Is AF a bottleneck for Xenos?

[Dave Baumann]

If it fundamentally boils down to bandwidth, you're not going to find any more over time (unfortunately).

It also comes down to time and understanding. With first gen titles these two factors are most certainly not there.

 

[nAo]

C'mon Dave, have you checked all the racing games out there?
Obviously I can't be 100% use they're being clever but it does not take a rocket scientst to not waste tons of bandwith on using max aniso (road markings are bloody perfect in those shots) on all the road.

 

[Titanio]

It also comes down to time and understanding. With first gen titles these two factors are most certainly not there.

I guess that's referring to devs hopefully applying it selectively where they cannot afford a blanket application. I wouldn't be too hopeful that many devs wouldn't just give up if they can't afford to apply it to everything - the quick way - and most devs so far would appear to be doing just that.

Main memory bandwidth will likely only get tighter as software matures and developers attempt more, also, leaving more devs with the choice of either spending the time to use it selectively or not at all.

How tight must bandwidth be for them not to be able to apply it to everything, though? I was always under the impression it wasn't THAT expensive.

 

[Dave Baumann]

C'mon Dave, have you checked all the racing games out there?

I obviously haven't checked every game, but the point is that I've yet to see one where that is the case. I'm even looking at recent examples to see that the same behaviour is still displayed. You've hypothesized this, and I'm wondering where from?

Obviously I can't be 100% use they're being clever but it does not take a rocket scientst to not waste tons of bandwith on using max aniso (road markings are bloody perfect in those shots) on all the road.

Look at the general level of texuring all throughout the shot. For instance the detail on the buildings into the distince is fairly good. Look at the two houses to the left of the image - with the angle they are at I'd expect the detail to be much reduced that far in if there was no AF. The wires on the pylons are also likely to be alpha texture based, and they appear to be maintaining clarity as well.

 

[nAo]

You've hypothesized this, and I'm wondering where from?

Developers talk to each other..

 

[Dave Baumann]

So, from your developer discussions do you have anything pertinent to add to what is actually going on in this case, or give any examples of racing titles where that is actually occuring?

What are your thoughts on the other texturing elements that I pointed out in that sceenshot?

 

[Dave Baumann]

How tight must bandwidth be for them not to be able to apply it to everything, though? I was always under the impression it wasn't THAT expensive.

Apparently, judging by this thread, opinion on that is divided, with XMas suggesting that it shouldn't be an issue and nAo suggesting that it wastes tons of bandwidth!

It is, of course as ever, going to be entirely application dependant and very variable. My point being that going by first gen titles on any single factor is never the best of ideas.

 

[nAo]

So, from your developer discussions do you have anything pertinent to add to what is actually going on in this case, or give any examples of racing titles where that is actually occuring?

EA's Superbike series (2000-2001) (developed by Milestone, an italian sw house) AFAIK was using the same 'trick'.

What are your thoughts on the other texturing elements that I pointed out in that sceenshot?

My thoughts are that in a racing game the road is covering 30/40% of the screen all the time and that has to be perfect, far buildings don't need to be so accurate and your screenshot ...well..what should it prove?
There are so many ways to render a road, if you believe that they used the dumbest one I'm sorry for them
(or maybe xenos is so powerful that you can switch on AF with no hit at all..)

 

[nAo]

Apparently, judging by this thread, opinion on that is divided, with XMas suggesting that it shouldn't be an issue and nAo suggesting that it wastes tons of bandwidth!

What I suggest does not contraddict what Xmas said at all

 

[Nemo80]

suddenly no one is bothered with "lack" of aa on x360 anymore , its all af now
bilinear is primary and for higher it needs additional cycle, it will be solved as everything else

Well then, the Multiplayer Part has NO-AA, because it's NOT for free!!!

Surprisingly it has AF though, in contrast to the Single-Player mode (but no HDRR on the other hand - weird...

Unfortunately that AF is so much over-optimized that my eyes almost start bleeding from the texture flickering!

 

[!eVo!-X Ant UK]

I can run 16xAF on HL2 with out any framerate loss. Even on my 5200FX, so somthing must be up with 360.

