Halo Infinite [Fall 2021] [XO, XBSX|S, PC, XGP]

[Deleted member 11852]

Regarding the campaign, I am disappointed that the environment is static. Nothing moves other than the player and NPC(enemy). I would have thought that they might have learnt something from other games regarding a live environment.

This really sticks out and you have to wonder if this was a deliberate choice, like the unnatural lighting on enemies so you pop are easier to see? Like a permanent accessibility mode. I also cannot remember playing any game with such a static environment with Half-Life 2.

Doing this was a ballsy move.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Well from the initial trailer over a year ago when you see Master Chief in space and the guy in his space craft wiping the window etc. it looked good. I thought then that if the campaign can look as good with a live environment, that 343 would put Halo on the map with an amazing looking game. Now it just looks like a good looking game and that's it. I've seen a few ships flying by trees and ground, and it's static. Lifeless.

 

[iroboto]

Too much draw distance perhaps. That forces everything to be “on”. Animations might be a stretch too far for the Hardware at least last gen hardware.

 

[mr magoo]

There is more and more vids showing up on YT with SP campaign. I really like insides of all the alien installations very atmospheric i get instantly vibes from halo:ce. Combat seems to be very dynamic and chaotic, very positive first impressions from every person that played this preview. Cant wait!

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Regarding the campaign(and what I have seen from the MP), I am disappointed that the environment is static. Nothing moves other than the player and NPC(enemy). I would have thought that they might have learnt something from other games regarding a live environment. Looks like a early Old-gen(Xbox Series One) game to me ala Destiny/Destiny2 from the gameplay environment wise of what I have seen.

I gave this some brief thought, and my conclusion is that if there is too much (possibly any) movement in the environment it would be completely out of place on a Halo ring.

Weather systems and thus wind that moves vegetation make sense on Planets and possibly even Dyson spheres where you can have complex weather patterns.

On planets (in very simplistic terms), that is primarily based on how much sunlight a given region receives combined with the rotation of the planet and any particular hot spots within the earth's mantle (magma chambers close to the surface, for example) or elevation relative to sea level.

However, unlike a planet every single part of a Halo ring receives the exact same amount of sunlight. Any tilt that affects the sunlight recived by one part of the Halo ring will be experienced by every part of the Halo ring as it's day cycle rotates the ring to that location. There are no magma chambers and elevation is relatively limited. Unlike a Planet, every single part of the Halo ring rotates at the same speed although there are minor differences due to "elevation".

Basically think of a Halo ring like a gigantic green house. Every aspect of the atmosphere and any differences in environmental temperature (due to different Biomes) are artificial and controlled to exact specifications. It has to be controlled as you also have to prevent any of the atmosphere from escaping into outer space because unlike say a Planet, there isn't a massive source of resources which can create and release gasses into the atmosphere as it is lost to space.

A Dyson sphere is similar to a Halo ring in that every aspect of it's atmosphere and any potential weather effects are going to be artificial in nature. A Dyson sphere basically revolves around an internal sun, so in essense every part of the sphere receives the same amount of sunlight. However, there will be rotational differences between different latitudes of the inner sphere which will inevitably lead to some weather patterns forming. And, unlike a Halo Ring a Dyson sphere is completely enclosed and thus there is no risk of loss of atmosphere if the weather isn't controlled to an exact degree.

Of course, this is all Science stuff and Halo is a game, so it doesn't have to adhere to any of this. But that thinking part of my mind would be hugely disturbed if there were any strong winds on a Halo ring. Hell, even a gentle breeze would make my brain twitch uncomfortably. As a game, there could be hurricanes on a Halo ring and it'd just be explained away as game magic. But it would bother me to no end to see something like that on a Halo ring.

So, unlike most games which have no wind effects on in game vegetation, that doesn't bother me in a Halo game set on a Halo ring. That pop-in though, they really need to do something about that, IMO.

Regards,
SB

 

[Karamazov]

But the ring is broken it should be chaos in there

 

[Silent_Buddha]

But the ring is broken it should be chaos in there

The same resources used to control different Biomes on a Halo ring (including just keeping all the atmosphere from escaping) would come into play ensuring that any non-contiguous part of the ring doesn't compromise the integrity of the rest of the ring.

The question is, what purpose would high velocity winds serve on a Halo ring? From the perspective of carefully controlling different Biomes on a ring, why would potential winds polluting other Biomes be desirable, since any wind on a Halo ring would by necessity need to be artificial.

