Half-Life 2 XB360 won't be using tiling to achieve A.A.

[TheChefO]

That's tiling in its worst case

I thought in order to use dof, an accumulation buffer was necessary Is it not possible to have the frames dumped to gddr for accumulation?

 

[aselto]

Was PGR3's resolution lowered only to get AA? Maybe Bizarre struggled to gave 30fps locked, so they lowered res and AA was additional benefit of such decision?

I'm really curious what is the faster way to get AA in 360 than tiling?

 

[nAo]

I thought in order to use dof, an accumulation buffer was necessary Is it not possible to have the frames dumped to gddr for accumulation?

Of course it is, but you don't want to render ALL geometry N times, that's why this is tiling worst case. (with tiling you usually need to render a subset of your geometry more than one time)
DOF effects can be implemented in many ways but on Xenon you need to dump out to gddr your back buffer at least once (+ another one..)

 

[Acert93]

Unfortunately all these techniques you enlisted don't provide AA, moreover AA in a shader would not help edges at all and it would not help frame rate as well!

As far as I know, MS "considers" DOF and Motion Blur "forms" of Anti-Aliasing. I am not sure that is what Gabe ment, but there is always that possibility. (Not that either are really anti-aliasing proper, but they can deminish edge jaggies)

And what Titanio said on the scale up ala PGR3 :smile:

 

[mrwilt]

"We're doing our AA a different way - tiling is not a very good way to spend perf to get visual quality."

What do you think he means by this? I thought tiling was essential to get "free" AA so you could spend on other effects to get visual quality?

 

[nAo]

As far as I know, MS "considers" DOF and Motion Blur "forms" of Anti-Aliasing.

Are you kidding? did they say that? cool!

 

[spdistro]

Ouch. That's a pretty stinging rejection of a rather fundamental design choice MS and ATi made. And Valve likes ATi!

Could you ask if there will be kb/mouse support?

I'm sorry what? Pgr3 didnt have the available tools at launch to get the most out of the 360 system at launch, but there are other ways of doing work to get AA aside from tiling whcih is just 1 of the options. Ur being quite judgemental too early.

 

[Ben-Nice]

Ouch. That's a pretty stinging rejection of a rather fundamental design choice MS and ATi made. And Valve likes ATi!

Could you ask if there will be kb/mouse support?

360 doesn't support K/B mouse. Only for text input not for controlling games.

 

[Acert93]

Are you kidding? did they say that? cool!

I cannot find a more direct source, but this seems to indicate such at about the time period it was stated. When this was discussed at B3D ERP seems to indicate the same, though he said you would have to be careful. Although since then we have seen games like those powered by UE3 not use MSAA at all so it does appear to have been removed as a requirement.

 

[TheChefO]

Of course it is, but you don't want to render ALL geometry N times, that's why this is tiling worst case. (with tiling you usually need to render a subset of your geometry more than one time)
DOF effects can be implemented in many ways but on Xenon you need to dump out to gddr your back buffer at least once (+ another one..)

So if they are already rendering dof fx and must use an accumulation buffer to achieve this result, could they not also sub-pixel jitter the camera as well in the same frame to achieve AA or am I misunderstanding?

 

[nAo]

I cannot find a more direct source, but this seems to indicate such at about the time period it was stated. When this was discussed at B3D ERP seems to indicate the same, though he said you would have to be careful. Although since then we have seen games like those powered by UE3 not use MSAA at all so it does appear to have been removed as a requirement.

ERP is saying a different thing..not that M$ considers DOF or blur as AA..

 

[Titanio]

I'm sorry what? Pgr3 didnt have the available tools at launch to get the most out of the 360 system at launch, but there are other ways of doing work to get AA aside from tiling whcih is just 1 of the options. Ur being quite judgemental too early.

... I'm not sure if you fully read my post, but PGR3 isn't in there.

At least if they were using PGR3's technique, though, they'd be getting some use out of the eDram.

Merely from Valve's point of view, though, I don't think it's unfair to say they'd have preferred another approach. Obviously they don't prefer the one provided in the design if they're not using it. That's all my post you quoted was saying!

360 doesn't support K/B mouse. Only for text input not for controlling games.

I was wondering about either console version really.

 

[nAo]

So if they are already rendering dof fx and must use an accumulation buffer to achieve this result, could they not also sub-pixel jitter the camera as well in the same frame to achieve AA or am I misunderstanding?

This is not what I said, I havent talked about accomulation buffers. DOF can be implemented as a post processing effect, you don't need to send your geometry multiple times hence there's no camera matrix to be adjusted/jittered at all.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Are you kidding? did they say that? cool!

I think this came after MS's list of mandatory requirements included AA, they reworked it to include any form of smoothing such as DOF for those titles they wanted to release without AA. I don't know what the official stance on AA is now. It was suggested the leniency for lack of AA was only on launch titles, which would mean all upcoming titles would have to have AA. What they class as AA though isn't clear.

Also, wouldn't upscaling violate the 720p requirement? Here's ERPs comments from October
http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showpost.php?p=584446&postcount=137

I believe they require at least 720P and some form of AA. They do not specify exactly what (or didn't last time I read the submission docs) you might get away with just motion blur ot DOF

Obviously some more contemporary source is required to explain the current requirements.

 

[spdistro]

"We're doing our AA a different way - tiling is not a very good way to spend perf to get visual quality."

What do you think he means by this? I thought tiling was essential to get "free" AA so you could spend on other effects to get visual quality?

this means they are using the 360 GPU's flexibility to get AA + visuals without using Tiling to an extent it would look even better than if it used Tiling

I think this is the same as in line with NT getting Nao32 on HS.

 

[TheChefO]

This is not what I said, I havent talked about accomulation buffers. DOF can be implemented as a post processing effect, you don't need to send your geometry multiple times hence there's no camera matrix to be adjusted/jittered at all.

ahhh - got ya .. so dof would be achieved by post processing (bluring) geometry within a specific z range?

What method would you use to achieve 720 AA on 360 without tiling?

 

[nAo]

What method would you use to achieve 720 AA on 360 without tiling?

I have no idea!

 

[AlNom]

if you do figure it out, we'll dub it nAAo

 

[Serenity Painted Death]

Ouch. That's a pretty stinging rejection of a rather fundamental design choice MS and ATi made. And Valve likes ATi!

Could you ask if there will be kb/mouse support?

I don't have an official answer, but for seemingly obvious reasons, I think you can expect not.

Is there a single Xbox/360 FPS that supports kb/mouse? I really don't know, though I'm under the impression MS is fairly hostile to the idea.

(this is one area where Sony can/needs to go for the jugular)

Hopefully the PS3 version will (hasn't kb/m been hinted at/said/alluded to for UT2K7 for example?).

 

[spdistro]

I have no idea!

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