IGN Blog On Lair

[Ben-Nice]

http://blogs.ign.com/Matt-IGN/2006/08/15/

The guy above is apparently some sort of bad-ass dude who rides, stabs, and jumps on top of dragons -- sometimes when he's soaring above the clouds. No fear, for sure.

...We've seen some pretty awesome scenes in trailers of Lair. We know there will be dozens, if not hundreds of dragons on-screen at a given moment. We know that the riders of these dragons occasionally war while in mid-air. And we know the game uses just about every kind of texture effect in the book in the realization of these beasts.

But I think Lair will also be one of the first games to truly utilize Sony's new motion-sensitive controller. Much more so than Warhawk. Rumor has it, you'll be able to fly the dragons around with a pretty intense physics system and using the controller's tilt functionality you can send them diving to and from, swinging to the left and right or even turn them into flips.

Rumors suggest that the control mechanics run deeper, though. Imagine, for instance, being able to actually control an on-ground camera with the tilt/accelerometer functionality of the controller? I would like that. Now, another pretty picture.

More hearsay indicates that the game will be one of the first to run natively in 1080p, with some seriously detailed textures to boot. Not some upscaled fake-out job, but legitimate 1080p. How can you get past the frame buffer? Streaming, streaming and more streaming, I'm sure.

Will be interesting to see if this turns out to be the case. Certainly the guys at Microsoft have repeatedly called it an improbability and stopped just shy of shouting that it's an impossibility.

Anyhoo, some good stuff. If I were a gambling man, I'd expect to hear a lot more about Lair in the next few months. In the meantime, it's definitely one of the sole reasons why I want a PS3 right now. ...

 

[Bad_Boy]

Interesting stuff, although seems to have a lot of rumors/speculation/hearsay in effect, it does sound pretty optimistic. Really sounds like Lair was made for this 6 axis controller the way he describes the uses (of course probably not the case, but sounds like a great match together).

Whatever happens... I'll be keeping an eye out for Lair. Thx for the read Ben-Nice.

 

[Ben-Nice]

Interesting stuff, although seems to have a lot of rumors/speculation/hearsay in effect, it does sound pretty optimistic. Really sounds like Lair was made for this 6 axis controller the way he describes the uses (of course probably not the case, but sounds like a great match together).

Whatever happens... I'll be keeping an eye out for Lair. Thx for the read Ben-Nice.

I believe the controller stuff over the 1080p stuff.

 

[Titanio]

Controller seems like a no-brainer.

Despite F5's technical credentials, I'd be very surprised if the game hit 1080p, given the level of visual fidelity you'd expect from a F5 game. That seems quite unlikely to me, and IIRC, that last shot shown at GDC was a 720p shot (of course they could have just resized it, but..).

 

[London Geezer]

I don't see why they should target 1080p when they can just settle for the more than acceptable 720p and crank up the detail.

 

[Mmmkay]

That GDC shot definitely looked like it was rendered at 720p, but still that doesn't say much about what the game is running at since most screens these days are rendered at 5120x2880. Anyway, this sounds very Factor 5, focusing more on technical merit rather than entertainment value.

 

[Qroach]

So what's the rumor regarding factor 5 laying off 20 people recently and going into a hiring freeze? Did anyone here see the game at siggraph?

 

[Titanio]

Apparently it was at GDC as part of a Softimage event, but few have reported on it.

As for layoffs, that would be consistent with the notion that the game has been put back. The team may have gotten to a size consistent with crunching toward a nearer release, and needed to resize when the date got put back. (A date was never announced, but it seemed that internally they were probably targetting launch).

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I don't see why they should target 1080p when they can just settle for the more than acceptable 720p and crank up the detail.

If they can manage 1080p with the same detail they've shown, adding more detail at a lower res wouldn't add much. Not that 1080p adds much considering most people can't view it. But it would be nice for those few 1080p set owners, and if Sony have been encouraging that res wouldn't Factor 5 like to rise to the challenge? Plus if they can manage 720p at 60 fps, they can go to 1080p at 30 fps. If they do that they should provide an option so 720p set owners get the joy of 60 fps!

 

[mrboo]

Hats off to F5 if they can pull Lair off at 1080p.

 

[Titanio]

Not that 1080p adds much considering most people can't view it.

For non-1080p TVs there would be the benefit of AA etc.

I agree though, that if they hit their desired level of detail and found it (relatively) easy to increase the resolution to 1080p, that might be a cheaper way to increase quality than going back and revising their detail targets.

All of that said, I think it's very unlikely F5 would be able to just flip on 1080p given the apparent level of fidelity, so I'm pretty sceptical of that part of the rumour at least.

 

[Jesus2006]

All of that said, I think it's very unlikely F5 would be able to just flip on 1080p given the apparent level of fidelity, so I'm pretty sceptical of that part of the rumour at least.

From a fillrate POV the RSX should easily handle a 1080p resolution, as its desktop counterparts rendered a similar resolution now for several years (1600x1200) just that the RSX is faster in this regard due to its higher clock rate.

So if they'd overcome the bandwidth limitations by a proper use of both memory pools, possilbly with some CELL "shading" applied to leverage bandwidth consumtion of the RSX i bet it would be possible, even at this detail.

On the other hand, theres always more detail possible in the lower resolution, which i would pretty much appreciate since i don't have a 1080p display anyways.

 

[AlNom]

1080p... I'd believe it if the number of dragons close to the player were limited, and they were using a Crazy(tm) LOD system for the hundreds of dragons elsewhere and at the same time limit what objects get shaded/lit. Other than that, I get the impression that you'll be flying at high altitudes where land geometry is insignificant anyway, and this ends up being a similar case as Fight Night 3.

