Halo3 Global Illumination Engine, can be a UE3 killer on 360?

[MasterDisaster]

We know that Bungie is developing an engine on 360 based on realtime global illumination, it needed a lot of work over this years and it's not finished yet, but it was demonstrated at E3 with a short real demo (not a trailer)
with this precious engine, can bungie sell the engine to 3th part developer or it will end wasted for only two games (H3 and the other bungie secred title)?


for reference, some info on the engine and the demo:

"Graphically, the game follows closely in the tradition of Halo 2, although obviously upgraded to take advantage of the Xbox 360's more prodigious visual abilities," reads Bungie's site. "As art director Marcus Lehto explains, 'It was intended to be an understated announce of Halo 3 -- the tone is that of mystery and suspense -- the calm before the storm. I wanted to make sure that we re-introduced the Chief, show that Earth is thoroughly conquered, with Covenant everywhere, and that there is a glorious, ancient artifact buried under the Earth's crust which will provide H3 with the epic journey which we all want.'"

Master Chief stops walking and the camera lowers, pointing up at one of two remaining Spartan soldiers, giving you the chance to eye all of the incredible detail from the new, next-generation super soldier. The lighting system is now global, meaning that the lighting comes from one single source, like us real-life humans experience every day, and you can see how it glimmers off the visor on Master Chief's helmet and the gritty beaten armor. You can see distinct reflections of objects in the visor -- big and small.

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/707/707241p1.html

We flew them around the environment, flew out over the Forerunner structure, did a close-up of the Chief to show the realtime reflection of the visor (you could see the ammo counter running down in his faceplate) and showed off the unified lighting model we're using - particularly how other surfaces, such as sand, reflect light back up onto his armor . Frame rate was silky smooth, but to be fair, that was basically an empty environment with the Chief in it. However, we're obviously trying to make our finished game silky smooth too

Personally I am fond of the draw distance and the detail PRT lighting on the Chief. But then I'm party to some graphical features that you haven't seen yet, that sort of blow that stuff away.

The sand, dust, smoke and other effects are all from the game engine. They will be used in the game. The landscape you saw is real geometry - the mountains and city in the distance are not a skybox - they are actual geometry that you can go to . Our cut scenes and our gameplay will be very comparable. Also, CJ Cowan, our director of cinematics, says that the texture "pop" seen in Halo 2's cinematics has already gone bye-bye for Halo 3.

http://www.bungie.net/News/TopStory.aspx?l...lyupdatemay1206

and are there other details on this Engine?
Will it use memexport to do the lightining?
Will It use the new updated tiling routines from microsoft?

 

[PiNkY]

There really is a BIG difference between unified lightning and true global illumination. I predict that you won't see the latter for some console generations.

 

[MasterDisaster]

There really is a BIG difference between unified lightning and true global illumination. I predict that you won't see the latter for some console generations.

of course full real global illumination with n light sources is not possible in realtime on hardware, but there're some tricks to make a GI engine as using only 1 light source to global illuminate ("The lighting system is now global, meaning that the lighting comes from one single source" Bungie) and using spherical harmonic lighting, doing the diffuse inter-reflections between materials
Global illumination complex to compute since light can come from any surface in the virtual world, and any surface can occlude light

this is possible, and there're some real projects to include GI in future engines

Bungie explained that there is one light source in the game and that everything cast realistic shadows; it's what they are calling the Global Illumination Model. They then showed off with a little demonstation...

http://www.ugo.com/channels/games/insidegames/game/250/Halo_3.aspx

 

[Urian]

The problem is that when you have an huge scenario at the same time you have lots of enemies and I don´t doubt that for the Halo atmosphere all this is perfect but at the same time some sacrifice must be done.

 

[_phil_]

PRT isn't really new.Reality engine has it for some years,for example.
Global illumination doesn't require n light source ,but light bounces on every material.

 

[Farid]

We know that Bungie is developing an engine on 360 based on realtime global illumination

It's PRT, not real time Global Illumination:

Personally I am fond of the draw distance and the detail PRT lighting on the Chief

Simply put, PRT, which stands for Precomputed Randiance Transfer, is a real time lighting model implementation that is is meant to look like offline renderers Global Illumination algorithims (Using Monte Carlo sampling and such).

GI is extremely computationally intensive, it's a complex form of Raytracing, in other words we can't expect to see GI, as found in offline renderers, running in real time before quite a while.

Some developers claimed that they have a running engine featuring some sort of real time GI, but given that they didn't expose their method, nor disclosed clear details on how their actual implementation works, we can't really draw any conclusions about it. It's surely a new type of real time approximation, like PRT via SH is.

Will it use memexport to do the lightining?

