Kojima MGS4 PS3 Devkit TGS show Fansubbed!

[zidane1strife]

Okay I did this poly/vertices test and I see the point you and Titanio are making cool. Now for the bigger question. Of course this is a rough estimate question.

How in the world can Hideo put about 60,000 polys in Snake's hair, when the outside of the cars in PGR3 (currently the best looking racing game in history bar none) are only 40,000-50,000 polys?

I'm sorry I'm just totally wowed, lost, and confused about this acheivement right now. So would it be wrong to think that the Snake character may top out around 200,000 polys?

Disclaimer: I am in no way discrediting PGR3 or what the Xbox 360 can do. Please don't take this question the wrong way. Thank you.

What's scary is that it's said to be at 60fps 720p on non-final h/w on a rushed trailer, and with physics.

PS
Sometimes I wonder, there has to be something wrong here. I mean, maybe I recall incorrectly, but Deano was thinking of trying to achieve 60fps at 1080p. Also the geometry, and effects in some of these demos is simply way out there from what we're hearing. Then you go and look at the 7800gtx which some rumor the rsx to be based off, true non-cell powered, and you see it lacking geometry in sega's arcade games, even in fighters(vf5 cough, iirc lindbergh uses the 7800gtx). Yet on ps3 non-final dev. kits suddenly you can throw as much geometry as probably is in some entire next-gen fighter characters[vf5] at just the hair in a non-fighter, in an action game?!? You also ask yourself how will they actually pull the ps2 gs emulation with the b/w as it is?

Something just doesn't add up, can the cell make such a difference in the gphx, especially when seriously b/w connection constrained? Or is there something more in these dev. kits that dev.s are keeping quiet about due to some NDA?

I mean if I indeed heard correct, and 1080p with HDR at 60fps with high number of particles/motion blur/ depth of field/framebuffer effects, was being taken as a considerable/plausible thing(and not something almost entirely out of the question) in an extremely impressive looking game , and considering the problems that may result in trying to emu the ps2's GS, one ponders... Does the rsx have some trick up its sleeve to deal with the intense B/W requirements? Is it based or does it have features from something even more advanced than the 7800gtx, some of nvidia's future gpus perhaps?

 

[Metalgearih]

Thanks everyone, Thanks 'One'

Whoa, amazing response all over the net. One told me about a slight mistake in the video (translation error) but I guess it's too late. My filefront account tells me about 14239 downloads have been made (That's 389.25GB) from my file there as of this writing. Amazingly overwhelming response!

Much thanks to one, great great help. Thanks to everyone who appreciated the work we did together. I mean it's all over the place you know. GA, TXB, here, Spanish communities, even the French(no offense, love the terms french fries and french kiss ^^). Simply overwhelming. Special thanks to ps3forums and beyond3d community for support and another special thanks to people in here who provided me with rep points. Very appreciated! One, know you're the best!

As for people debating the 60,000 vertices thing if it's true or not. It is true! Because Takabe-san along with Kojima-san clearly established it in the video that they are still experimenting with these things. You have to realize that whatever period they had to put their focus into the video couldn't allow pretty backgrounds or vast fileds etc. Like the vid says, Takabe-san 'thinks' it'll get better.

But reality is that the short period they had with the presentation allowed them to work their best with the character models(which is quite evident TBH). So it's all good for the presentation. The hair part is quite amazing but check the 720p footage and you'll know the hair truly standout from almost anything next-gen out there. I suggest, check the GameInformer coverpage with Snake's pic, there you can see 'em in full detail. Other places to look for would be the event where Snake kneels down while coughing in the 720p video.

Oh, and it was real fun to do that video. Aside from the cheesy image intro's with each new speaker I think it turned out ok

 

[mckmas8808]

I believe the 60,000 poly number, but how? I'm asking technically how is it possible? I just found out that the soldiers in GRAW are made up of 15,000 polys. Please B3D explain to me and the people how in MGS4 Snake's freaky moustache will have half of the amount of polys that the main girl had in Perfect Dark 0.

Explain how Hideo can spend 4 soldiers worth of polys of Snake's freaky hair (that I like by the way) with it also being physics based. I don't get it.

 

[drpepper]

I believe the 60,000 poly number, but how? I'm asking technically how is it possible? I just found out that the soldiers in GRAW are made up of 15,000 polys. Please B3D explain to me and the people how in MGS4 Snake's freaky moustache will have half of the amount of polys that the main girl had in Perfect Dark 0.

Explain how Hideo can spend 4 soldiers worth of polys of Snake's freaky hair (that I like by the way) with it also being physics based. I don't get it.

Using a very good design team. That's my 2 cents.

 

[Farid]

Explain how Hideo can spend 4 soldiers worth of polys of Snake's freaky hair (that I like by the way) with it also being physics based. I don't get it.

Honestly, I don't know what there's to explain?

Team kojima decided to dedicate a 60K vertices budget to Snake hair, and that's it. Nothing to explain there.

 

[TurnDragoZeroV2G]

Adding hair should be relatively trivial compared to creating a full-fledged model, where you have proportions and so many other things to consider. The more demanding aspects should be all the work put into it to make it look right in the first place (i.e., physics simulation and such). And that from the implementation rather than hardware side. At least that's my mostly-uninformed view.

Developers for the win, once again.