Just as a side-note, how are Sony handling the different TV resolutions? Are they using an internal scaler? Or is it a combination of user-selectable resolutions and a scaler?

I was thinking that someone might want a higher framerate, but that the resolution is not native to the TV and the TV might have a crap scaler...

 

[Bad_Boy]

I believe the controller stuff over the 1080p stuff.

I honestly don't know what to believe. It all sounds so optimistic to me. I'm just keeping my comments to a low until something does surface about Lair. A game we havent really heard much about relatively speaking, just little bits and peices here and there. If everything, or even parts of what Matt said are true then indeed it sounds pretty great. But I'll say this much, If anyone could pull off those graphics we saw during e3, I think Factor 5 would be the one to.

If any of you have been following the game, you can see the game has somewhat already went through a graphical change. Remember E3 2005, we saw very wet, shiny looking dragons. And during GDC/e3 we see much more realistic and textured dragons. For the most part I think GDC/e3 looks better than the previous look. Both look great to me, I'm just saying there has been an obvious change. I dont see any reason why the game couldnt get another graphical jump(if you even want to call 1080p that). But because the game has been kept so quiet, I'm not really sure what to beleive unless it comes out of Factor 5's mouth.

But yeah, if all this is true, then great news.

 

[Ben-Nice]

Take this with a grain of salt but after E3 a supposedly Lair Dev answered questions on IGN message boards

Quote:
Black_Samson18 posted:So was the trailer they showed at E3 realtime or CGI?


I was waiting for that to come up. In fact I'm surprised it took this long. The company and Sony anticipated this and we've been told to not answer the question. I can give you some idea of the current graphics though. Remeber the screenshot that surfaced from the GDC presentation? That was entirely real-time, in the engine, as in someone was actually playing the level(in fact I've played that level). Also in terms of the levels, Obivion has nothing on Lair

Quote:
Well obviously my opinion is not the company's opinion. There was more than just one reason for choosing the PS3 console. There's always things you have to take into account when you decide the platform besides the hardware such as publishers, funding, contracts, those kinds of things. That being said, the most obvious reason is power and the abilities of the hardware. I don't think you have to be a rocket scientist to figure out which console is the most powerful of the 3.


And I should be a little clearer about the comment on Oblivion because I don't want this to turn into thread comparing such or give people the wrong impression. With Oblivion, you have thick forest that really prevent you from seeing that far ahead of you, that way the developers can stream in new geometry and textures as you pass through the levels. Oblivon may have a larger overall size in terms of miles, but you can only see a small amount of it in front of your screen. It's not this way in Lair.

 

[Bad_Boy]

For reference, heres pretty much the only direct shot we have of LAIR.
720P resolution, shown at GDC (IIRC) 2-3 months before the e3 trailer.
http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/article/698/698558/lair-screen-20060327004958573.jpg

 

[Laa-Yosh]

I think the image quality differences between the knight in the first post and this screenshot are more then obvious. Just look at how the specular highlights look like, or how much aliasing is there from the - quite detailed - plate armour.

The trailer was more than likely CG, with very high levels of AA, advanced texture filtering and so on. And if they could produce it in realtime, they'd provide at least some PR shots from it as they've done with the first trailer (which was very similar to this latest screenshot, by the way).

Edit: Another possibility is that it's been rendered witht he engine, but in such high quality settings that are not possible to maintain in realtime. It gets harder and harder to tell, that's for sure.

 

[Bad_Boy]

I think the image quality differences between the knight in the first post and this screenshot are more then obvious. Just look at how the specular highlights look like, or how much aliasing is there from the - quite detailed - plate armour.

The trailer was more than likely CG, with very high levels of AA, advanced texture filtering and so on. And if they could produce it in realtime, they'd provide at least some PR shots from it as they've done with the first trailer (which was very similar to this latest screenshot, by the way).

Well I think it goes without saying, a lot can happen in 2-3 months. And we dont even know what age the screenshot's build was in. And arent you one who orginally said FFXIII was CG? Not that I think it's realtime, I've already expressed my opinion's on it being realtime or not in the other Lair thread. But in certain parts of the trailer (watch the HD version), you can see graphics very close to the one to that real-time screenshot if you can imagine it in motion. I think the trailer was a mix of CG and ingame-assets imho. But of course I doubt we will know the truth any time soon unless Factor5/Sony tells us or atleast shows some more media (preferably video).

edit:
rough screen grab from the trailer, but this is the part im referring to.

the dragon looks almost identical to the one from that real-time screen if you move the video frame by frame. right down to the metal ring around the "saddle."
And you have to remember, when you shrink down images like that, like the video was shrunk down. It gives the appearance that there is AA going on.
http://img127.imageshack.us/img127/4871/lairscreen20060327004958573yw0.jpg

This is all speculation on my part of course. It would definately be nice if Factor 5 cleared this all up for us.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Rogue Leader to Rebel Strike had an increase in on-screen enemies, an increase in special effects, and a jump in resolution (480i to 480p). Don't underestimate Factor 5. Their games have always emphasized "work smarter, not harder." And since Playstation is still a far more powerful brand name than Nintendo is or was, other developers will be beating down their doors to license the tech (that said, you'd think devs would be trying to get ahold of F5's Cube tools to get themselves a head start on Wii).

 

[mrboo]

Heres some footage from GDC

http://youtube.com/watch?v=sgW81km74lk

The good stuff starts at 1:19 into the video, It looks jaw dropping IMO