I see no obvious reasons why they'd use MEMEXPORT in their PRT implementation.

Will It use the new updated tiling routines from microsoft?

If they said that they'll support AA at 720p, then they indeed use tiling.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

this is possible, and there're some real projects to include GI in future engines

From that quote, it sound to me less than a true GI secondary illumination solver, and more an overloading of the term 'Global Illumination'. They talk about one light source for all objects, and all objects cast (and receive?) shadows, which they call a global illumination system. This is in contrast to differnt lighting methods for different scene components, where you might have a shadow casting light for the hero, a less complex shadow light for NPCs, and simple baked lighting + shadowless pixel lighting for scenery.

Looking at the limited pics we have, it's hard to be certain how the secondary illumination is being effected and where it's scope ends. MC defintiely has some 'fill light' on him which by this report comes from a single light source, and similarly the reflections come from the same light source. This suggests secondary ray work. As mentioned though, PRT isn't particularly new. It may be a first if it's applied to every object in realtime though.

As for an alternative for UE3.0, UE3 is popular because of the tool chain more than anything. There are other more impressive looking engines out there. The Project Offset engine is at the top for me. That's not the primary consideration for licensing an engine though. A Bungie engine would need the versatility and tool chain comparable to UE3 to be a considered alternative for those eyeing UE3 at the moment.

 

[MasterDisaster]

It's PRT, not real time Global Illumination:

Simply put, PRT, which stands for Precomputed Randiance Transfer, is a real time lighting model implementation that is is meant to look like offline renderers Global Illumination algorithims (Using Monte Carlo sampling and such).

GI is extremely computationally intensive, it's a complex form of Raytracing, in other words we can't expect to see GI, as found in offline renderers, running in real time before quite a while.

Some developers claimed that they have a running engine featuring some sort of real time GI, but given that they didn't expose their method, nor disclosed clear details on how their actual implementation works, we can't really draw any conclusions about it. It's surely a new type of real time approximation, like PRT via SH is.

they (Bungie) talks of global illumination, simply. this can be obtained in different ways, realtime or not, fantasy lab, bungie and others are working on this, they all says that this is possible, this is almost a fact
of course intense raytracing is a different case
but they are simulating in some ways and with some approximations, the light bounces

"you can see how it glimmers off the visor on Master Chief's helmet and the gritty beaten armor. You can see distinct reflections of objects in the visor -- big and small."

http://www.xboxyde.com/pop_image.html?G=3291&N=2

I see no obvious reasons why they'd use MEMEXPORT in their PRT implementation.

because this is a software method, and CPU and GPU can work togheter to calc the light ray effects?

If they said that they'll support AA at 720p, then they indeed use tiling.

nope, 360 can do HDR an AA with framebuffer in GDDR3, so tiling is not required, tiling permit to do both with no performance loss, this is another thing
es. MOTOGP06 uses 4xAA and HDR but not tiling, from what I know, there are no games that uses tiling yet to do 4xAA+HDR+720p

 

[Farid]

they (Bungie) talks of global illumination, simply. this can be obtained in different ways, realtime or not, fantasy lab, bungie and others are working on this, they all says that this is possible, this is almost a fact
of course intense raytracing is a different case
but they are simulating in some ways and with some approximations, the light bounces

Bungie clearly talked of PRT (which can be related to GI, in a loosely manner). And as I said, Fantasy lab guys claim that their engine is supporting some form of GI, that is not precomputed, but they have yet to demonstrate how their engine works. Whatever it would be it will be a new approximation for GI, some sort of "Simulated Radiance Transfer" or something. But the point is that an approximation is not an equivalent of the original effect, it's an effect on its own that happens to provides , more or less, similar results. That what PRT is all about and that what the Fantasy lab engine should be about (unless the Fantasy lab guys outsmarted all the folks working on Raytracing for the last decades and found a way to have a complex form of Raytrcing, GI, running in real time on common and existing hardware... Thing that I doubt, I must admit.)

nope, 360 can do HDR an AA with framebuffer in GDDR3, so tiling is not required, tiling permit to do both with no performance loss, this is another thing

Yes, in other words, they'd render their rendertarget directly into the Main Memory without using the eDRAM at all. But by doing so they'd burn system BW like there's no tomorrow, something that would quite unexpected - to say the least - from a high profile title like Halo 3.

 

[ShootMyMonkey]

A Bungie engine would need the versatility and tool chain comparable to UE3 to be a considered alternative for those eyeing UE3 at the moment.

AFAICR, Bungie has never really made their engine with the intention of licensing it out to other studios. Sure, there was Wideload using the Halo1 engine for Stubbs, but then they were part of the team (including Bungie's founder) who developed Halo in the first place, so they knew how to take it where they were headed.

