Halo 4

[antwan]

Because the engine has been so much downgraded. Only art is different.
(but then if it's only art difference, why woukd they need to downgrade the engine ? Paradox ! Spacetime collapse imminent !)

The Art is better and the polygons are distributed more efficiently. For example; Halo3 master chief had an excellent model with many rounded edges, but people don't really see it as high poly because it doesn't really stand out.
So with great (clever) art the models will appear more detailed.
They increased the main resolution and the texture filtering though. This comes at a cost. Gone was the smooth 30fps update. So they had to cut some things. First the HDR had to go. Still no smooth 30fps update. Then the motion blur went.. It looked okay, until they began firing some weapons which would cast lights in previous titles. Severe framerate drops. So a restriction of the number of dynamic lights possible. Result: smooth 30 fps update.

People forget that Bungie was incredibly talented and competent, as displayed by the excellent Halo Reach. This new studio supposedly created a new engine. In that case, it's also possible that they simply are not yet skilled enough to implement all the technical effects Bungie did, at acceptable framerates.
As it looks now, their art design is what really makes it stand out. Not the use of OBM, SSAO, tessellation, true HDR lighting, and lots of dynamic lights at the same time.
Aesthetically speaking, Halo4 is the biggest upgrade ever in the series, IMO.
Compare it to Halo: Reach though on a technical level, and it is a big downgrade.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Er, HDR gone?? What exactly are you basing this on?

Or do you just mean the implementation from the Reach version of the engine? As far as I know the two were parallel evolutions of the original Halo 3 engine... There really isn't much actual technical information available on Halo 4.

 

[warb]

Compare it to Halo: Reach though on a technical level, and it is a big downgrade.

That was a fun analysis, but it clearly isn't.

Halo 4 is the Reach engine improved to make a prettier game, with hopefully not so much slowdown. The overall lighting is clearly better in 4 and there can be more geometry in environments now so they say. This on top of a significant image quality upgrade, and good art.

Or is every game that doesn't have the H3 implementation of HDR (Reach didn't) a huge technical downgrade in comparison, including KillZone and Gears of War, in spite of everything else.

 

[antwan]

Er, HDR gone?? What exactly are you basing this on?

Or do you just mean the implementation from the Reach version of the engine? As far as I know the two were parallel evolutions of the original Halo 3 engine... There really isn't much actual technical information available on Halo 4.

We don't have technical documents, that is correct. Though in the released footage you can clearly see the dark scenes display black crush; as if the gamma is turned up. You can also see the energy weapons don't light up the environment like in previous games (to my disappointment as imo it was one of the visual highlights).

Again, Halo4 looks a lot better than Halo: Reach. But it's still sad to see these things go.

Or is every game that doesn't have the H3 implementation of HDR (Reach didn't) a huge technical downgrade in comparison, including KillZone and Gears of War, in spite of everything else.

As an example: Uncharted 3 compared to 2. While playing 3 I saw they refined the animation, and it was as if they improved texture filtering or just used higher quality textures overall. But I also noticed they took away the excellent motion blur, and some screen effects like the shockwave that you would see in Uncharted 2 when a grenade would go off. To me, that were technical downgrades; as these effects made a real impact on me while playing the game. I would still choose 3 over 2 any day in terms of overall graphics, but that had to do with the art style and attention to detail with regards to the animation. They did release a patch which brought all the effects back so in the end it was both a technical upgrade (water tech in the shipyard level for example, or addition of split screen multiplayer and 3d), as an artistic upgrade. but before this patch, yes I would agree with people explaining how 3 was a technical downgrade on a lot of levels.

 

[kagemaru]

Haven't seen this posted yet, tech interview:

http://www.ign.com/videos/2012/09/21/halo-4-technology-interview

Nothing incredibly telling, they basically do an overview of the direction they took with the engine.

They increased the main resolution and the texture filtering though. This comes at a cost. Gone was the smooth 30fps update. So they had to cut some things. First the HDR had to go. Still no smooth 30fps update. Then the motion blur went.. It looked okay, until they began firing some weapons which would cast lights in previous titles. Severe framerate drops. So a restriction of the number of dynamic lights possible. Result: smooth 30 fps update.

