Fight Night (Xbox 360) - 3 Million Polys Per Fighter

[Hardknock]

Hardknock please. Come on man think about it. He wouldn't have said "it's more like FN4" without it being better in some spots. If it would have been dumb down then they would be calling it a port or something of the like.

It might have more features due to more time, or it might have updated rosters or something. But graphics wise you are fooling yourself if you expect a difference. Sorry.

 

[mckmas8808]

It might have more features due to more time, or it might have updated rosters or something. But graphics wise you are fooling yourself if you expect a difference. Sorry.

Yeah I agree with you. But I wouldn't 100% cut out the possiblity. I think there's a 10% chance for enhance graphics or framerate. But yeah I agree that more than likely it will be more features or fighters.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Yeah I agree with you. But I wouldn't 100% cut out the possiblity. I think there's a 10% chance for enhance graphics or framerate. But yeah I agree that more than likely it will be more features or fighters.

When they showed the E3 demo, the quality of the animation in terms of player movement looked much better than what's been shown on the Xbox360 videos. The Round3 videos look like they've mostly reused animation from the previous titles. I'm hoping the PS3 version will be more like the E3 demo than what I've seen of the 360 title. Hopefully they haven't decided to retool the game for a more conservative "re-use" approach.

 

[blakjedi]

what would be the point of two separate releases of FN?

 

[dskneo]

money.... the same game released 6 months from now it must have something better to make ppl buy it, otherwise the gamers would stay with the 360 version released ages ago...

you know

 

[Jawed]

Transfering +300MB of data each time the player changes the two boxer is just out of the question. I know EA load times are not the best around, but that is pushing it too far.

How often is the player changing boxers? And no, the answer isn't once a week.

Anyway, with a 10-12MB/s transfer rate off DVD, what's the problem? I'm missing something...

Also, the game, clearly and visibly do not use +3M pps models, I don't see why we should be arguing about that. EA must be talking about the high polygonal models before APS, thoses are easily around +3M polygons, seeing that they use 3D scans for a lot of the models, the in-game models are nowhere close to that (If the Face is made of ~10K pps, I'd say a model should be roughly around 20-25K pps).

I agree, chances are 3m is what they started with.

But even if they were 3m, I just don't see the problem in terms of memory.

The Brooklyn Bridge is meant to be 1m actual polys in PGR3. Clearly very high poly counts are fitting into memory and aren't taking an untenable time to load.

Jawed

 

[Laa-Yosh]

But even if they were 3m, I just don't see the problem in terms of memory.

The Brooklyn Bridge is meant to be 1m actual polys in PGR3. Clearly very high poly counts are fitting into memory and aren't taking an untenable time to load.

1. Brooklyn Bridge is probably using instancing, very heavily. If not, it should
2. Brooklyn Bridge is not skinned to a skeleton, so it only needs very basic vertex processing

The actual memory problem would also be about transfering at least 30 * 2 * 150MB -> 9 GB of data per second through the GDDR bus just for displaying the two characters. Adding some inefficiency, it'd consume more than half of the available bandwith...
Assuming that it's only 150 MB per character, but you'd probably need more data for a skinned model IMHO. At least 2-4 bone weight values per vertex, at least 1 pair of UV coordinates, plus the standard 3 floats for the XYZ coordinates, and maybe vertex normals too... And as I've mentioned, there's absolutely no reason to use 3 million polys in a realtime application because of various aliasing and other issues.

Then again, if they tesselate a low-res mesh into 3 million polys, it'd be a little more possible to do. But it just doesn't look like 3 million polygons to me.

 

[Jawed]

So with half the bandwidth of XB360 consumed, what is the other half for?

I'm curious more in terms of the actually realisable upper-limit for a game such as this, where you have a limit of two ultra-high-detailed characters on screen.

Are we concluding that, say, 1m modelled polys per boxer is the actual real limit due to bandwidth, overheads etc.? This whole question seems seriously complicated by the melding of procedural geometry and tessellation.

On the face of it, half the bandwidth consumed by boxer-geometry just doesn't sound like a lot, when the whole game is about the two boxers.

---

These boxers look, to me, like higher-poly versions of the basketball players we've already seen in 2K6 and Live. I dunno what poly count those players have, or what the poly budget for players on court (and on the sidelines?) is. From the visible polys in the screenies for FN3, it's arguable that the game isn't using any fancy "next-gen" geometry techniques. Erm...

