Is UE4 indicative of the sacrifices devs will have to make on consoles next gen?

Nesh said:
Little off topic but what I loved about that particular scene is how the light affected the smoke and changed color while it dispersed naturally. At the same time it didnt immediately disappear. It stayed their for a while and it also cast a reflection on both sides fo the wall
Amazing :)
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Particle lighting is nothing new. Take a look at Crysis for example. I think there are even some basic examples from late last gen like SotC and Rebel Strike.

The reflections are calculated in screen space so it doesn't matter if the particles are sprites (which they are).
 
I guess the whole smoke reflections thing is actually much less impressive than you guys think it is. Judging by the video, the impression I got is those stair stepping artifacts on the reflections of the grenade red trail were because its reflections were borrowing the depth of the oppaque geometry behind it, in that case, the stairs. Basically the SSR are done after the alpha effects are already in there, which makes it so that they can be reflected, but very wrongly so, warped around as if they were projected into the geometry behind them. I don´t know how that works with the deffered pipeline and how the reflections are added in into the final buffer but the whole thing looks to be very hacky and artifact prone.
 
Well, it seems that the UE4 SVO GI solution creator doesn´t work for Epic since July 2012. This fits with UE4 not using voxels anymore:

http://www.scheidecker.net/2012/11/08/update/

Here is confirmed what i posted time ago, that the technique is based on the papers of Cyril Crassin but simpler for performance reassons. I don´t know where i have read that updating the SVO for each dynamic object was 5ms...ups....

I have read Geomerics is investigating into path finding for GI that seems cheaper that voxels, could have EPIC go for a photon mapping/path finding technique?. Or... are we back at backed GI?.
 
Love_In_Rio said:
Well, it seems that the UE4 SVO GI solution creator doesn´t work for Epic since July 2012. This fits with UE4 not using voxels anymore
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I don't see much evidence of UE4 giving up voxels based on this blog post only. First and foremost I don't think he was working on this technique alone, he was part of a team. And even if it was the case, someone could carry on his previous role. People are leaving companies everyday and fortunately that doesn't mean that everything they have previously worked on must be put to the trash, Nobody is irreplaceable.

I don't have any knowledge on the state of voxel cone tracing in UE4, other than what is publicly available, but i'm not convinced that after working on this technique for a long time and having a good understanding of its performance, they would give it up on a whim. If they had any doubts, I think they wouldn't have showed it at the GDC last year.
 
Tim Sweeney speaks about UE4 (and in particular about voxels)

Tim Sweeney: Oh, wow. The industry's advancing on a bunch of fronts simultaneously. One is just advancing the state of the art of lighting technology. We've really added to that with sparse voxel octree global illumination stuff -- basically, technology for real-time indirect lighting and glossy reflections.

That's really cool stuff, but it's also very expensive and only suited for the highest-end GPUs available, so having a family of solutions for that that scales all the way down to iPhone with static lighting is a big priority for Epic -- the ability to go to a game that scales in a dramatic factor from low-end to high-end.
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I don't think he would say that if they had given up on voxels in UE4
 
I can see their voxel cone tracing GI and becoming a mean for real time visualisation of you lighting during production, and then that being used in large scale with high quality for backing lightmaps very quickly. Maybe it could be availiable in real time in-game as a premium feature most games will just choose not to use. UE3 supports real time cascaded shadowmaps and yet few games use it (to my disapointment) I just have this impression Epic is not into fully real time engines, they like baking stuff. They want real time editing, for quick interation times, but real time in-game, maybe not so much.
 
milk said:
I just have this impression Epic is not into fully real time engines, they like baking stuff. They want real time editing, for quick interation times, but real time in-game, maybe not so much.
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If you recall the ue4 walkthrough video, they did say that they have removed the ability to do baked lighting in the engine.

Love_In_Rio said:
I have read Geomerics is investigating into path finding for GI that seems cheaper that voxels, could have EPIC go for a photon mapping/path finding technique?. Or... are we back at backed GI?.
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Do you mean pathtracing? The fastest technique I have heard of about this is implemented in the Brigade engine, which involves using an octree structure for the acceleration. To me, voxel cone tracing is an approximated fast version of pathtracing. The main issue with pathtracing in realtime is the noise - although there is a technique called Random Parameter Filtering, which can filter this noise quite well, but it is still noticeable.

Maybe Geomerics is looking into that. If they are, and are able to implement it with minimal noise, then that would be the next step up. Actually, this is the future of realtime gi; in the meantime, our current mainstream computing capabilities still only allows for the approximated methods like vct at best.
 
New Unreal 4 techdemo/game from Epic will be showcased on GDC. Small teaser @ http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/6bnhuh/unreal-engine-4-teaser

asddaslqcdi.gif
 
It doesnt say but that game could be Daylight

Its u.e 4 and the trailer says coming soon

edit: TECHDEMO somehow my brain didnt register that bit :D
 
Last edited by a moderator:
cityscape was amazing.

corridors look like halo 4's on steroids.

overall i think the most impressive next gen demo i've seen. but still not totally mind blowing, except that cityscape.

imagining a next gen game where you could go anywhere in that city....wow! or imagine an rpg in such a setting, double wow

i have too wonder if ps4 and durango can get to this level a bit, as well. as opposed to a high end pc.
 
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