

doesn't in-engine take less time than FMV?

No.

A well done realtime cutscene requires tons and TONS of optimisation, finding workarounds and solutions and tweaks to keep the framerate smooth, to eliminate stutterings/pop ups/tearings/clippings, doublecheck all possible graphical customisations (characters, costumes, weapons, lighting, textures) in order to stay true to the original vision.
In a FMV you maybe use higher quality assets (or not) and simply render the movie frame by frame.
CGIs are much less time consuming nowadays as well, with all the computer farms involved in the production.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

CGIs are much less time consuming nowadays as well, with all the computer farms involved in the production.

Thanks, now I can stop panicking and freaking out about the stuff we have to deliver for E3. Teh computerz are gonna take care of it for us!
Seriously, no.

First of all, any extra processing power we get from the renderfarm, we make use of it until the render times reach the previous threshold. More ligths, more complex shaders, more objects, better textures, more displacement, better hair, more particles and voxels, whatever. If there's any extra time left, we spend it on cloth dynamics, muscle dynamics, there's always something more to do.

And second, we're always expected to deliver more content, more action, and at better quality, then the previous year. And if it's not enough, next gen consoles will probably require the CGI to be in stereo just as well as the games themselves, which means far, far less cheating in 2D then what we've used to do so far.
Just why do you think Avatar's budget was around $300 million? It most definitely was not the actors' salaries, nor Cameron's (Michael Bay earned way more for TF2 ROTF). It's the CGI work, and since they've raised the bar so high, everything else has to follow as well or will be lost in the crowd.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Thanks, now I can stop panicking and freaking out about the stuff we have to deliver for E3. Teh computerz are gonna take care of it for us!
Seriously, no.

First of all, any extra processing power we get from the renderfarm, we make use of it until the render times reach the previous threshold. More ligths, more complex shaders, more objects, better textures, more displacement, better hair, more particles and voxels, whatever. If there's any extra time left, we spend it on cloth dynamics, muscle dynamics, there's always something more to do.

And second, we're always expected to deliver more content, more action, and at better quality, then the previous year. And if it's not enough, next gen consoles will probably require the CGI to be in stereo just as well as the games themselves, which means far, far less cheating in 2D then what we've used to do so far.

This stuff is why I'll ALWAYS prefer a well done CGI cutscene to either a realtime in-engine or in-engine rendered cutscene. It's just far more of a graphics whore reward seeking bit of satisfaction.

Drawback, of course, is that it'll be more expensive, more time consuming and unfortunately something that's not always conducive to staying within budget.

Regards,
SB

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Case in point - Dante's Inferno. Has at least 15-20 minutes of CG from Blur studio. The differences between engine movies and their work are quite obvious IMHO.

 

[Billy Idol]

Case in point - Dante's Inferno. Has at least 15-20 minutes of CG from Blur studio. The differences between engine movies and their work are quite obvious IMHO.

Did you have a look at the CGI movies!?
In my opinion the CG cutscenes are one of the best CG stuff I have ever seen in a game - sometimes looks real!!

 

[Dungeonscaper]

Disc space obviously affects graphics. Rage's mega texture system was said to be less effective on the Xbox 360 due to less available disc space, whereas the PS3 doesn't have this problem and will likely have better textures.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Disc space obviously affects graphics...

In engines that are capable of streaming huge amounts of textures directly, which can be counted on one hand. For the vast majority of titles, texture fidelity is limited to RAM capacity.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

In engines that are capable of streaming huge amounts of textures directly, which can be counted on one hand.

And even with such engines, the amount of unique artwork is limited by the production's budget.
And if there's a lot of repetition in the textures, then even such engines don't require that much disc space, because compression automatically becomes more efficient due to the redundancy.

I expect rendering engines to eventually move to a sort of middle ground; where they use virtual texturing to conserve runtime hardware resources, but don't make the most out of it, because of lacking completely unique texturing of the game world.

 

[Dungeonscaper]

In engines that are capable of streaming huge amounts of textures directly, which can be counted on one hand. For the vast majority of titles, texture fidelity is limited to RAM capacity.

I agree, however Rage is a rare case

 

[NRP]

And who knows what Rage will end up looking like. The man himself has said he's had problems getting the PS3 version to parity, so I wouldn't automatically assume this game can be used to prove a point.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

In engines that are capable of streaming huge amounts of textures directly, which can be counted on one hand. For the vast majority of titles, texture fidelity is limited to RAM capacity.