 

[mckmas8808]

Honestly, I don't know what there's to explain?

Okay well how can they afford to put 60,000 vertices in his hair while still making everything else look so good? Is it because the textures aren't up to snuff?

 

[Hardknock]

Okay well how can they afford to put 60,000 vertices in his hair while still making everything else look so good? Is it because the textures aren't up to snuff?

You are asking questions that nobody has the answers to. It was a design choice, simple as that. Nobody knows if they had to sacrifice anything else for Snake's hair. We'll just have to wait and see.

 

[Karamazov]

it's believable, and about PGR3, devs said that some cars throw about 100 000 polys, + the background etc.., it's conceivable that snake's hair is made of 60 000 verticles (poly ?), and the rest of the body could use about 40 000 poly.

 

[Jov]

it's believable, and about PGR3, devs said that some cars throw about 100 000 polys, + the background etc.., it's conceivable that snake's hair is made of 60 000 verticles (poly ?), and the rest of the body could use about 40 000 poly.

I think thats harder to believe. If it was the case then when they zoomed in, I doubt it'll be that detailed.

 

[wireframe]

I don't know better than anyone else here (but someone here knows...), but it's generally good to take these numbers with some caution because sometimes developers speak about the base model used and not the actual in-game model. For example, you may have a million polygon model used to create normal maps and then this is "reduced" to what you see in the game, which, if done right, will give you the look of a million polys while only using 100,000, for example.

Another factor may be occlusion. There may be "models," think of an enitire cityscape for example, that has a huge number of polys but there is no angle in the actual game from where you can view them all at the same time. So, a developer might correctly say "the city has 1 billion polygons" and there is no lie in this. S/he is speaking technically. But some people will incorrectly interpret this to mean that you will be exposed to that many polys at one time, which never happens.

It looks very good though and that is what matters most. (Not saying it's not 60,000 poly hair or whatever, but I wouldn't really care to count them. The result is the result.)

 

[Jov]

Another factor may be occlusion. There may be "models," think of an enitire cityscape for example, that has a huge number of polys but there is no angle in the actual game from where you can view them all at the same time. So, a developer might correctly say "the city has 1 billion polygons" and there is no lie in this. S/he is speaking technically. But some people will incorrectly interpret this to mean that you will be exposed to that many polys at one time, which never happens.

It looks very good though and that is what matters most. (Not saying it's not 60,000 poly hair or whatever, but I wouldn't really care to count them. The result is the result.)

I get your point, but modelling with higher polys will provide more realistic simulation of entities (objects, characters, environments) even thought the quantity used (poly, vertices) might not translate to screen for the reason you mentioned.

That is the difference between pre-baked/semi-pre-baked stuff and full modelling. For example you’ll know there’ll be more poly required for a free flowing camera view (full modelling) compared to fix camera views (maximum the resources where it will translate to screen) for the same or equivalent game.

 

[Deepak]

Maybe what they (Konami) mean is that Snake's moustache (sp?) will have a peak of 60k polygons (in a scene for exp where the camera is focussed on moustache) but it will have less polygons in other scenes.

 

[one]

Maybe what they (Konami) mean is that Snake's moustache (sp?) will have a peak of 60k polygons (in a scene for exp where the camera is focussed on moustache) but it will have less polygons in other scenes.

To clarfy it again

hair in Snake's head = 60,000 vertices primitives driven by physics
mustache = same polycount as one enemy soldier in MGS3

Though wireframe suggests that there are many ways to obscure polycount such as normal mapping and occlusion, is there any chance that "vertices primitives driven by physics" (yes it's literal word-by-word translation of what the system programmer of MGS4 said) can be rendered with similar tricks?

 

[mckmas8808]

To clarfy it again

hair in Snake's head = 60,000 vertices primitives driven by physics
mustache = same polycount as one enemy soldier in MGS3

Though wireframe suggests that there are many ways to obscure polycount such as normal mapping and occlusion, is there any chance that "vertices primitives driven by physics" (yes it's literal word-by-word translation of what the system programmer of MGS4 said) can be rendered with similar tricks?

That's a good question. It's pretty much the same thing I was asking a few post up.

 

[ihamoitc2005]

Cut-scene

To clarfy it again

hair in Snake's head = 60,000 vertices primitives driven by physics
mustache = same polycount as one enemy soldier in MGS3

Though wireframe suggests that there are many ways to obscure polycount such as normal mapping and occlusion, is there any chance that "vertices primitives driven by physics" (yes it's literal word-by-word translation of what the system programmer of MGS4 said) can be rendered with similar tricks?

This is cut-scene so with 7 SPE available for calculations this not "big deal". It is not known what detail level playable character model has.

 

[ShootMyMonkey]

Though wireframe suggests that there are many ways to obscure polycount such as normal mapping and occlusion, is there any chance that "vertices primitives driven by physics" (yes it's literal word-by-word translation of what the system programmer of MGS4 said) can be rendered with similar tricks?

Yeah, that's word-for-word all right... effectively, what he's saying is that there are 60,000 simulation points in the hair physics. (i.e. not 60,000 points that also happen to have physics, but 60,000 points in the physics system). He doesn't say anything about how many polys are being rendered for the hair. I assume that kind of granularity is there for the quality and stability of the sim. If it's significantly higher granularity than the render geometry, then you can probably generate normal maps dynamically from it.