"you can see how it glimmers off the visor on Master Chief's helmet and the gritty beaten armor. You can see distinct reflections of objects in the visor -- big and small."

Ummmm... okay... this quote throws me. I don't see how this is a global illumination matter, unless I'm missing what they are trying to say here. But a reflection in a visor to me simply means reflection maps.

I especially find it weird when I see the earlier part of the sentence --

The lighting system is now global, meaning that the lighting comes from one single source, like us real-life humans experience every day...

Almost makes me wonder if they're doing some kind of skydome lighting. i.e. global illumination as in "it comes from a globe." They do mention PRT on the Chief, though, so I it's a more likely conclusion that they have some sort of irradiance volume type of technique (precalculating SH coefficients for deformable geometry is far more ugly). Again, just plain SH or something similar in the end.

 

[mrboo]

Some people have pointed out using memexport for the GI but would'nt that be impossible? Bungie have claimed the game will be running at 720p with HDR and 4xMSAA now that indicates that they are tileing, now when tileing is in use does'nt it disable the ability to use memexport?

MasterDisaster ~ Can they do HDR and 4xMSAA in the GDDR3? i thought the ROPS were in the edram and that it stoped that from happening? unless ive got everything completely muddled up?

 

[Acert93]

PRT isn't really new.Reality engine has it for some years,for example.
Global illumination doesn't require n light source ,but light bounces on every material.

Radiosity, Photon Maps, Ray tracing, etc are not "new" either but I bet you cannot list the an available game that used them in a commercial release.

PRT has been shown at SIGGRAPH for years (Sloan et al wrote about it in 2002), but no game has used it yet. As for RE, their lead developer got snagged by Epic a while back, they have released no games, and just having a feature in a SDK does not mean it was viable (in regards to performance or stability) for a commercial product. A lot of developers have tech demos showing off these cool effects--but there is a significant gap between tech demo and game.

Anyhow, along with others, this is not realtime GI. This is PRT (probably via spherical harmonics), an effect that will seemingly also be used in Crysis and Forza Motorsport 2. It is pre-computed.

New effect to realtime gaming, very nice, but like all "hacks" has some limitations. Expect more of these theoretical effects to become more common place over the next 3 years as devs get a handle on the new hardware as a baseline for performance and features.

 

[assen]

Some people have pointed out using memexport for the GI but would'nt that be impossible? Bungie have claimed the game will be running at 720p with HDR and 4xMSAA now that indicates that they are tileing, now when tileing is in use does'nt it disable the ability to use memexport?

MasterDisaster ~ Can they do HDR and 4xMSAA in the GDDR3? i thought the ROPS were in the edram and that it stoped that from happening? unless ive got everything completely muddled up?

mrboo,

Excuse me, but you sound like you're trying to string together as much buzzwords as possible to score some kind of special buzzword combo, in some kind of sick B3D fighting game.

MEMEXPORT doesn't go together with tiling if you're attempting to use the "tiling for dummies" automatic tiling support provided by MS in one of the later SDK updates. I suppose Bungie, who are among the hardcorest of the hardcore, will do full manual tiling and won't have that restriction.

 

[mrboo]

mrboo,

Excuse me, but you sound like you're trying to string together as much buzzwords as possible to score some kind of special buzzword combo, in some kind of sick B3D fighting game.

Damn, you caught me Still,...... im winning

 

[darkblu]

nope, 360 can do HDR an AA with framebuffer in GDDR3

huh?

from what I know, there are no games that uses tiling yet to do 4xAA+HDR+720p

full auto.

 

[mrboo]

huh?

Thats what i was thinking

 

[MasterDisaster]

Some people have pointed out using memexport for the GI but would'nt that be impossible? Bungie have claimed the game will be running at 720p with HDR and 4xMSAA now that indicates that they are tileing, now when tileing is in use does'nt it disable the ability to use memexport?

it came from a problem in old/recent 360 SDK with automatic tiling, not with manual tiling (this require some works, it's not trivial), Microsoft says that this will be finally fixed within few months in Q1 07 SDK

 

[Pausanias]

huh?



full auto.

Full Auto does not use a tiling engine to my knowledge. Forza 2 will be the first.

 

[darkblu]

Thats what i was thinking

though IIRC xenos can memexport to practically everywhere in the system, i don't think that was intended to be used for anything but small non-MSAAed render targets. with a full-sized AAed framebuffer the ROPs- and the AA-downsampling workloads would easily turn such a scenario into a slideshow experience.

 

[mrboo]

Full Auto does not use a tiling engine to my knowledge. Forza 2 will be the first.

I thought it did, as that was one of the reason's why it had such a bad frame rate?