Do you work for 343i? Unless you do, how do you know where they ran into performance issues? I can't believe someone would actually post this as if they were there when it happened.

As it looks now, their art design is what really makes it stand out. Not the use of OBM, SSAO, tessellation, true HDR lighting, and lots of dynamic lights at the same time.
Aesthetically speaking, Halo4 is the biggest upgrade ever in the series, IMO.
Compare it to Halo: Reach though on a technical level, and it is a big downgrade.

You know, I think it would make for a better discussion if you questioned what is and is not there, explain what lead you to these questions, and break down the possibility of this being the case. We have no tech papers on Halo 4, so there is no way of knowing they aren't using tessellation for example.

Making claims and just assuming you're right is no way to conduct a conversation.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Most of the assets don't have any apparent increase in texture res or polygon count from Reach. In fact some of the screenshots show quite low-res textures and heavily optimized meshes, like this one:

You can search for images of Elites and Spartans if you want to study them, but all in all the assets aren't any more taxing compared to Reach, they're just higher quality in art design and execution.

I also believe that the shading and perhaps the lighting model are replaced to create better looking materials. Again, not likely to be too taxing - especially if you consider that for example the specularity on the Chief was composed of 3 layers in Halo 3, giving a lot of room for optimization. But I don't think they could manage such nice saturated colors and contrast without HDR, it's most likely the 7e3 version though.

The deferred/forward rendering issue needs some developer answers, the lack of dozens of dynamic lights and the fact that no game manages 1280x720 with deferred rendering does make it suspicious though...

Motion blur probably had to go to free up cycles for FXAA - I for one agree with their choice.

 

[kagemaru]

The deferred/forward rendering issue needs some developer answers, the lack of dozens of dynamic lights and the fact that no game manages 1280x720 with deferred rendering does make it suspicious though...

Unless I'm mistaken, Rockstar games, Medal of Honor, Blur, Crackdown, Fear 2 & 3, EGO engine games, and more have managed full 720p with deferred rendering.

Though I've questioned whether Halo 4 used deferred lighting in the past, the recent videos has me thinking it does.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

There's a difference between deferred lighting or light pre-pass which for example Rockstar games do, and fully deferred rendering like Crysis 2/3 and Battlefield 3 or Trials. None of those are running on a full 1280x720p buffer on the X360 because of the limited EDRAM size.

Edit: Eurogamer has a tech interview on Reach where they mention using three full sized buffers; 1152*720 or 1280*704 is the largest resolution where you can fit all three of these into the EDRAM's 10 MB size.

The games you mention work with only 2 full sized buffers, that's how they can afford full 720p frames.

 

[milk]

Although saying most most of the technical differences between 4 and Reach amount to Downgrades is very two dimensional, I do agree that better art is the biggest step-up indeed.
Sure with such a talented team, they simply MUST have improved the engine in multiple ways, and even with a Dream team of artists, your game won't look good if your tech can't give those artists great tools, and can't render their work with the best fidelity possible, which I think is the case of 343.
Yet, I was always intrigued by how unimpressive the art direction of previous halo games was. It was never bad, but for the triple AAA game it is, it was certaily underwelming. 343 is taking the design and mood of the game to the place it always deserved to be, given how big of a franchise it is.

 

[kagemaru]

There's a difference between deferred lighting or light pre-pass which for example Rockstar games do, and fully deferred rendering like Crysis 2/3 and Battlefield 3 or Trials. None of those are running on a full 1280x720p buffer on the X360 because of the limited EDRAM size.

Edit: Eurogamer has a tech interview on Reach where they mention using three full sized buffers; 1152*720 or 1280*704 is the largest resolution where you can fit all three of these into the EDRAM's 10 MB size.

The games you mention work with only 2 full sized buffers, that's how they can afford full 720p frames.

I understand about light pre-pass, which is what I thought was used in Reach (along with Crysis 2/3). I just kept deferred rendering in vague terms because some use just deferred lighting while others are fully deferred like FEAR 3.

