For the Geometry Snobs

[blakjedi]

Can anyone show me what the visual difference is between a game with high geometry and a game that is textured and mapped well? Its seems some prefer "loads" of geometry in their games to heavy mapping but I really can't see the difference to the point where someone is a snob about it...

 

[kyleb]

Surely you understand that if you walk up along side a wall using heavy bump mapping it looks flat, but if you walk up against a wall using heavy geometry it still looks 3d? Obviously both methods have their place depending on the particulars of the situation.

 

[Richard]

I'd be one of those snobs then. There's only so much you can do with clever bumpmapping (and derivatives). As kyleb mentioned, bumpmapping can give the impression of more detail at certain distances but as you get closer you can see through the illusion.

 

[blakjedi]

Surely you understand that if you walk up along side a wall using heavy bump mapping it looks flat, but if you walk up against a wall using heavy geometry it still looks 3d? Obviously both methods have their place depending on the particulars of the situation.

Mmmmmaybe... but in a game who has the camera viewport along the wall looking at it? Isn't the topic of geometry just technology for technology's sake?

How could you tell the real difference in geometry between a deferred renderer and an immediate renderer? All that geometry that isnt being displayed in the deferred renderer can be placed on the "wall" you are talking about so claims of "higher geometry" for one card or system or another are basically meaningless...

 

[Pete]

I wonder if Gears of War vs. ET:Quake Wars would be a good example of high vs. "low" geometry? Both games should have great textures and normal/etc. mapping, but I'm guessing GoW will have more detailed geometry thanks to Xenos and a closed/static system.

 

[kyleb]

Mmmmmaybe... but in a game who has the camera viewport along the wall looking at it?

Lots of games put you in various situations were you are best positioned up against a wall for cover, games like Metal gear solid and Splinter Cell even make a point to have controls specificly for such situations.

 

[Acert93]

I wonder if Gears of War vs. ET:Quake Wars would be a good example of high vs. "low" geometry? Both games should have great textures and normal/etc. mapping, but I'm guessing GoW will have more detailed geometry thanks to Xenos and a closed/static system.

Gears of War vs. ET:Quake Wars is more like "Low poly versus REALLY Low poly" Both D3 and UE3 seem to be much more focused on faking extremely high levels of geometry and detail through normal mapping. Compared to what is on the market so far, in their respective genres, both look pretty decent although that may be as much related to skill and dev budget as it is the cost-benefit of their techniques compared to other competing methods.

Lots of games put you in various situations were you are best positioned up against a wall for cover, games like Metal gear solid and Splinter Cell even make a point to have controls specificly for such situations.

Unless you are completely flush with a wall with a perpendicular view, parallax occlusion mapping seems to work well for *walls*, although things you can walk around and will see flush (like a pillar) that fake geometry are less convincing.

I think the key is, from an artists perspective, using the correct effect in the right situation. In some circumstances it wont matter how much work and detail you put into it, it will never be close to using real geometry. In other situation, the cost of using a texturing trick is so cheap, and the effect so convincing, that it is worth using. In the grand scheme these things need to be all weighed. Is the impact of 2x the geometry worth the penalty, or does using texturing tricks end up with a better IQ.

It will be cool seeing this question play out over the next couple years, especially considering the setup limit on some GPUs is pretty low and the problems with small polys.

 

[pegisys]

Gears of War vs. ET:Quake Wars is more like "Low poly versus REALLY Low poly" Both D3 and UE3 seem to be much more focused on faking extremely high levels of geometry and detail through normal mapping. Compared to what is on the market so far, in their respective genres, both look pretty decent although that may be as much related to skill and dev budget as it is the cost-benefit of their techniques compared to other competing methods.

I just thinks it is more about character model detail, most of the games that people are calling "high poly" the enviorments are lacking and games that have been called "low poly" have more detail put into the enviorment. I think GOW and MGS4 are good examples

Beside I think Steep Parallax Mapping is a good common ground but alot of the bump mapping techniques are new to most devs and artist I think they will improve in quality quickly

 

[Squeak]

Mmmmmaybe... but in a game who has the camera viewport along the wall looking at it? Isn't the topic of geometry just technology for technology's sake?

How could you tell the real difference in geometry between a deferred renderer and an immediate renderer? All that geometry that isnt being displayed in the deferred renderer can be placed on the "wall" you are talking about so claims of "higher geometry" for one card or system or another are basically meaningless...

I think you misunderstood the concept of a deferred renderer. It still has to calculate and also buffer all the geometry, the "only" thing it saves on is opaque fillrate and it has no z-buffer.
Only calculating the visible geometry is an old and still not satisfactory resolved problem in realtime graphics.

 

[Bobbler]

I'm a geometry whore... I'd much rather have high poly models than normal maps (but I guess anyone would). I'd rather have a medium quality model with little to no apparent normal mapping vs a low poly with excessive normal maps. When used properly as a complimentary effect (to add fine grain detail), it can look great... but when devs use it to actually replace mass amounts of geometry (like actual protruding geometry... vs wrinkles or things that are, if anything, indents) it looks tacky as hell.