 

[Guilty Bystander]

I can run 16xAF on HL2 with out any framerate loss. Even on my 5200FX, so somthing must be up with 360.

Does the GeForce FX5200 series even support anything more than linear filtering?

The PC cards are perfectly able to handle it. If Xenos isn't able to sustain at least some level of AF on all textures in those first games, something is seriously wrong.

That's what I've thinking for the past 4 months aswell.
There something seriously wrong somewhere in the Xbox 360.

Why don't people ever argue on what it might be.
I remember reading a few months ago Xenos has problems with it's texture engines can´t give you a link on that.
So maybe the texture engines in the Xenos are actually so bad it can't even do Trilinear filtering or Anisotropic filtering without dropping to very low framerates when doing Bump-mapping, Offset-mapping, Normal-mapping etc.

Please discuss

 

[groper]

Surprisingly it has AF though, in contrast to the Single-Player mode (but no HDRR on the other hand - weird...

I can run 16xAF on HL2 with out any framerate loss. Even on my 5200FX, so somthing must be up with 360.

 

[Xmas]

Does the GeForce FX5200 series even support anything more than linear filtering?

Of course it does. It basically has the same high-quality but slow 8xAF as all NV2x and NV3x.

 

[Guilty Bystander]

Sure it has low AF (4x AF at best) but no HDR and no MSAA.
The worst of all that as I do own GRAW myself I'm sure the fps in that screen is sub 30fps.

Again only low AF but no HDR and no MSAA.
And worst of all that the framerate is something like 10-15fps in that screen.

 

[Titanio]

Why don't people ever argue on what it might be.

What have we been doing for the last 3 pages?

Regarding Untold Legends shots - ironically, all else being equal there'd be more texture sampling going on there given the 1080p resolution I think it's very difficult to tell what the filtering is like in that game anyway, given the shots here..it's not exactly relevant anyway to the topic at hand!

Regarding GRAW, I think you'll find direct feeds more useful. The one linked in the very original post is sufficient to illustrate.

 

[Tap In]

...*Ghost Recon Shots*...

Again only low AF but no HDR and no MSAA.
And worst of all that the framerate is something like 10-15fps in that screen.

those are all mp shots (up to 16 players and tons of enemies)

SP apears to be a different beast altogether (2 different Dev teams)

 

[Dave Baumann]

EA's Superbike series (2000-2001) (developed by Milestone, an italian sw house) AFAIK was using the same 'trick'.

So we have a single older engine/title using it on hardware that was far less likely to be able to perform AF at all than current hardware; we also have current EA games that clearly do use texturing/AF for higher clarity on the road markings.

My thoughts are that in a racing game the road is covering 30/40% of the screen all the time and that has to be perfect, far buildings don't need to be so accurate and your screenshot ...well..what should it prove?

I was actually saying that the detail of the buildings was fairly high. So too are the wires on the pylons.

(or maybe xenos is so powerful that you can switch on AF with no hit at all..)

Why such a silly comment?

 

[nAo]

So we have a single older engine/title using it on hardware that was far less likely to be able to perform AF at all than current hardware

thanks for making my point (btw..it's not a single engine/title and part of is was re used on racing evoluzione/apex on xbox)

we also have current EA games that clearly do use texturing/AF for higher clarity on the road markings.

So what? it's all about trade offs, time vs cleverness.

Why such a silly comment?

I think you lost your sense of humour, are we a bit oversensitive about xenos?

 

[Dave Baumann]

thanks for making my point (btw..it's not a single engine/title and part of is was re used on racing evoluzione/apex on xbox)
So what? it's all about trade offs, time vs cleverness.

And XBOX was using NV2x's filtering mechanism that had a far larger performance hit than current hardware, those costs aren't and trade-offs have changed with current hardware.

I think you lost your sense of humour, are we a bit oversensitive about xenos?

No, it was just a pointless comment. Of course its not going to perform AF for free, these things will entirely depend on numerous usage scenarios and whether it fits in the performance envelope of the targets the developers have set for the title.