Wait there i thought Capcom said RSX had faster pixel shaders? This smells to me like a not-so-optimised 7900GS engine.
PS3 has a lot of CPU to GPU bandwidth to free up RSX bandwidth as per GG on KZ2.
Image Quality and Framebuffer Speculations for WIP/alpha/beta/E3 games *Read the first post*
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Wait there i thought Capcom said RSX had faster pixel shaders? This smells to me like a not-so-optimised 7900GS engine.
PS3 has a lot of CPU to GPU bandwidth to free up RSX bandwidth as per GG on KZ2.
Comparing PS3 and XBox 360 pixel shader processing power is not that easy. Like all new ATI chips, the XBox 360 has unified shaders and this allows the hardware to better load balance the shader power. On architectures with separate pixel and vertex shaders some of the processing power always gets wasted, as it's impossible to tune the game to meet the exact PS/VS ratio every frame (on all different scenarios).
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Or an already bandwidth limited scenario...
or that, I thought a 2XAA shouldn't kill the performance that bad, or maybe the game is just barely above 60fps at the arcade to keep things running smooth already. But then its a console that we are talking about, they need any extra resources they can get.
RSX has "peak performance" and "realistic performance". There are many gotchas with RSX, meaning that hitting peak performance in a game product is unlikely. sebbbi mentioned some issues, there are many others as well. For example, half floats. To get RSX to perform you *must* use half precision floats anywhere and everywhere possible. This helps it dual issue commands and hence reduce a shaders pass count. Of course half precision floats aren't always enough precision for the task at hand so you get forced to use regular floats, which hurts performance. Sometimes even just one float used in a shader can cut that shaders performance by a very measurable amount. On xenos, you don't have to care.
The bandwidth I was referring to was frame buffer bandwidth for transparency lookup. PS3 is permanently handicapped in this area. All games suffer from it, even first part titles like KZ2 have very low resolution particles, explosions, etc. They are hard to spot in that game because explosions last just a fraction of a second, but if you could freeze frame on an explosion pic you'd see how low res it really was. SF4 though has particle effects that like to linger around on screen, so they can't take the low res route on those because it would look really bad. During an SF4 zoom in sequence, the transparent particles could result in many screen amounts of overdraw, which RSX would struggle to maintain at 60fps. That might be why they drop main render rez on a zoom.
Don't you have those two games reversed? I thought the smoke in KZ2 lingers on much longer and much more denser. Especially the rockets from the tanks which best anything I've seen in SF4.
marcus_rocks
Newcomer
Here is a gif that shows killzone 2's smoke effects http://i41.tinypic.com/2h5n37m.gif
Killzone 2 and Lost Planet have the same resolution for smoke effects and we already know the end result even though the PS3 has less frame buffer bandwidth.
From experienced eyes, I haven't seen such nice smoke effects in a console game yet.
As I said before, just wait till GDC09 to see how they did it.
Killzone 2 and Lost Planet have the same resolution for smoke effects and we already know the end result even though the PS3 has less frame buffer bandwidth.
From experienced eyes, I haven't seen such nice smoke effects in a console game yet.
As I said before, just wait till GDC09 to see how they did it.
Stuff like smoke is ok, it has little detail in it so you can get away with lower res for that and let them linger around. Same with stuff like kicked up dirt, etc. It's in stuff that needs details where the low res shows badly, like on explosions, but they flash those real quick in KZ2 so it's hard to see that they are low res.
marcus_rocks said:
You can get away with it in smoke. In explosions like this though:
http://i455.photobucket.com/albums/qq277/mintylubcomp/kz09.jpg
...it's much harder to get away with. It's painfully obvious that it's a downrezzed effect in that pic, you would definitely not want that lingering around, so they just flash it quick. Irregardless of whatever trickery they use, they will still bound by permanent bandwidth limitations, hence why downsized buffers have become standard fare across all PS3 titles.
SG79 said:
I assume you mean 'without lower resolution particles'? That's my guess, that they didn't like the look of lower resolution transparency effects but they wanted to maintain 60hz...so their compromise was to leave transparency at full res, and drop main render rez only during zoom where the transparency burden perhaps because more apparent.
GarretASUS
Newcomer
Well I wish most games would use KZ2's approach because it is beautiful. Its as they say, the best magicians use the little tricks to make you amazed.
Also it should be reminded that unlike most third party games, KZ2 is using Cell for lots of the visuals, so what may be limitations on RSX are lifted because of Cell.
Also it should be reminded that unlike most third party games, KZ2 is using Cell for lots of the visuals, so what may be limitations on RSX are lifted because of Cell.
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grandmaster
Veteran
Some apts shots here: http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/2047/killzone2dn1.jpg
And here: http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/7158/killzone4ow0.jpg
the ignoramus
Regular
These are my own 1920x1080 shots from WipeoutHD's photomode.
No shot was "touched up" with added effects.
1) #1
2)#2
3)#3
4)#4
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The game also has other high res particles that must linger for the duration of each race:
i.e. the tail exhaust. A close up ss:tail exhaust
Of course as we all know, the game does drop its native resolution on the fly, but I believe the lowest resolution it renders internally is 1200x1080?
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grandmaster
Veteran
Yes, but neither of them are ports. Both targeted the hardware specifically. The point is that with Street Fighter IV, there's no point developing from the ground up for PlayStation 3, when a port - with modifications only a tiny section of the audience will be aware of - will be hugely cheaper.
It's funny, that could also pass as a motion blur effect on the high-velocity explosion particles
Are you sure that the blended and blurry look isn't just a result of intentional motion blur effects? If you look at the scene and objects behind the smoke and explosion, you'll see that they are slightly blurred as well. The blurred appearance of the explosions in the screenshots could just be an indicator of how they are meant to look in motion. It looks rather effective to my eyes.
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grandmaster
Veteran
The blended and blurry look in Killzone is an arch example of how Guerilla Games have used the limitations they came up against and turned them to their advantage. The game is absolutely ram-packed with low resolution textures (walk close-up to any bit of scenery you care to mention then compare and contrasts with, say, Resistance 2) but in the context of everything else they are doing, they work astonishingly well.
I also did a count and I came up with similar numbers for SO4. I didn't post them because I wasn't sure I did everything correctly, but it seems the game really renders battles at barely-above-SD.
He's talking about the vertical streaks through the smoke. That is a result of lower resolution buffers.