Killzone Prerendered E3 Trailer Talk

[mckmas8808]

I mean honestly it's much less a transgression than MS' *promise* of 4xMSAA and 720p in every game, only to silently rescind, right? But I don't care about that either. MS had a target - proved unrealistic for launch. Oh well. Sony had an industry show coming up, very important. Great demo gets put together, their call: show it and let questions linger. Sure it's dishonest in some people's view. What can be said?

In this industry it's easier to ask forgiveness than ask permission, that's just the sad reality. But it's the reality in so many fields in life.

I 100% agree. But the question from me would be does or did Guerrilla and employee of Sony actually believe that they could code the KZ2 game to look like the E3 trailer? If they did then I could give 2 craps in the darn thing in CGi. Hell Gundam at E3 was CG, but the real thing was looking damn near as good a few months later.

And like Titanio said earlier (that no one wants to talk about now) it's the end product that matters most not the technical behind the scenes numbers.

 

[Carl B]

I 100% agree. But the question from me would be does or did Guerrilla and employee of Sony actually believe that they could code the KZ2 game to look like the E3 trailer? If they did then I could give 2 craps in the darn thing in CGi. Hell Gundam at E3 was CG, but the real thing was looking damn near as good a few months later.

And like Titanio said earlier (that no one wants to talk about now) it's the end product that matters most not the technical behind the scenes numbers.

I think that Sony and Guerilla fully *intend* on releasing a game that looks similar to that demo. In fact I think Sony believes in the visual potential of the game enough to acquire Guerilla. But remember also that the Halo 2 we got was different to the one Bungie had been working on for a while until they realized XBox1 was limited in terms of achieving their vision. One can't rule out the same thing eventually happening with PS3 and Killzone 2. But I would think a fair approximation of the demo visually (not technically) will be what's released.

 

[nelg]

I would like to expand on the point I made higher up on this page since we all seem to drifting off topic...........

To an artist a reasonable facsimile is an ocean apart from an original

First off I am not an artist. But if you have ever worked with one that line will have special significance . I very much do admire good art and appreciate the work and talent goes into it. As is the case, it is the small details that the artist sweat over that usually make a work great. As they say "God lives in the details". It's like Ansel Adam's photographs to most they are stunning but to understand the technical proficiency of his work makes it all the more special.

 

[_phil_]

Laa-Yosh, dubert or anyone. Any idea how much processing power would be nedded to actually run the CG trailer realtime ?

One couldn't answer that without assuming a lot,and count on CGI guys here guys to do that to the max lot.
IMO ,You could do the same overall look without any hypervoxel and with completly static GI and SAS baked into alpha .98 % people wouldn't see the difference.

(That said ,i have and advantage here ,since i know a guy at guerilla ,so the conspiracy theories discution from both sides here are mostly for a fun reading)

 

[mckmas8808]

One couldn't answer that without assuming a lot,and count on CGI guys here guys to do that to the max lot.
IMO ,You could do the same overall look without any hypervoxel and with completly static GI and SAS baked into alpha .98 % people wouldn't see the difference.

(That said ,i have and advantage here ,since i know a guy at guerilla ,so the conspiracy theories discution from both sides here are mostly for a fun reading)

Stop having fun tell us what he is thinking about this conversation.

 

[dubert]

One couldn't answer that without assuming a lot,and count on CGI guys here guys to do that to the max lot.
IMO ,You could do the same overall look without any hypervoxel and with completly static GI and SAS baked into alpha .98 % people wouldn't see the difference.

(That said ,i have and advantage here ,since i know a guy at guerilla ,so the conspiracy theories discution from both sides here are mostly for a fun reading)

Static GI is not very good for moving or deforming objects though.
And the shading properties of the SAS hair would be lost in translation.
But sort of, yeah.

 

[Deepak]

Even 90% IQ of KZ CG trailer would be awesome. *me keeps fingers crossed*

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Laa-Yosh, dubert or anyone. Any idea how much processing power would be nedded to actually run the CG trailer realtime ?

Theoretically, we could calculate the average render time per frame, which would be a sum of render time for all the layers it's been separated into, and the render time for the compositing (cause there's such a thing too). I assume that the rendering was done on ~3GHz Pentium4 level machines.
This would obviously fluctuate quite a bit through the actual movie though, because the scene complexity changes constantly (sometimes you have explosions and characters and vehicles, sometimes you only have a matte painting). Unfortunately the statistics required for this would only be available for Axis.

Now for educated guesses, I'd say that rendering times would be counted in hours per frame, considering the amount of geometry, the radiosity, and the HD resolution. Even if we go with only 1 hour per frame, it'd mean that the computing power required for realtime running would take 60 minutes * 60 seconds * 30 or 60 frames; also 100.000-200.000 times the speed of a Pentium4. Let's say, if the CPU used produces 10 GFLOPS, than we'd need 1000 TFLOPS.
However, this calculation completely ignores any memory related issues, ie. how much RAM would be needed to render it in realtime, and how fast should the system be able to access it. These are not compressed textures, mind you.