Jawed

 

[Bad_Boy]

After 3 pages, I think people are missing an important peice of the quoted text.

we're talking head and body scans of fighters so intense

I beleive they are refering to 3million polys before normal mapping.

To compare, i think ut2k7/Gow teams mentioned 5-20k polys on some of their creatures, with normal maps in the hundreds of thousands & even millions.

http://www.unrealtechnology.com/screens/character_creation2.jpg
5,287 triangle in-game mesh in 3D Studio Max.

http://www.unrealtechnology.com/screens/character_creation1.jpg
Purely geometric 2,000,000 triangle detail mesh in 3D Studio Max.

http://www.unrealtechnology.com/screens/character_creation3.jpg
Resulting normal-mapped mesh in game.

This is just my take on it. On the other side I think it is kinda sloppy journalism to throw that number around without being specific not knowing many people will pick it up.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

So with half the bandwidth of XB360 consumed, what is the other half for?

I'm curious more in terms of the actually realisable upper-limit for a game such as this, where you have a limit of two ultra-high-detailed characters on screen.

Well, I'm not sure about texture bandwith requirements, but that'd probably need a lot of it. One boxer could easily use at least one 4K map for color, normal, specular channels each, and maybe even some more, depending on their shaders. Caching or not, these would have to be accessed in each frame. Note that a single 4K map takes as much space as 64 512*512 textures! They might be going with several 2K maps or less though.
But then there's the whole ring, and the audience, which will all need geometry and texture bandwith.
Then there's bandwith for the framebuffer copy operations, an unknown increase if they go with predicated tiling, then some more bandwith for shaders, for sound etc.

But all in all, I still believe that using an actual 3 million polygon model as an asset would be far too difficult for their entire art pipeline, from modeling through UV mapping to character rigging and animation. If the X360 would have the power to display those 3 million polygons, it'd be much better to do it with tesselation and displacement mapping. There are many reasons why CG prefers that as well, instead of working with such heavy meshes...

 

[Teasy]

I know you were, just that the complexity of a game (or graphics-engine) is somewhat relative and I'm not too sure how complex Fight Night is considering all I've seen until now is a game that focuses almost entirely on the two fighters with little to nothing going on in the background.

Well, its a game using good quality textures and shading effects, its relatively as complicated as previous Fight Night games and none of those pushed the envolope in polygon counts last gen.

It's theoretical max is not 500 million pp/s, Xenos is capped at 500 million pp/s. There's a difference I think Xenos will get far closer to that number than any GPU before.

Are you telling me that the polygon performance MS listed in there 360 specs wasn't a theoretical maximum number? I really doubt that, since when do MS list realistic performance numbers that are actually achievable in game? Unless I'm mis-remembering the specs MS listed, in which case what were they?

 

[TurnDragoZeroV2G]

500M was the setup limit. Transform rate was never listed, but if all three arrays were dedicated to the task, with 4 ALUs/transform, it's not hard to believe it could achieve 6 billion. If there were no other bottlenecks and the setup cap wasn't there.

 

[Titanio]

It's theoretical max is not 500 million pp/s, Xenos is capped at 500 million pp/s. There's a difference I think Xenos will get far closer to that number than any GPU before.

It's been said it might be doable..with fairly trivial shaders (of a previous-gen quality).

 

[aaaaa00]

It's been said it might be doable..with fairly trivial shaders (of a previous-gen quality).

I wouldn't say that. 360 could probably reach it's full triangle rate running what would be considered a fairly non-trivial shader on xbox 1.

 

[Synergy34]

"And the first real madden already came out, have you played that in HD? Have you seen those graphics?"

Please, graphics don't make it the first real next gen Madden. It's dumbed down man. Why can't you see that? I'm gonna leave it at that cause I already know you won't see differently.

Now Fight Night R3, thats a true upgrade. Being released as is on all consoles. Not full owner mode for last gen and halfassed owner mode for next gen. Madden will start next year.

 

[scooby_dooby]

"And the first real madden already came out, have you played that in HD? Have you seen those graphics?"

Please, graphics don't make it the first real next gen Madden. It's dumbed down man. Why can't you see that? I'm gonna leave it at that cause I already know you won't see differently.

