LAIR Thread - * Rules: post #469

[Shifty Geezer]

IMO in the developer videos, the LOD was cranked up to "show off" the technology, while the IGN videos showed actual LOD during actual "gameplay".

Riiiiiight. In the developer videos, the game is running in full quality at gameplay framerate and is being played as a game. But when they release the game, they'll crank down the LOD to make everything look very rough. Why? The game is obviously capable of running as it has been shown in the walkthrough vids, so why then gimp it? Unless you want to suggest the walkthrough vids were offline renders of low framerate gameplay and the showing was a sham, I can't see any sense to your argument.

 

[Capeta]

Riiiiiight. In the developer videos, the game is running in full quality at gameplay framerate and is being played as a game.

So you've played the game and know this for a fact? I didn't see much "gameplay" in that developer video. All I saw was a dragon flying around an empty city firing on sail boats with some dragons in the air. I didn't see any soldiers on the ground shooting arrows at dragons probaby because adding them requires cranking down the LOD a couple notches like that "other" level to keep the framerate up. Why do you think that F5 guy said you couldn't land in that level?

 

[Jesus2006]

I didn't see much "gameplay" in that developer video. All I saw was a dragon flying around an empty city firing on sail boats with some dragons in the air. I didn't see any soldiers on the ground shooting arrows at dragons probaby because adding them requires cranking down the LOD a couple notches like that "other" level to keep the framerate up.

If you'd take a closer look you can see arrows being shot from various ships and other spots in these videos .

If you'd read the dev. interview you also noticed that the ground combat starts in level 2 for the first time.

And i really don't get what you mean by "cranking down the LOD" or where you see those "notches". If you have some soldiers far away, you'd display them as very small "dots" but that does not mean at all that the rest of the level is influenced in any way.
But of course you cannot have unlimited detail, if you put more detail in one area you have to reduce detail in another area - completely independant of the hardware.

And still, the level of detail is far beyond anything else so far seen on any console/PC. I just hope they improve the framerate a bit more and the texture /LOD streaming also seems to be imperfect in some areas as there are still some pop/slide-ins.

 

[Capeta]

I think the static city looks cool kinda like the star wars landscapes in the RS game but with much more detail, but like I said there's not much going on in the city. The only action is some dragons in the air and catapults from the boats. Even then the framerate is iffy. In the second level where you CAN land and do battle on the ground the "city" is MUCH smaller as expected. Of course the framerate doesn't improve in that level either. My point is that the picture on the left is NOT a capture anomaly. It is a LOD issue.

http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u80/Stillmatiking/headcomp.jpg

I think F5 is being quite selective in what they show, unfortunately that low LOD dragon model looks like it'll be that way "in-game" if they want to keep the framerate from dropping.

 

[Jesus2006]

Even then the framerate is iffy.

Ever thought about that this runs on a debug station with lots of debug info being done in the background (see the scene where he pauses)? Ths is not a final game after all - all that sounds more like you're trying hard to find bad things in this game which there obviously still are, but nevertheless, there is no other game at this scale that looks like this (sorry to repeat myself but this is worth noting as some seem to do a little too much nitpicking here)...

 

[Capeta]

Ever thought about that this runs on a debug station with lots of debug info being done in the background (see the scene where he pauses)? Ths is not a final game after all - all that sounds more like you're trying hard to find bad things in this game which there obviously still are, but nevertheless, there is no other game at this scale that looks like this (sorry to repeat myself but this is worth noting as some seem to do a little too much nitpicking here)...

Why even bring up that there's no other game of this scale? There's no other game that requires flying so there's no point in showing the level at that scale...unless you want to compare it to Ace Combat. Again explain that picture because it sure looks fishy. Also nobody said this is the final game, but it's 2 months away so it likely better be near final.

 

[Neb]

Ok, let me be a little bit clearer. They move in 3D, the rotate in 3D and they zoom in 3D, so what makes them a 2D Sprite now?

Lol, a 3D object has depth, volume, x-y-z. A 2D object is a texture/sprite that has no depth, x-y. For example in BF2 for PC when arty comes down 20-40 pieces of debris is created by a shader, these pieces are 2D and animated, rotate and of course change size depending on view distance. Such 2D pieces created by shaders have also no physics due to obviuos reasons.
What I saw in the second developer video was the use of these shaders to create 2D debris pieces when the boats explodes. Look at developer walkthrough video 2 at 0:26 into the video!

Dev video 2 HD.
http://www.gametrailers.com/downloadnew.php?id=18585&type=wmv&f=

 

[Shifty Geezer]

A video explaining progressive mesh
ftp://ftp.research.microsoft.com/users/hhoppe/videos/pm.mpg

Thanks for that link. It shows the process, the concept of geomorphs, and importantly shows how processor intensive it is. Those 'high polygon' models took quite a period to subdivide further. If you imagine that applied to an entire modern game, it would require a lot of processor grunt, so perhaps that's what the commentator was saying? As a technology it's not new, but being applied to best effect, the level of implementation is something impressive in Lair?

It's the sort of technology that would be good hard-coded into a GPU IMO.

 

[Capeta]

It's the sort of technology that would be good hard-coded into a GPU IMO.

Would the hardware tesselator in Xenos be up to the job?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

That was something I was thinking of. Either that or the vertex shaders. Starting with the low desnity mesh and adding the higher details, that sounds ideal for the tesselator. At least, going by its name! Dunno what limits there are that might prohibit it's usefulness.

 

[MarkoIt]

So, isn't Lair 1080p native...?

Gamespot's Preview

"For most of its history, Factor 5 has developed games exclusively for one platform at a time, which has naturally allowed the team to exploit more of that target platform's potential than if it were creating a game that ran on multiple systems. That tradition will continue on the PS3, with the developer's coding wizards performing a number of advanced tricks to raise Lair's visual caliber. We saw the game running at 720p resolution, but Eggebrecht said the final game will also have a 1080p option, and both modes are targeted to run at 30 frames per second, since resolution apparently has little impact on overall frame rate in this particular game."

