far cry ps3 and stuff

[pocketmoon66]

quick brain dump from the Nvidia dev conference in London on Monday/Tuesday (nothing under NDA...)

Both VS3 and PS3 paths have been added to Fry Cry.

In general, gains from using Geometry Instancing usually between 0 and 10%, though up to 40% in worst (best!) case.

Devs wanted to use PS3 to loop through dynamic number of lights in a single pass but PS3 has limitations (in specs) which prevent this from being implementable. So use static branching for up to 4 lights per pass. This created more instructions than ps2 could handle so need ps3.

Gains are good - in game fps went from 20 to 30 in demo.

HDR - Did not require PS3 but requires 16bit blending and filtering. Devs replaced 'hacks' ( glare/flare etc) with HDR. No AA when using HDR. on 6800U playable (40-50fps) @1024x768.

Very Nice effect



Other Stuff

Nice demo of soft shadows (penumbra's) with PS3.0. Basically do a a small number of shadow sampler tests. If all 0 then you'r out of shadow, if all 1 your in shadow otherwise you are in the penumbra so do 64 samples to get your shadow level.

Works well because the expensive sampling needed is only done if youre initial small sample set is not wholly in or wholly out of shadow. 2xfaster than equivalent PS2 shader (not shown)

Unreal Engine 3 look stunning. Tools where very clever (graphical shader creation tool for artists). Tim S excited about 6800 SLI Target dx9 as minimum spec with release date 2006, blah, blah.

Same flame eating, fire breathing, power tool sparking entertaiment as for the NV30 launch ?!

 

[digitalwanderer]

Flame eating AND fire breathing?!?! DETAILS!!!!

Thanks for the update, very interesting.

 

[LeStoffer]

Tim S excited about 6800 SLI

I knew there was a reason for SLI!

 

[Nite_Hawk]

No AA when using HDR.

I'm not very thrilled about this idea. Too many games are no longer working with AA. If it comes down to it, I'd atleast like to have 2x super sampling if multisampling no longer works. I don't think there is any reason why super sampling should be incompatable?

Nite_Hawk

 

[ninelven]

Super sampling is probably incompatible with performance.

 

[Dave Baumann]

I'm not very thrilled about this idea. Too many games are no longer working with AA.

This is implementation specific. As it goes into maturity MSAA should be orthogonal with HDR.

 

[ohNe22]

Both VS3 and PS3 paths have been added to Fry Cry.

"fry cry"?????????? nice 8)

 

[Nite_Hawk]

I'm not very thrilled about this idea. Too many games are no longer working with AA.

This is implementation specific. As it goes into maturity MSAA should be orthogonal with HDR.

HDR implementation specific or MSAA implementation specific? If MSAA, is it a harder or software issue?

Nite_Hawk

 

[Dave Baumann]

As far as I know its specific to the FP filtering/blending on NV40 (NV4x?).

 

[Evildeus]

That seem to be in harmony with Marc comments on HFR forums but more specific. Thanks pocketmoon66

 

[Xmas]

NV40 can't do MSAA when rendering to a FP16 render target. P20 can, AFAIK. But the post-processing is still a concern. You would need to render to a multisampled FP16 framebuffer, take the downsampled contents of that buffer to do the post-processing, and blend the result with the framebuffer.

 

[Cali3350]

Any 1.2 release date revealed?

 

[pocketmoon66]

Any 1.2 release date revealed?

Didn't Ask But they had a bug where the screen would flash black for a few moments. So don't hold your breath.

All in all the far cry devs where very open and honest. Where they though PS3 was not usefull they said so

The 0-20% gain they got using Geometry Instansing is taken up by pushing the sprite/mesh object boundary further out - so objects get rendered as sprites when at a certain distance but on NV40 they can push this distance out which they said looks nicer.

The images looked so good with HDR that even without AA and at low res it was very cool

 

[GraphixViolence]

Devs wanted to use PS3 to loop through dynamic number of lights in a single pass but PS3 has limitations (in specs) which prevent this from being implementable. So use static branching for up to 4 lights per pass. This created more instructions than ps2 could handle so need ps3.

Gains are good - in game fps went from 20 to 30 in demo.

Since they aren't using dynamic branching, this optimization sounds like it should work fine with PS2_b as well as PS3, no?

 

[pocketmoon66]

Devs wanted to use PS3 to loop through dynamic number of lights in a single pass but PS3 has limitations (in specs) which prevent this from being implementable. So use static branching for up to 4 lights per pass. This created more instructions than ps2 could handle so need ps3.

Gains are good - in game fps went from 20 to 30 in demo.

Since they aren't using dynamic branching, this optimization sounds like it should work fine with PS2_b as well as PS3, no?

The instruction count for PS2b ranges from 96 to a maximum of 512, nit sure what ATI hardware supports...

 

[jvd]

Devs wanted to use PS3 to loop through dynamic number of lights in a single pass but PS3 has limitations (in specs) which prevent this from being implementable. So use static branching for up to 4 lights per pass. This created more instructions than ps2 could handle so need ps3.

Gains are good - in game fps went from 20 to 30 in demo.

Since they aren't using dynamic branching, this optimization sounds like it should work fine with PS2_b as well as PS3, no?

The instruction count for PS2b ranges from 96 to a maximum of 512, nit sure what ATI hardware supports...

http://www.beyond3d.com/reviews/ati/r420_x800/index.php?p=8

 

[LeStoffer]

The images looked so good with HDR that even without AA and at low res it was very cool

Interesting. How come aliasing didn't bother you much? Any thoughts on that?

 

[pocketmoon66]

The images looked so good with HDR that even without AA and at low res it was very cool

Interesting. How come aliasing didn't bother you much? Any thoughts on that?

Perhaps the bloom effect softened the edges somewhat. Mind you I didn't go looking for jaggies.

 

[IceWind]

I think the support for PS 3.0 will be Nvidia's trump card over ATI. Once developers start realizing the potential of PS 3.0, and begin implementing it in either existing or in development games, ATI is gonna be in serious trouble.

If these numbers prove correct about how much PS 3.0 improves Far Cry, developers are gonna start jumping bandwagons and the video card buyers will not be far behind either.

Im one of those people who also couldn't give a damn about AA. I honestly am to busying playing and enjoying the game rather then worrying about what the freaking edges look like. AF makes a difference that I never knew before with my Ti4200 and when I got my 9800pro, wow, that was a difference! But with AA, meh, not worth the performance hit.

Glad im waiting till fall till I upgrade to a Athlon 64 system and see who comes ahead, but I have a feeling I will be returning to Nvidia this round.

 

[Galduta]

HDR - Did not require PS3 but requires 16bit blending and filtering. Devs replaced 'hacks' ( glare/flare etc) with HDR. No AA when using HDR. on 6800U playable (40-50fps) @1024x768.

Very Nice effect

!

In which map you saw the HDR? catacombs?

thank you