Killzone 2 technology discussion thread (renamed)

[AlNom]

Confused me at first too, but I think he was referring to the 360. Unless there is some HDDless PS3 SKU planned that I'm not aware of.

He's speaking from a multiplatform development POV, so yeah, 360 $199 SKU.

 

[mymywat]

The only real advantage from deferred rendering in KZ2 is that they can use a few hundred light sources per scene instead of a few dozen at max.

(I dunno how many GTA4 has at any time during the night, but it should be around that; then again, lighting in GTA4 is deferred too, but it does run on the 360.)

What KZ2 visuals depend on actually are tight art direction, high quality and very efficient artwork (texture budget per character seems to be way lower then Gears but most people won't really notice it) and very good post processing. I hope the GDC slides will have some before/after stuff to support my point here. It really adds a lot... You guys just wouldn't believe how crappy our CG stuff looks like straight out of the renderer and how much we add in post, either.

So it actually does come down to the budget. If a talented 360 developer gets a similar amount of time then they could produce something similarly cool.
It's just that MS doesn't really need that right now so they probably won't throw money at it.

Hi,

You will want to watch this video http://www.gametrailers.com/player/43388.html

I completely agree with you btw. Another thing about the Killzone 2 game it is designed to funnel a player through levels after levels, scripting and linearity are perfect tools for a director to make impressive setpieces! It is anogulous to prerendered backdrops.

Bye!

 

[patsu]

The only real advantage from deferred rendering in KZ2 is that they can use a few hundred light sources per scene instead of a few dozen at max.

(I dunno how many GTA4 has at any time during the night, but it should be around that; then again, lighting in GTA4 is deferred too, but it does run on the 360.)

What KZ2 visuals depend on actually are tight art direction, high quality and very efficient artwork (texture budget per character seems to be way lower then Gears but most people won't really notice it) and very good post processing. I hope the GDC slides will have some before/after stuff to support my point here. It really adds a lot...

Yap ! But KZ2's technical achievements is not "just" deferred rendering though. There are tons of brainwork behind the scene. They seem to be able to use little resources (e.g., tight memory ?) to deliver big results. That's one of the key differences between excellent and mediocre technical staff anyway. So KZ2 visuals are definitely more than art (We just can't see the enabling "backstage").

So it actually does come down to the budget. If a talented 360 developer gets a similar amount of time then they could produce something similarly cool.
It's just that MS doesn't really need that right now so they probably won't throw money at it.

When we talk about this level of performance, it has to be more than money. Everything -- talent, attitude, time, money, including any available hardware edges and tools -- counts.

You know I'm still not 100% sold on splitting post processing between the cpu and gpu. I guess there are cases where it can be done and/or makes sense, but it seems like the bang for the buck you get from the cpu in that regard isn't ideal on this generation. PS3 does have monster vector units, but you would munch up so many of them to do what the gpu would handle easier, not to mention dma bandwidth use, etc... Plus keeping post processing all gpu makes sharing and reuse of post process steps so much easier.

The GPU is definitely more efficient at it. Since there's significant power and flexibility on the Cell side, it'd be a waste not to use it. The SPUs would be idling anyway.

Hopefully the developers can think of more and more creative use for the Cell-RSX arrangement (e.g., PS Eye-related processing)

Quick example of that, I was bored between projects so I implemented the 'sun shafts' shown in the ShaderX6 book. I think it was 4 or 5 post process steps for that. Easy enough and it looked nice. Then I went back and optimize it. Since all our post process is done in gpu it was easy to reuse some of the data that the sun shafts needed from other steps, and better yet I was able to piggy back some of it on other steps. In the end, the entire sun shafts post process effect ended up only costing me ~0.45ms or so once I reused/reduced/recycled it into the exiting gpu post process pipeline. I was very pleased with that

Cool ! Can the same trick be used for Cell too ? Should be possible if it's "batching" and reusing data.

It still may very well make sense for Killzone 2, but games are always adding more post processing in subsequent versions. So I can't help but wonder if at some point if someone went to the trouble of cpu-i-fying post process that they may run out of cpu and have to start shifting them slowly back to gpu anyways. Maybe I'd be more sold on a 16+ spu PS4, but not sure about this gen.

I am keen to see if the intermediate results (not just the final data) can be used by the CPU for other purposes.

 

[Betanumerical]

...

Do you or anyone else have any numbers for the SPE performance at graphical tasks?.

 

[.Melchiah.]

Hi,

You will want to watch this video http://www.gametrailers.com/player/43388.html

I completely agree with you btw. Another thing about the Killzone 2 game it is designed to funnel a player through levels after levels, scripting and linearity are perfect tools for a director to make impressive setpieces! It is anogulous to prerendered backdrops.

Bye!

I think it's a bit too much to compare scripting and linearity (which also many other games rely on) to prerendered backdrops. Not to mention, there's no scripting and linearity in the MP side of KZ2.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

When we talk about this level of performance, it has to be more than money. Everything -- talent, attitude, time, money, including any available hardware edges and tools -- counts.

You're getting a bit too emotional about this game and losing perspective on the technical aspects. IMHO.

 

[-tkf-]

It is anogulous to prerendered backdrops.

Bye!

Hello!

Realtime rendered "backdrops" would be better i think.

In this case it´s everything that is realtime rendered though

 

[patsu]

You're getting a bit too emotional about this game and losing perspective on the technical aspects. IMHO.

Why ? The game can tank for all I care (would be a shame !) but KZ2's certainly more than art and deferred rendering. Many have complained about the difficulty to develop on Cell, but few delivered at this level. When someone does, it usually means that they have gone through all sorts of experiments and hard core technical work to try out ideas before settling on the final approach. I'm sure the tech sharing between studios helped too.

Throwing more money at the problem definitely will help, but it's not the only ingredient. Otherwise, there wouldn't be high profile failures or disappointments in the industry. They also need to set a high bar for themselves first.

 

[psorcerer]

So it actually does come down to the budget. If a talented 360 developer gets a similar amount of time then they could produce something similarly cool.

Partially agree, indeed everything can be done on X360, but bigger budget won't always help.

It's just that MS doesn't really need that right now so they probably won't throw money at it.

No, it's because they cannot. They just do not have the people who can do it. MSFT does not have any decent internal studio with really strong developers. And when we talking about top-of-the-line games we need to talk about the top-of-the-line developers, which cannot be bought with money alone, by definition.

 

[vanquish]

No, it's because they cannot. They just do not have the people who can do it. MSFT does not have any decent internal studio with really strong developers. And when we talking about top-of-the-line games we need to talk about the top-of-the-line developers, which cannot be bought with money alone, by definition.

That is a problem .

I thought Rare are pretty good technically though, doesn't their engine make the most of the 360's capabilities, with tiling, and hardware tesselation support?

Bungie are also quite capable technically, at least on Xbox they were, however with Halo 3 they seem to have been superseded by others technically.

But again it 's nothing like PS3 1st/2nd party development, where you have studios such as Guerilla, Insomniac, Naughty Dog, Polyphony Digital and SCE Santa Monice trying to outdo each other technically. This great in-house competition (and the shared techniques/technology) breeds technical success.

The lack of developers pushing the 360, is what will in the end lead to substantially better graphics on the PS3. It's almost a self fullfilling prophecy.

 

[AlNom]

Clearly, folks can't understand two thread splits and staying on topic...