How can they do this?
A 1080p native frame has about 50% more pixel than 720p. I think that they can do this only using a spe for upscaling.
The ign screenshot confirm my doubt:

http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/article/780/780114/lair-20070412015713861.jpg
http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/article/780/780114/lair-20070412015719392.jpg
Cut-scene->1080p

http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/article/780/780114/lair-20070412062409009.jpg
http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/article/780/780114/lair-20070412062411306.jpg
Ingame -> 720p

 

[DeanoC]

That was something I was thinking of. Either that or the vertex shaders. Starting with the low desnity mesh and adding the higher details, that sounds ideal for the tesselator. At least, going by its name! Dunno what limits there are that might prohibit it's usefulness.

Displaced Subdivision Surfaces

MSR has a number of papers on them. I suspect several parts of R500 were built to do them (tesselator and very fast vertex texturing)

 

[pakotlar]

Ok, let me be a little bit clearer. They move in 3D, the rotate in 3D and they zoom in 3D, so what makes them a 2D Sprite now?

Um the fact that they have no depth? It isn't even a particle system for facks sake, its just a series of sprites, that "stick" to a model. That's why it looks crappy and stands out (most everything else looks great). Doom also moved in 3D, rotated around z, yet was completely 2D. As was pointed out before, many many sprites exist in 3d environments. You can see dragon fire in a part of the video that is much nicer looking, and looks almost like liquid fire, like lit benzene or something. That looks great. Those orangy clouds that the dragons are currently farting out of their mouths look about realistic as what I saw in doom 12 years ago.

 

[mckmas8808]

I love these screens.

 

[NERO]

Being that I am unable to read/watch most links at work (where I do 90% of my B3Ding) due to IT restriction I hadn't watched the trailers until today. I am impressed at the fluidity in transitioning from one-one combat to huge battle fields. The graphics still look great IMO, especially considering the scale of the game. Surely it's avoided in the trailer but I didn't see any loading, the player is able to fly into entirely different game situations without hiccup. That is what impresses me.

p.s. "X farting out their mouths is funny in any context."

 

[Farid]

Lol, a 3D object has depth, volume, x-y-z. A 2D object is a texture/sprite that has no depth, x-y.

A plane, made of a single or two triangles, is a 3D surface that exists in a 3D space.
Physics can apply to them like any other rigid body, if needed.

Anyway, there's no point in arguing the fact that they used cardboard surfaces to display their flames, because the other, impressive, method would be to have recourse to fluid simulation, or opt for high density particle emissions (like the fire in Crysis). The problem being that both are computational heavy, not to mention that the latter is a fillrate hog, but it's not even said they'll look good in the end.
There are a few real time fluid simulations, but I haven't seen any real time implemention to display fire, and concerning the high density particles, the result is far from looking good, if you ask me.

So, the only issue the fire in the game has so far is that the textures they use for the effects are, simply put, bad.

By the way, the Gametrailer videos show a game that looks quite nice; at least graphically, I can't say that I'm a fan of Factor 5's 3D flying shooters. The game has an impressive scope and their LOD system is extremely powerful, being able to see detail materials when close to a building is a nice feat for a flying game.

 

[patsu]

Thanks for that link. It shows the process, the concept of geomorphs, and importantly shows how processor intensive it is. Those 'high polygon' models took quite a period to subdivide further. If you imagine that applied to an entire modern game, it would require a lot of processor grunt, so perhaps that's what the commentator was saying? As a technology it's not new, but being applied to best effect, the level of implementation is something impressive in Lair?

I think so too. It must be a great pain to pull all the elements into such a massive and amazing environment. I remember Factor5's Siggraph papers were on realistic texture creation. I wonder what other magic went into the game.

e.g., Is the lighting dynamic ? Does it "play" with the weather and the time of the day ? In general, is it difficult to have persistent destructible objects/deformable terrain like the mini-towers on the bridge, and the falling scales of the seaworm with progressive mesh ?

I also like how they optimize the experiences selectively to maximize what we will get in-game (e.g., using highly detailed textures while doing one-to-one or ground battles vs showing impressive scale while in flight).

I didn't expect to see this kind of game so early in PS3's lifecycle (due to complains about immature tools and libraries) and at 1080p + 30fps (target ?). Subsequent iteration should be more refined and optimized

It's the sort of technology that would be good hard-coded into a GPU IMO.

Thanks Inefficient and DeanoC. Here're more links about progressive mesh and its (possible) implementation techniques:
* http://research.microsoft.com/~hoppe/dss.pdf
* http://www.cs.utah.edu/~wkjeong/publication/p060_jeong_w.pdf

Can we apply physics to the mesh at some point in time ?

EDIT: Ah... I see Vysez mentioned Factor5's detailed material work. Good to know that they can still do something about the fire. Only real stand-out for me visually is the pop-ups. Not sure if they can get it out of the way this time though.

 

[L. Scofield]

no i know very well factor 5 but if you believe that uncharted is only small environments and just enough well you don't know nothing about Nd.So we'll see how look uncharted when it come out

I never said that Just that what they've shown so far, is completely unimpressive

Again explain that picture because it sure looks fishy.

Blown up picture showing a side of the dragon being direcly lit by the sun, washing out the normal map detail. There you go. It's not the first time that's happened in a video game

 

["Nerve-Damage"]

You must have overlook this huge thread.

 

[inefficient]

A 1080p native frame has about 50% more pixel than 720p.

It's 125% more pixels.

I think you mean a 720p frame has less than ~50% the pixels of a 1080p frame.