E3 Q&A: id Nixes Tech 5 Engine licensing

["Nerve-Damage"]

Didn't see this posted here.

GS: What are these developers, who are all presumably familiar with Unreal Engine 3, most impressed by when they see your engine?

SN: I'm not that aware of what our competitors are doing and what they're promising with their road map, but when people walk into our booth, they see that we have four platforms running at 60Hz with the exact same assets. We probably have artists in the company that aren't aware we have our new technology running on the PS3 because you need to do absolutely zero changes, no packaging, no extra baking, no extra steps, to get to the PS3. It really is a seamless, multiplatform, no-hassle solution. That's what people are telling us is extremely attractive. There's also the power of the rendering. No one has this rendering solution that we have with the unlimited texture. People are shocked by that. They weren't expecting it. It's a totally different path than where everyone else is going with their technology right now. It's Carmack again coming up with something that no one else in the market is thinking about. People are surprised by that. I mean, you expect John [Carmack] to come up with massive technological leaps in rendering, but at the same time people are really shocked to see it running on all the platforms.

GS: As we understand it, MegaTexturing on the PC streams data off the hard disk and on the 360, it streams off the DVD. On the PS3, will it stream off the hard disk because now all the systems have hard disks, or will it stream off the Blu-ray disc?

SN: I'm probably getting over my pay grade by speaking directly, but I understand that it's going to be either streaming off the Blu-ray disc or a combination because you are now guaranteed a hard drive with the PS3.

 

[Arwin]

Thanks. Will be interesting to see what other games are going to licence this engine and how that turns out.

 

[3roxor]

That Steve Nix guy is totally blowing the horn with how amazing they are and people are shocked, and absolutely no adjustments needed for whatever platform and.. we'll see I guess.

 

[inefficient]

That Steve Nix guy is totally blowing the horn with how amazing they are and people are shocked, and absolutely no adjustments needed for whatever platform and.. we'll see I guess.

N'Gai talked about it a bit on the 1up show. In the room where they where showing off id tech 5, they just had 4 identical screens all running the same game. Mac, PC, 360 and PS3. All looking identical at 60fps.

The wow factor wasn't just that the engine looked quite good but the fact that it looked indistinguishable on all 5 platforms. And to the artists w ho make the content they don't even have to think about the differences about the platforms. They just make 1 game content wise. They don't have to worry about texture sizes or optimal meshes etc for a particular platform.

 

[idsn6]

That is a really unfortunate article title for the sake of a pun.
I hoped there would be more shown to the public of id Tech 5 at E3. It's a little curious to have it referred to as "next-next generation technology" in the same breath as "60 Hz on all this-next generation platforms".

 

[Rangers]

Id behind the UE3 ball big time and trying to catch up now. I have high hopes for this engine. Show us what you've got Id.

 

[pegisys]

That is a really unfortunate article title for the sake of a pun.
I hoped there would be more shown to the public of id Tech 5 at E3. It's a little curious to have it referred to as "next-next generation technology" in the same breath as "60 Hz on all this-next generation platforms".

since he said that games using the engine wouldn't come out for 2 or 3 years I would guess he is talking about software generations, most people consider a new generation every year or every round of games.

 

[Blade47167]

since he said that games using the engine wouldn't come out for 2 or 3 years I would guess he is talking about software generations, most people consider a new generation every year or every round of games.

Lol its ID, expect it in no less than 10 years. *cough* Duke Nukem Forever *cough*

 

[ErnstH]

Lol its ID, expect it in no less than 10 years. *cough* Duke Nukem Forever *cough*

ID's got nothing to do with DNF, that's 3DRealms.

 

[ebola]

unique texture everywhere..?

- How far have people got with efforts to digitize 3d enviroments... (photogrametry)...

 

[Blade47167]

ID's got nothing to do with DNF, that's 3DRealms.

Ya I'm an idiot x_x. I get them mixed up sometimes.

 

[Gunhead]

unique texture everywhere..?