If anything the lack of AF and higher geometry (or poor normal map use) on character models has been my biggest disappointment with a lot of the stuff I've seen so far.

 

[blakjedi]

A supposedly low poly, highly mapped screen

http://xbox360media.ign.com/xbox360/image/article/707/707364/mass-effect-20060510040228550.jpg

versus a supposedly high-poly lesser mapped game that has been touted as a better looking more aesthetically pleasing look

http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/article/651/651322/metal-gear-solid-4-20050915072838293.jpg

I honestly think the first screen looks BETTER and more detailed. Maybe its the filter on Mgs4... Also the wall in MGS4 is just bumpmapped...

 

[AlNom]

hm... good example would be Halo CE and Halo 2. The model for the master chief used less polygons in Halo 2 but looked much better and more detailed than the model used in Halo CE.

 

[kyleb]

Yeah, it would have looked a a bit less impressive if they were just flat textured.

 

[AlNom]

You mean like DOA?

 

[akira888]

I'm not so sure that the Mass Effect screen is paradigmatic of a "low poly/high tex" approach with the MGS4 screen a "high poly/low tex" one. I would guess (just on sight) that the MGS4 screen has, on average, higher texture resolution than the ME one, and that some of the blurring we are seeing is simply due to the fact that the camera is almost right on top of the wall.

The actual reason the ME screen appears so much nicer (again, this is just my theory) is because of the extremely exaggerated surface lighting model they are using in that scene, whereas that part of MGS4 is in an outdoor daytime enviroment with heavily diffused light sources and therefore looks "plainer."

 

[LunchBox]

Your eyes are being fooled .... If you've noticed, most if not all of the low poly/ high texture stuff we've been seen just has a higher contrast ratio than the high poly/low texture... same as in movies were the sharp color contrast seems to please the eyes more...

 

[groper]

Surely you understand that if you walk up along side a wall using heavy bump mapping it looks flat, but if you walk up against a wall using heavy geometry it still looks 3d? Obviously both methods have their place depending on the particulars of the situation.

No , no and no.
A Wall with fine-crafted or even with just ok bm looks 3d even if you watch it from a side angle unless you are talking for real crappy bm.
Not to mention that what you can do in game enviropments (walls and grounds etc) with paralax mapping is not achievable with geometry unless you spend half of your poly-budget for this part of the enviropment and let the rest of your game to looks like crap.
I dont get any flat wall/ground surfaces here

not to mention that the parallax mapping in PDZ give a far more impressive result than COD2 and as i said is simply not achievable with geometry.

Gears of War vs. ET:Quake Wars is more like "Low poly versus REALLY Low poly"

Do you have any numbers because from what i know GoW is pushing 10-15.000 x 4 polys per frame for 4 teammates (like Ghost Recon).
40-60.000 polys just for the main character/s is quite more geometry from the current gen games.
With that said for me the argument High geometry vs BM is pointless.
There are things that you cannot do with geometry and you need some kind of BM and ofcourse there are things that you can't do only with BM and you need to save you poly budget for them.

Both D3 and UE3 seem to be much more focused on faking extremely high levels of geometry and detail through normal mapping.

This is the history of video games . You try to fake , among other things , the geometry of real world.
If we watch in the past when CryTek brought the PolyBumping technique on the table it was a revolution for the video gaming.They created mercenaries models with only 1.500 polys who were looking far more 3d from the ps2 Half Life soldier models(3.000 polys)
I think that one of the reasons that GoW looks so good is because they have achieved an ideal analogy between Geometry and smart use of modern BM techniques (I mean ideal for the type of the game they are doing).

 

[rounin]

No , no and no.
A Wall with fine-crafted or even with just ok bm looks 3d even if you watch it from a side angle unless you are talking for real crappy bm.
Not to mention that what you can do in game enviropments (walls and grounds etc) with paralax mapping is not achievable with geometry unless you spend half of your poly-budget for this part of the enviropment and let the rest of your game to looks like crap.
I dont get any flat wall/ground surfaces here

not to mention that the parallax mapping in PDZ give a far more impressive result than

I'm not sure how those screenshots are actually helping you prove your case though. They look flat enough to me...

 

[groper]

I'm not sure how those screenshots are actually helping you prove your case though. They look flat enough to me...

It proves that a surface with NM doesnt look more flat when you watch it from side angle (I posted first pic for the wall and the second for the ground).
If this surfaces lookoverall flat to you then you can imagine how much worst they would appeared with only geometry and simple textures.
IMO what developers need to do is to start using parallax mapping for surfaces like stone walls and roads...

 

[kyleb]

Now get up right along side a wall like you are using it for cover as I suggested, and you'll see what I was talking about rather than be arguing off point as you currently are.