Now Fight Night R3, thats a true upgrade. Being released as is on all consoles. Not full owner mode for last gen and halfassed owner mode for next gen. Madden will start next year.

I don't know about you, but when I go through the menu system in the demo, everything I like about madden is there. Franchise, Season, all the core modes are there. it's not the 'real' madden cause it doesn't have gimmicky little stuff like 'create a superstar'?

Sorry but I disagree, they nailed the GFX< and the kept the vast majority of the game instact, a couple features are missing, doesn't really impact the game as far as I'm concerned. That fine of 'owner mode' is a big deal to you, don't buy the game, personally I could care less about 'owner mode' I want to play a season of football, in HD with stunning gfx and madden 2006 does that.

On topic - If you watch the IGN interview with that Kato guy from EA, it's a 3million polygon SCAN of the each boxers. Then he says they photograph the entire boxer, and take those photos and use them to make the textures.

 

[mckmas8808]

Sorry Scooby but EA themselves have said that they left things out of this year's Madden and that next year will be the real thing.

 

[scooby_dooby]

Sorry but the things they left out are gimmicks anyways, the core of the game is intact.

The cutting of a handful of features does not mean that it isn't the 'real' madden.

That's just waht PS3 madden fans tell themselves to rationalize the fact they won't get to play it for almost an entire year.

 

[Bad_Boy]

I don't know about you but there were some features cut in the game that I would not call gimmicks.

IGN thought the same also:
http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/666/666658p3.html

Features got cut in Madden NFL 06 for the Xbox 360. One of the most notable is the ability to challenge play calls during the game. This may seem minor, but when you consider the fact that entire football games are won and lost on decisions made by the refs (ahem, tuck rule, what the hell), this is huge. And if that fictional reception above means the difference between converting on third down or going 3 and out, the lost ability to challenge plays becomes even bigger. Making a challenge is a gamble -- it's the game within the game. You can come up big if things go your way, or lose a valuable timeout with nothing to show for it. Missing this vital feature takes away from the game's ability to be a well-rounded football simulation, and it's sorely absent.

Ask any Madden guru what they do to get so good, and they'll tell you "mini-camp, mini-camp, mini-camp." But with this gone, the game loses some of the richness it had before.

Additionally, pre-snap defensive playmaker controls have been scaled back. In previous titles, if you saw an opportunity to send one of your guys on an individual blitz, you could select and re-assign him on the fly to exploit your discovery. Well, that feature didn't make it into this version of Madden either.

These are actual gameplay cuts, not gimmicks.

How Gamespot felt:
http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/sports/maddennfl2006/review.html?q=madden 06&page=2

360 owners ought to at least give Madden NFL 06 a look, if only to see its great graphics and to take a peek at what next year's NFL game will have to improve upon. However, this is not one of those must-own 360 launch games.

Yeah the core of Madden is still very intact in 06, most definately; and it's still a good game. And if your not much of a madden fan, I'm sure things will seem fine to you. But after playing madden since 2001, I dont see how you can say this madden is'nt just more than a graphical upgrade. Not saying thats bad, but I think you would wish for more than a gaphics boost when going next gen.

Look what happened last time madden made a jump.

http://ps2.ign.com/objects/014/014286.html
Electronic Arts' popular football franchise tackles the PlayStation 2 in its very first year with Madden NFL 2001. To celebrate the big occasion, EA has included the official NFL Coaches Club license (a first in a football videogame) so that each team has its own unique coaching strategy and personality. Complimenting this bonus further is a host of other new features have been integrated as well, including player-specific equipment and accessories; a new collision-detection system powered by height and weight attributes, player-specific touchdown celebrations, a streamlined menu interface, readjusted defensive controls, and Madden Playing Cards that allow gamers to unlock secrets and bonuses by performing certain tasks during game time.

In summary, seems like they ADDED features. And didn't take them away.

It will be interesting how EA's next titles compare to their first launch titles, wether they are on 360 or PS3, im sure they will be a boat load better.

 

[Tap In]

Sorry Scooby but EA themselves have said that they left things out of this year's Madden and that next year will be the real thing.

thry never said the "real thing" Mck.

they said that they created the graphic engine from the ground up and that "THIS IS IT" for next gen. this is what they are basing as the building block of the future games. from here they will continue to grow and tweak and add gameplay and graphical enhancements (for both systems)