I'm not sure of the buffer layout of every game in the list, but again I thought Reach just used a light pre-pass, so in a way it could have been comparable to other games using similar model. Didn't realize it used 3 full sized buffers, been a long time since I read that tech interview.

 

[AlNom]

Battlefield 3/edram

Different issue - the 4RTs+ depth is well within 20MB. 704 had to do with general perf (plus a bit of savings for GDDR3 mem).

 

[Ruskie]

There's a difference between deferred lighting or light pre-pass which for example Rockstar games do, and fully deferred rendering like Crysis 2/3 and Battlefield 3 or Trials. None of those are running on a full 1280x720p buffer on the X360 because of the limited EDRAM size.

Edit: Eurogamer has a tech interview on Reach where they mention using three full sized buffers; 1152*720 or 1280*704 is the largest resolution where you can fit all three of these into the EDRAM's 10 MB size.

The games you mention work with only 2 full sized buffers, that's how they can afford full 720p frames.

Ah...there is one fully deferred and 720p, with 2xMSAA. NFS from Criterion.

I don't mind if they dropped deferred for Halo 4. Reach (please don't kill me guys) never looked pleasing to my eyes as far as lighting goes. Interiors looked a bit flat, and outside they didn't really need bunch of light sources (neither they had) like R* needs with their games for example. So it never seemed like they took advantage of deferred. Also, using deferred lighting they needed to process geometry twice. Will be interesting to see comparison of the results between Reach and Halo 4 if 343i went with forward renderer.

The way I understand it, 343i took Halo 3 engine and went in their direction, while Bungie build on that and went in other. Will be hard to weight pros and cons, art direction, asset quality and production values play big part in visuals.

 

[Acert93]

Good or Bad, this definitely looks like a Halo game.

 

[AlNom]

Wonder if the QTEs are the new load hiding. >_>

 

[NRP]

Seems like the plasma grenade explosions have been toned down. They were spectacular in Reach. In that video, not so much.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Different issue - the 4RTs+ depth is well within 20MB.

Huhh? X360 has 10MB EDRAM, that won't fit the render targets at 720p.

1280 * 720 * 4bytes * 3buffers = 11MB

 

[Ruskie]

Huhh? X360 has 10MB EDRAM, that won't fit the render targets at 720p.

1280 * 720 * 4bytes * 3buffers = 11MB

Tiling?

 

[AlNom]

Huhh? X360 has 10MB EDRAM, that won't fit the render targets at 720p.

1280 * 720 * 4bytes * 3buffers = 11MB

Your original point was that there were no games @ 720p with the fat G-Buffer because of eDRAM.

None of those are running on a full 1280x720p buffer on the X360 because of the limited EDRAM size.

In this case, the reason it's not 720p as opposed to 704p is unrelated to the eDRAM amount. Whether it's 704p or 720p, it still has to tile because it's well above the 10MB limit. Both resolutions are still under 2 tiles. My point was that it's 704p for performance reasons whilst saving a bit of memory, and not because of the eDRAM. (Coincidentally, it's also good for their chosen TBDS 32x32 sub-tiles, and simultaneously is better suited to the memory layout restrictions for RSX)

From what I understand they shipped the game without the dynamic radiosity (GBuffer3), so yes, they are down to 3RTs, but there's also depth during the G-buffer pass, so that's still 4*(1280*704*4Bpp) -> 13.75MiB (vs 14.06MiB). Reducing the res to 704 doesn't solve eDRAM space.

Even if it's 2RTs + depth, 1280x704 is still going to give you 10.31MiB. They'd have to drop down to 1280x680 to get under (like Trials HD, IIRC) - of course, they were more performance sensitive, so that makes sense.

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[(((interference)))]

There's a difference between deferred lighting or light pre-pass which for example Rockstar games do, and fully deferred rendering like Crysis 2/3 and Battlefield 3 or Trials. None of those are running on a full 1280x720p buffer on the X360 because of the limited EDRAM size.
.

Reach used light prepass as well though?
AFAIK Battlefield 3 is the only fully deffered renderer in a 360 boxed title.

 

[Aeoniss]

Good or Bad, this definitely looks like a Halo game.

In general the explosions look toned down..