Nevertheless, this calculation does not mean much in my opinion. Taking advantage of hardware acceleration can drastically speed up many calculations and data manipulation, thus reducing the need for programmable processing power. On the other hand, hardwired texture filtering and AA will probably never have the quality of programmable solutions; for example with CGI, you can have an artist increasing AA samples as much as it is needed to get rid of jaggies, but on hardware, you're usually limited to what the engineers have given you.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

One couldn't answer that without assuming a lot,and count on CGI guys here guys to do that to the max lot.
IMO ,You could do the same overall look without any hypervoxel and with completly static GI and SAS baked into alpha .98 % people wouldn't see the difference.

Some of the quality differences might be easier to overlook, some not. As good as the fur looks in Shadow of the Colossus, you can still tell that it's fake. As much as you think about the difference between static and dynamic GI (especially the occlusion), it still has an amazingly dramatic effect on the looks of an image. And as good as Guerilla's coders and artists are, they are still unable to overcame the limits of the PS3 hardware in antialiasing, texture filtering, shading and so on - which happens to be one of the most important quality differences between CGI and a realtime screenshot.

How much the audience will care about it is the least known factor. Perhaps you're the one who assumes a lot here, perhaps not.

(That said ,i have and advantage here ,since i know a guy at guerilla ,so the conspiracy theories discution from both sides here are mostly for a fun reading)

What Guerilla guys think about their own product is, I think, largely irrelevant here... Care to ask me about my work?

 

[dubert]

for example with CGI, you can have an artist increasing AA samples as much as it is needed to get rid of jaggies, but on hardware, you're usually limited to what the engineers have given you.

The maximum number of passes for LightWave3D is currently 35 though.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

The maximum number of passes for LightWave3D is currently 35 though.

Enter the good old 'render in twice the resolution' trick... Hey, it works with Maya Paint effects! ))

 

[Carl B]

Alright guys, too much CGI industry love going on here. Get a room already!

 

[mckmas8808]

What Guerilla guys think about their own product is, I think, largely irrelevant here... Care to ask me about my work?

With all due respect Laa-Yosh, but why should we care about your work. If Guerilla has something to say about this conversation then their word count more than yours ina heartbeat. I mean they are actually programming on the PS3 so...

 

[Laa-Yosh]

With all due respect Laa-Yosh, but why should we care about your work. If Guerilla has something to say about this conversation then their word count more than yours ina heartbeat. I mean they are actually programming on the PS3 so...

With all due respect, you seem to lack a sense for irony...

 

[Carl B]

Laa-Yosh is saying that Guerilla's devs won't be impartial arbiters of this topic material, and is just using himself as a sarcastic example. Like, you can expect him to talk up his own work, that kind of thing.

Granted I *do* think any insights Guerilla devs would share would in fact be welcome - of course - but clearly that's between Phil and his friend, and not for our ears.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Actually, the whole thing is kinda useless anyway; even the number of PS3s sold, or the number of KZ3 games sold would not have any relevance to most of this debate. The only thing that could be settled for the remaining few users here is if Sony would state that the trailer was in fact prerendered CG (see the poll thread).

 

[Carl B]

Sure but when did things turn to discussion of KZ3 or PS3 sales in any event?

I agree that there's nothing left but for Sony to indiate one way or the other, but since they're almost assuredly not going to do that, seemingly there's nothing left period.

As for the poll thread, that's another thread I avoided. Those threads just immediatley have a 'bad news' feel about them, like I feel nothing positive can come of them. I mean since you're all CG Laa-Yosh I can see why you would be drawn to them regardless, but for me it just seems like alarm bells all over the place.

 

[mckmas8808]

Laa-Yosh is saying that Guerilla's devs won't be impartial arbiters of this topic material, and is just using himself as a sarcastic example. Like, you can expect him to talk up his own work, that kind of thing.

Granted I *do* think any insights Guerilla devs would share would in fact be welcome - of course - but clearly that's between Phil and his friend, and not for our ears.

Umm... No! The Ninja Theory guys have NEVER done that. Their contributions to this board about their game seemed to be for non-bias and very trustworthy. So if a Gueriella dev signed up and started talking 1 hour from now we should take him more seriously than these CG guys (only because he or she is actually working on the game and PS3 h/w).

 

[mckmas8808]

The only thing that could be settled for the remaining few users here is if Sony would state that the trailer was in fact prerendered CG (see the poll thread).

Well no, the only thing that could settle the remaining (few you say) users is to see what the end product looks like. For most of us if the game looks basically the same then that would be great for PS3 owners, Sony, Guerrilla, and even Xbox 360 owners (because that would mean a game like Halo 3 could like just as good or better than the KZ video).

 

[Carl B]

Umm... No! The Ninja Theory guys have NEVER done that. Their contributions to this board about their game seemed to be for non-bias and very trustworthy. So if a Gueriella dev signed up and started talking 1 hour from now we should take him more seriously than these CG guys (only because he or she is actually working on the game and PS3 h/w).

Mckmas I'm not disagreeing with you, I was just explaining where Laa-Yosh was coming from in his post. I agree that their direct input would be clarifying rather than obscuring.