And in the case of streaming, you're going to be even more limited to drive speed. And you'll still need enough memory to hold textures in immediate view + extra or you're going to see massive texture pop-in. Borderlands is one game with a bit too aggressive system for ejecting textures as there's cases where if you keep your view static for a bit, turning to the side will have low res textures and really annoying texture pop in.

Likewise, large open area's aren't going to see as much benefit as closed areas or area's with lots of large objects that can occlude most of the surroundings.

Either way drives speed will become a huge factor with streaming. Even the super fast HDD's in PC's are limited in how much you can stream without graphics stuttering noticeably when you hit the limit (evident in some older streaming games). One notable example I can think of off the top of my head was Asheron's Call 2 which used a massive amount of streaming to present a seamless world. If you moved too fast with runspeed enhancements active (spells, or whatever) you would be presented with a stuttering mess with the game pausing every half second as it waited for the textures, geometry, new models, etc. to stream in.

Regards,
SB

 

[Billy Idol]

Disk space may not improve graphics...but content and thus graphic variety for sure:
http://kotaku.com/5474476/capcom-wrestles-with-xbox-360-disc-restrictions

OT: By the way, I am starting to get an aversion against CAPCOM, their DLC policy is a bit too consumer unfriendly...and if Takeuchi is happy to anounce that the cutted content should be available as DLC, I wonder how much they charge for it (see RE5 day one DLC) and I for myself prepare me to rage!!

 

[Dungeonscaper]

I personally hate FMV; any compression whatsoever bugs me. Unless they can put HQ native lossless movies on the disc. For this reason, not having enough disc space may make you need to compress the videos to fit. Disc space affects FMV.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I personally hate FMV; any compression whatsoever bugs me.

Texture compression must drive you nuts!

Unless they can put HQ native lossless movies on the disc.

You must have remarkably sensitive perception and exceptional quality AV gear to notice the compression artefacts of well-authored BRD movies. We have study results that show people actually regarding compressed video as better than the original, which goes to show at high bit-rates, compression has a negligable perceptablel effect. Indeed, one asks where you're getting to see lossless movies? I can only guess you work in the movie industry and get to see 4:4:4 RGB sources. For FMVs, decent high-bitrate compression is as much as pretty much anyone needs. For those who can't stand any compression, we need to wait a generation in storage capacities to get terabyte media.

 

[Simon F]

Texture compression must drive you nuts!

It certainly drives me nuts but for a completely different reason

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Texture compression must drive you nuts!
You must have remarkably sensitive perception and exceptional quality AV gear to notice the compression artefacts of well-authored BRD movies. We have study results that show people actually regarding compressed video as better than the original, which goes to show at high bit-rates, compression has a negligable perceptablel effect. Indeed, one asks where you're getting to see lossless movies? I can only guess you work in the movie industry and get to see 4:4:4 RGB sources. For FMVs, decent high-bitrate compression is as much as pretty much anyone needs. For those who can't stand any compression, we need to wait a generation in storage capacities to get terabyte media.

Damn, you beat me to it. Was going to mention that textures in almost all games released are compressed.

And until we have multi-terabyte media, then uncompressed video isn't going to be a reality, and even then, assuming they don't use the space for higher resolution compressed video which would be more useful, IMO.

As well, engine rendered cutscenes are going to suffer from all kinds of rendering artifacts that can be completely eliminated in good quality pre-rendered CGI cutscenes. Things like aliasing of edges, shader aliasing, texture crawl, aliased alpha textures, and on and one and on. Which will have a far more noticeable affect on visual quality of a cutscene. And that's not to mention the simple things like incredibly blocky body features, pointy heads, blocky tires, etc...

Regards,
SB

 

[Dungeonscaper]

Texture compression must drive you nuts!
You must have remarkably sensitive perception and exceptional quality AV gear to notice the compression artefacts of well-authored BRD movies. We have study results that show people actually regarding compressed video as better than the original, which goes to show at high bit-rates, compression has a negligable perceptablel effect. Indeed, one asks where you're getting to see lossless movies? I can only guess you work in the movie industry and get to see 4:4:4 RGB sources. For FMVs, decent high-bitrate compression is as much as pretty much anyone needs. For those who can't stand any compression, we need to wait a generation in storage capacities to get terabyte media.

I sit like 1 foot away from a native 1280 x 720 17in screen using and HDMI to DVI-D connection from my PS3 and Xbox 360. I almost notice everything. As for compression, I meant lossless compression, if they can compress it with no artifacts I'm all for, I don't mind compression in films/ movies/ blu-ray, just pre-rendered game cutscenes bugs me because it's inconsistent. I'm not in the movie industry I'm an audiophile and videophile though