KILLZONE Shadow Fall [PS4]

[milk]

I felt the same way about GOW 3 and ascension... Oh cool, you can hit 50 something here and there. Nice, now lock that shit down to 30fps and give me consistent animation with no jumpy stutter.

 

[hesido]

So thats why it looked so smooth when I saw it at a kiosk. I thought the kid was playing an mp map. It was the campaign afterall. Thats really cool

Yes, even some 40ish 45ish frame rate seems better to me than 30fps, although some people are more susceptible to judder because some frames are repeated while others are not. However, God of War 3 had its 45fps really smooth for me, but it had the advantage of game-controlled camera which probably allowed them to not have sudden frame rate changes which may look jarring.

 

[Sigfried1977]

For me there's definitely some sort of cutoff point. God of War 3 was sort of at the sweet spot where I appreciated the added slickness and didn't mind the judder. Ascension, on the other hand, was definitely not. Now that game might as well have been capped at 30. After all it barely managed to exceed that mark anyway.
TR feels really great on the PS4 for sure. It certainly seems to maintain its relatively high fr more often than it doesn't. As for Shadowfall. Most of the times it seems to adhere very closely to the 30 fps mark anyway, so I don't care whether it's gonna get capped or not.

As for whatever comes next for these franchises, I'll always take visual oomph over 60fps unless it's a fighting game, traditional 2d platformer/shmup or some sort of hard-as-balls future racer like Wipeout.
I have absolutely no problems with going back and forth between games with different framerates either. If the devs can pull off a high fr reasonably well I'll gladly take it, but on my list of priorities it's definitely very close to the bottom.

 

[DavidGraham]

I just watched several footage of KZSF. I took some notes and I wanted to know If they are accurate.

1-The game has no tessellation, but everything is high poly.
2-LOD is medium.
3-Player flash light and NPC flash lights cast shadows.
4-Plyaer gun has muzzle flash shadow but not NPCs.
5-Smoke is self shadowed and can be shadowed too, but don't cast shadows.
6-Shadows are of medium resolution.

If any of these points is not accurate please let me know.

 

[DieH@rd]

Guerilla talked about their LOD system and lack of tesselation, they now have 7 switchable states for characters.

 

[DavidGraham]

Guerilla talked about their LOD system and lack of tesselation, they now have 7 switchable states for characters.

I know, but still .. the results obtained from Tessellation would have surpassed what they have now. and at lesser performance cost too.

 

[RenegadeRocks]

CD Projekt Red are also not going for tesselation but instead handcrafted polys. I think its simply because it would add uncontrolled, unnecessary meshes ?

 

[Laa-Yosh]

I know, but still .. the results obtained from Tessellation would have surpassed what they have now. and at lesser performance cost too.

What makes you think so? Tessellated surfaces are only good if you also have proper displacement mapping (so you need to subdivide to very small triangles, inefficient on current GPUs) or if you're going for an unnaturally smooth curved look.

It's currently far more optimal to manually allocate your polygons to maximize the GPUs efficiency and get the best geometric detail possible. I'd be surprised to see any serious use of tessellation and displacement on current hardware for characters; maybe huge monsters can benefit from it in 3rd person fantasy games, but even that's not that likely.

 

[Cjail]

What about these ones?

Spoiler

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Those are not characters. There are no sharp details at all, no small and large scale details either.

I'm not even sure if it's real 3D displacement and not a 2D trick, would need to see a wireframe.

 

[Cjail]

Sorry my comment was directed to what DavidGraham said.

I think the result is quite good even even if they didn't use tessellation & displacement mapping.
As a trick IMO it works quite well

 

[RenegadeRocks]

Its simple POM. When u look at it at a very oblique angle, the surface is flat. The same on tree barks.

 

[DavidGraham]

I'd be surprised to see any serious use of tessellation and displacement on current hardware for characters

Metro games do it with wonderful results, especially in Metro Last Light.

 

[Sigfried1977]

Don't know about Last Light, but the tesselation in the first Metro looks bloody awful. Everyone gains 10 pounds at the push of a button. It completely ruins the character models.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Metro games do it with wonderful results, especially in Metro Last Light.

I've never liked the artwork in those games...

 

[DavidGraham]

I've never liked the artwork in those games...

Don't know about Last Light, but the tesselation in the first Metro looks bloody awful. Everyone gains 10 pounds at the push of a button. It completely ruins the character models.

You should see Last Light then, if you have the last DLC "Developer Pack" you will find a museum for all the characters and enemies where you can inspect them up close and thoroughly.. and with motion too, you won't find a single piece of ugly curves or polygonal edges. same thing in the game too.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

I've looked up some images, still terrible art direction and no sign of proper math in the shading.

The screenshots I've managed to find show exactly what I've meant - every character is turned into a smoothed plastic doll. If that fits your definition of "improvement" than we have nothing left to talk about.

 

[Sigfried1977]

You should see Last Light then, if you have the last DLC "Developer Pack" you will find a museum for all the characters and enemies where you can inspect them up close and thoroughly.. and with motion too, you won't find a single piece of ugly curves or polygonal edges. same thing in the game too.

I would have been more impressed if the tesselation improved certain aspects of the game that actually needed it. Same with Tomb Raider. Sure, Lara herself looks every so slightly smoother with tesselation enabled, but the rusty pipes in the WWII bunker remain hexagonal (or octagonal) no matter the setting.
Nah, I'm all for artists managing the polygonal budgets themselves. That's what I like about the look of Killzone for example: it's consistent. You don't get a few super detailed meshes while other things stick out like a sore thumb. Crysis 2 with its select few micro poly concrete blocks and wood panels is probably the worst offender in that regard.

 

[Gitaroo]

You should see Last Light then, if you have the last DLC "Developer Pack" you will find a museum for all the characters and enemies where you can inspect them up close and thoroughly.. and with motion too, you won't find a single piece of ugly curves or polygonal edges. same thing in the game too.

IRC last light uses far less tesselation because I notice a lot of thing that I have expected to be rounded are blocky compare to the first games. Playing the game in highest setting setting on PC btw.

 

[DavidGraham]

The screenshots I've managed to find show exactly what I've meant - every character is turned into a smoothed plastic doll.

Yes they look like plastic dolls, but that doesn't mean they look any less detailed than any other game. in fact they are well above the rest.

Crysis 2 with its select few micro poly concrete blocks and wood panels is probably the worst offender in that regard.

Crysis 2 used tessellation for all characters, water, brick walls, concrete blocks and many other objects. It's implementation of tessellation is among the best in the industry.

Other strong examples include Metro, Call Of Duty Ghosts and Hitman Absolution.

IRC last light uses far less tesselation because I notice a lot of thing that I have expected to be rounded are blocky compare to the first games. Playing the game in highest setting setting on PC btw.

Yeah, they reduced the number of tessellated inanimate objects, but applied Tessellation to all organic objects.