Yes, it's what Id calls "MegaTexturing": one single huge texture canvas covering the entire landscape -- as opposed to recycling the same detail map in similar areas -- and a corresponding mechanism for streaming relevant (visible) parts of it on-demand to video memory -- as opposed to recycling because you couldn't fit enough unique texture maps into video memory.

Sort of gives rise to a new mental model for artists: you don't mesh together polygons and then wallpaper them with suitable textures, you begin with a big-ass texture sheet and crumble it with geometry ;-) (For lanscape; for characters and such the better workflow is of course the traditional "actor" way where you begin with a bag of bones you can animate and then you skin it with a mesh you can texture. Sort of.)

In case your opening question was rhetorical... yeah, for sure opens up very interesting possibilities with digitized real imagery or footage. Wonder if Id is co-developing any tools specifically for this? I vaguely remember some old Silicon Graphics presentations where they talked abot grabbing video and finally texturing it on a (simplified) geometry model. I also vaguely remember that the Origin iron required back then for this didn't come very cheap ;-)

 

[SedentaryJourney]

I heard the WWDC demo used a 20GB megatexture for the terrain. Doesn't this mean a rather hefty install on the HD to get it working on the xbox360?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

20 GB source data. Compresses down to a 500 MB file IIRC.

 

[one]

20 GB source data. Compresses down to a 500 MB file IIRC.

IIRC these are 2 separate things, the former is about the WWDC demo but the latter is about Quake Wars.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Revisited the original discussion here. For QW, two 4GB textures are combined into a 500 MB file. I think the 20 GB is for source data. If that's compressed with the same 16:1 ratio, that's 320 GB of source images. That's the equivalence of a 100,000 x 100,000 texture, 4800 unique 1080p screens worth, or 771 square foot of 300dpi photo, the same as 4630 6"x4" photos.

 

[rekator]

Revisited the original discussion here. For QW, two 4GB textures are combined into a 500 MB file. I think the 20 GB is for source data. If that's compressed with the same 16:1 ratio, that's 320 GB of source images. That's the equivalence of a 100,000 x 100,000 texture, 4800 unique 1080p screens worth, or 771 square foot of 300dpi photo, the same as 4630 6"x4" photos.

A newers month's post for Shifty!

 

[TheChefO]

Revisited the original discussion here. For QW, two 4GB textures are combined into a 500 MB file. I think the 20 GB is for source data. If that's compressed with the same 16:1 ratio, that's 320 GB of source images. That's the equivalence of a 100,000 x 100,000 texture, 4800 unique 1080p screens worth, or 771 square foot of 300dpi photo, the same as 4630 6"x4" photos.

From my understanding of the technology, it wasn't quite the same as having one huge texture though. It was more along the lines of a texture base that "recorded" edits or manipulations to the texture from the texture artist(s) and then recreated such edits in realtime.

Or did I misunderstand?

 

[Gabrobot]

From my understanding of the technology, it wasn't quite the same as having one huge texture though. It was more along the lines of a texture base that "recorded" edits or manipulations to the texture from the texture artist(s) and then recreated such edits in realtime.

Or did I misunderstand?

No no, it's one huge texture...the texture is made using a tool that allows artists to stamp bits of textures onto the MegaTexture, but if you wanted to you could go in and literally draw right on the texture. The source images used to make the MegaTexture are far larger then the final compiled MegaTexture, so recording the edits would be even worse and would take up a huge amount of space.

It also wouldn't be practical because of the kind of texture blends they're doing...they're blending based off of things like normal map angle and such which takes a lot longer to calculate. Splash Damage has a special server thing set up specifically for compiling MegaTextures...it takes several hours in some cases. They couldn't possibly do the compile while loading the game, or you'd be waiting for half the day for a level to load.

 

[Fafalada]

That's the equivalence of a 100,000 x 100,000 texture

If you have a 1km*1km world and want 1texel/1cm precision with single texture and no hassle of extra layers (what their PR is advertising), you'll need a 100,000x100,000 texture.
I'll let you decide if 1texel/cm is enough to be passed off as high-res (it's not in an FPS, but it will vary with genres).

Also worth noting that 1km^2 world is not particularly large (for a racing game).