[edit] Looking at the DF footage now and it appears there is very slight movement in the pine trees and grass that would be consistent with something like a slow gentle breeze. Air movement that would be easily controlled and prevent cross contamination of different Biomes.

Regards,
SB

 

[Karamazov]

Why a halo in the first place when you can Travel the galaxy and colonize any planet you want. It's just games you're reading too far into it ! Is wind essential to halo gameplay would be a better question.

 

[Riddlewire]

Why a halo in the first place when you can Travel the galaxy and colonize any planet you want.

The Halo rings were never intended for colonization/civilization in the first place. They were galactic brooms, if I remember correctly.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Why a halo in the first place when you can Travel the galaxy and colonize any planet you want. It's just games you're reading too far into it ! Is wind essential to halo gameplay would be a better question.

The Halo rings were never intended for colonization/civilization in the first place. They were galactic brooms, if I remember correctly.

Yup, the original purpose of the Halo Rings was to destroy all sentient life in the galaxy. If I recall my lore correctly, some (maybe all?) Halo Rings also had a secondary purpose and that was to house certain species genetic code for eventual repopulation and at least one appears to have been tasked with studying the flood.

In the case of potentially repopulating the galaxy, different Biomes for different species of life would be important as would preventing cross contamination between different Biomes that might be hazardous to one life form or another.

Regards,
SB

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Why a halo in the first place when you can Travel the galaxy and colonize any planet you want. It's just games you're reading too far into it ! Is wind essential to halo gameplay would be a better question.

In the campaign where immersion is essential, I would think so. Nothing is more immersive if gameplay looks realistic. Playing a game with a static environment breaks that immersion for me and it's become a pet peeve of mine in new games that have a static environment. It's something I pick up almost immediately now.

I can understand it though if what @Silent_Buddha posted above is what actually happens but there are flying ships around and I don't see the environment react to it. I could also understand why it wouldn't move in the MP as you really wouldn't be looking around the environment but in a campaign where it's not as frantic and you have time to look around, a moving environment imo makes a much better for that immersive experience than a static one.

I looked at ACG's video again and noticed some trees sway. That's it. There's clouds in the sky, so I would think that there should be some wind, the trees sway so I would think so yet everything else is static. So I think @Silent_Buddha is wrong in his explanation.

There's a lot of explosions in the gameplay I have seen, but nothing reacts to the force of the explosion other than flying block of shrapnel etc.How about a hole in the ground where the bomb you threw blew up. Nada! They could have made the campaign so much better with a malleable environment.

I hope they fix this as well.

 

[iroboto]

I can understand it though if what @Silent_Buddha posted above is what actually happens but there are flying ships around and I don't see the environment react to it. I could also understand why it wouldn't move in the MP as you really wouldn't be looking around the environment but in a campaign where it's not as frantic and you have time to look around, a moving environment imo makes a much better for that immersive experience than a static one.

Draw distance is the killer of all things. I think it's just too much. I'm pretty sure they wanted to include it, but being able to stand at hill top, and shoot at people by simply zooming in etc. That's a lot of stuff for the CPU to keep track of.

 

[PSman1700]

Draw distance is the killer of all things.

This. Unless games are really starting to make use of the newer technologies and no cross-gen, we wont see much of an improvement there. Star citizen's vast draw distances (even things in space can be seen from ground level) and your going to require SSD's and larger ram amounts.

For a MP oriented game the CPU might get hammered aswell indeed, shouldnt that be server-side too?

 

[Karamazov]

RDR2 handled lod pop in very weel, could not notice the pop in, but it's a much slower paced game.

 

[iroboto]

This. Unless games are really starting to make use of the newer technologies and no cross-gen, we wont see much of an improvement there. Star citizen's vast draw distances (even things in space can be seen from ground level) and your going to require SSD's and larger ram amounts.

For a MP oriented game the CPU might get hammered aswell indeed, shouldnt that be server-side too?

Typically draw distances increases the amount of everything in general. More needs to be animated, more needs to be done. More batches of draw calls need to be sent to the GPU etc.
for MP that's all server side, but there are some things local. For SP. You're screwed for being able to see and shoot that far.

Getting the right feel for every single thing in the game is a really complex process.
There is a whole journal of how hard it is to get doors right in video games despite the fact that people take them for granted.

RDR2 handled lod pop in very weel, could not notice the pop in, but it's a much slower paced game.

