HALO 2 Beta info : come inside

[AlNom]

Don't see much evidence of bumpmapping in those shots. Looks like multitexturing with specular maps on the characters.

yeah, check out the master chief's armour and the green parts on the orange Elite.

Or just look at the screenshot with the white MC and the red MC. The entire suit is bumpmapped.

edit: Here, you can compare it to this render of the MC which does have bumpmapping.

Of course, in motion bumpmaps would stand out greatly, but on these shots they just don't look bumpy at all.

Very true But what you can do is compare how the skins look between shots because the lighting is quite different .

(PS: why do some people seem to feel threatened just by having Metroid mentioned in a Halo thread? I was just WONDERING! )

It's just a sign of fanboyism

Personally, I don't care since I have never played Metroid Prime nor have I seen much of what the game consists of (like... how many enemies on screen, what sort of visual effects are in)

 

[Qroach]

Um, normal maps is what you use in bog-standard dot3 bumpmapping is it not? Don't see much evidence of bumpmapping in those shots. Looks like multitexturing with specular maps on the characters.

yup, and I thought Dot 3 and per-pixel lighting went hand in hand? anyway you can see that the dot 3 bump mapping in these pics are self shadowing.

 

[Teasy]

Metroid Prime is SOOOOOOOOO limited in gameplay compared to Halo, let alone Halo 2.

Thanks for your oh so non biased and worth while opinion....

 

[Laa-Yosh]

It also looks like they are using normal map compression...

 

[GameCat]

It's hard to tell from these screenshots, but I don't see any evidence of bump mapping either. The green legs of that covenant soldier look like a simple colour texture for example. But it's hard to tell from static screenshots, especially since everything is so colourful.

BTW, full per pixel lighting, i.e per pixel attenuation and diffuse and specular lighting per pixel is pretty expensive on something like the xbox hardware, but you can do diffuse per pixel lighting with a single directional source essentially for free even on a lowly GeForce, so it's certainly possible to use per pixel lighting on a large scale without a performance hit..

 

[Laa-Yosh]

There is bump mapping. And it's perfectly within the capabilities of the Xbox, just look at Riddick, or the upcoming Doom3 conversion. I'm sure the Bungie coders can get it to work.

 

[AlNom]

Let me put it this way... if there were no bumpmapping, the master chief would look like this instead of this.

Look at the leg of the red MC who's carrying the sword. If the pits near the knee are not clearly bumpmapping.... well I don't know what to say .

Just because it doesn't have the typical super-mega-over-exaggerated gloss maps.....

 

[termikk]

oh boy
so much time, delays.. just for another shiny plastic look?

 

[Deepak]

Those pics look too shiny-shiny, could prove to be harmful for eyes.

 

[pc999]

The graphics have taken a massive leap since I went on vacation. It was kind of nice to come back and see levels that I'd previously enjoyed with placeholder graphics, suddenly populated with dust, smoke, trees, grass, trucks, roadsigns – all the detail and drama that makes a level exciting visually.

There are tons of new effects in the game that give it a new layer of flavor. Water, for example is a lot more detailed, while particle effects like the aforementioned dust and smoke add atmosphere and gameplay subtleties in equal measure. On one early level, the addition of distant buildings, telegraph poles and overhead wires and cables makes an astonishing improvement to an already pretty level. I often find myself pausing the game and just checking things out. More than cool looking, the buildings and objects look convincing, like this is a real, working city in the 24th century. Albeit one that's been smashed all to hell by marauding Covenant scum.

http://carnage.bungie.org/haloforum/halo.forum.pl?read=468323

Nice

I had no idea that animation are so intense to the CPU

Still only a 733 MHz processor in this thing, but we will work it out. Our three biggest consumers are animation, AI ray tests for perception, and visibility / rendering. The test guys keep posting graphs of framerate over the course of a level and I'm going to make it all better.

 

[AlNom]

I had no idea that animation are so intense to the CPU

Isn't it? I always thought so....

 

[EPe9686518]

Um, normal maps is what you use in bog-standard dot3 bumpmapping is it not? Don't see much evidence of bumpmapping in those shots. Looks like multitexturing with specular maps on the characters.

Of course, in motion bumpmaps would stand out greatly, but on these shots they just don't look bumpy at all.

You really have no clue what your talking about, if you can't see the bump maps on the models then your blind. I played a good bit of Halo 2 m player, and not only can you see it in every screen on both the models and the enviorments, i can confrim with out any doubts that the M player uses full bump mapping on everything. Thats not saying every single surface has a bump map on it, but it's not just limited to the models. In the Zansabar map you can clearly see bump mapping on some of the rocks and the walls and it looks damn good too.

Just to infrom you on the models a little bit.... All of the models are made exclusively from bump maps. They are very low polygon models which have most of their detail from the bump maps them selfs. Like MC for example, almost all of his surface detail is done from bump maps not polygons.

To clear up a few other misconceptions.....

Halo 2 is NOT using normal maps, none, zero, zip! Not Dot 3 normal maps eather! These are height based bump maps with self shadowing, yes Halo 2 is using self shadowing bump maps, at least on some things like the models.

The reason you might not notice the bump maps in some screen shots is due to the fact that on the models, they are used for everything. They are not just used for "bumps" but used to show all sorts of different details. So things that you think are made out of polygons (and normaly would be) are actually being done with bump maps.

 

[AlNom]

It also looks like they are using normal map compression...

Probably, seeing as how they're using it almost everywhere for Single Player.. might as well use it for multiplayer.

....would it be DXTC5 or... does the xbox even support that? If not, then an in-house compression they made?

Halo 2 is NOT using normal maps, none, zero, zip! Not Dot 3 normal maps eather! These are height based bump maps with self shadowing, yes Halo 2 is using self shadowing bump maps, at least on some things like the models.

ok ok... so I've forgotten what Normal maps do different compared to regular bump maps.....

Self shadowing bump maps like in Humus' demo

 

[Laa-Yosh]

To clear up a few other misconceptions.....

Halo 2 is NOT using normal maps, none, zero, zip! Not Dot 3 normal maps eather! These are height based bump maps with self shadowing, yes Halo 2 is using self shadowing bump maps, at least on some things like the models.

The misconception is on your side as well - whether they are using painted greyscale bump maps or extracted normal maps from high-res models, the result is still a normal map which the video card is using for the dot3 perpixel lighting of the surface. It requires the same pixel and vertex shader programs, the same amount of hardware resources, etc. etc.