But also has intense amount of latency/delay with respect to inputs. Halo is instant, it doesn't have luxury of knowing the player inputs a few frames in advance to load things up.

 

[zed]

Typically draw distances increases the amount of everything in general. More needs to be animated, more needs to be done. More batches of draw calls need to be sent to the GPU etc.
for MP that's all server side, but there are some things local. For SP. You're screwed for being able to see and shoot that far.

So how do all the other open world games manage it? (not sure if halo infinite is really can be classified as true open world though) And they are always more geometry complex than the simple halo infinite (prolly material complex as well from what Ive seen of halo, its not very diverse, though perhaps thats cause they havent showed all the biomes? )
eg how does cross gen forza horizon 5 etc manage to do, what halo don't?

the animated vegetation, denser environs etc will be in halo 6 (odds are better than 50:50 developed by a different company)

 

[Scott_Arm]

Multiplayer is growing on me. I like the apex-lite movement. Addresses my primary dislikes about Halo, which was that it was always dogshit for movement. It's not as fast as cod, and has apex-like ttk so the fights can have a reasonable duration. Still fast enough that it's actually fun, and team play is a necessity. It's not a spawn-kill-die-repeat meat-grinder that keeps everyone at a 1.0 K/D. With four people it's actually enjoyable to play with tactics and call things out etc. Oddball is a horrible game mode. Everything else for the smaller matches is good, and I think the maps are overall good except for this one bigger 4v4 with quads and vehicles. Launch site or something, with a rocket? That map sucks. Big team is kind of shitty, especially the thing where you have to relay the power cells, but the mode can be good for laughs if you get some nice power weapon kills on vehicles.

I think the graphics are a mixed bag of very nice and outdated looking. I think maps that are more industrial looking are a lot better than the outdoor ones with trees and grass. Performance is oddly heavy on the gpu on pc for how it looks, but at least it looks pretty good still if you set it on all low.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Typically draw distances increases the amount of everything in general. More needs to be animated, more needs to be done. More batches of draw calls need to be sent to the GPU etc. for MP that's all server side, but there are some things local. For SP. You're screwed for being able to see and shoot that far.

I think there's more to it. The issues tend to manifest themselves more when NPCs are far away and very little is nearby. When all the action is nearby there are less issues, even where there are as many things on screen.

Why are there are more issues in the scenario where the game is rendering less detail when things are far away and where animations can really be pared back without the player noticing, but still having long draw distances for everything behind?

 

[iroboto]

So how do all the other open world games manage it? (not sure if halo infinite is really can be classified as true open world though) And they are always more geometry complex than the simple halo infinite (prolly material complex as well from what Ive seen of halo, its not very diverse, though perhaps thats cause they havent showed all the biomes? )
eg how does cross gen forza horizon 5 etc manage to do, what halo don't?

the animated vegetation, denser environs etc will be in halo 6 (odds are better than 50:50 developed by a different company)

Smaller FOV, reduced draw distances, they disallow zooming with rifles, increased latency.
There are a variety of reasons here; it could be that Halo's job system is bad to be able to scale the loads up. I would have figured most of it would be done using compute like we see in Ghost of Tsushima for instance. Or as DSoup suggests, the animation system has got some real problems.

But PC graphs show, GPU is the bottleneck, CPU is barely being used. We already know they are using GPU based dispatch for jobs, and likely this involves GPU based culling. Not really sure why they didn't have enough juice to do everything moving, except my assumption is that there isn't enough juice, since we saw it in the reveal trailer.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I think there's more to it. The issues tend to manifest themselves more when NPCs are far away and very little is nearby. When all the action is nearby there are less issues, even where there are as many things on screen.

Why are there are more issues in the scenario where the game is rendering less detail when things are far away and where animations can really be pared back without the player noticing, but still having long draw distances for everything behind?

Hmmm, I wonder if perhaps they are using some new custom compute based culling system and it isn't as good as they'd hoped it would be?

The closer to the camera other NPCs are, the more they will occlude required more triangle rejection. The faster the animations are, the less re-use there is WRT to triangle occlusion if they are using a lazy occlusion (probably wrong terminology on my part) where they only test for occlusion based on what has changed in a scene? Basically the faster the animation the more occlusion tests the system has to conduct.

That's just a random stab in the air, however, as it seems odd to me that something like that would be a problem considering it isn't one in most other games.

Regards,
SB